Americans Are Passionate About Social Causes, But Few Take Action Based on Their Beliefs, Study Finds

February 06, 2009

Americans Are Passionate About Social Causes, But Few Take Action Based on Their Beliefs, Study Finds

By Caroline Preston

Americans hold strong convictions about issues of great importance to the nonprofit world — but few act on their beliefs, according to a new survey.

The survey by Porter Novelli, conducted last summer, found that 70 percent of Americans care deeply about a number of causes, such as protecting the environment, fighting poverty, and improving schools.

But less than 20 percent had done anything to better those causes in the past year. In fact, on most issues, just one in 10 Americans had put time or effort toward improving the problems they cared about.

For example, 73 percent of Americans expressed concern about the environment, but just 10 percent had made an effort recently to help.

Seventy-three percent of people also said they cared about improving schools and education, while 17 percent had donated time to the cause in the past year.

Even smaller percentages of Americans had volunteered to feed others (9 percent), assist poor people (8 percent), or help homeless people (7 percent).

The survey was part of a series called Porter Novelli Styles, which relied on interviews with more than 10,000 people.

Comments

That would seem to point to the fact that they don’t actually care, it’s just the thing to say…which is a big thing here. Actions speak louder than words, eh?

— Baffled in Beantown Feb 6, 04:49 PM #
If you need to make over $500,000 a year to run a charity you are a charity in reverse. Millard Fuller founder of Habitat for Humanity never made over $74,000 and virtually changed the world. He died this week with millions (of people who loved him and their neighbors).

No more than $500,000 from my taxes,thank you.

— Doug McLead Feb 6, 05:35 PM #
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— Mississippi-Angel Feb 7, 07:40 AM #
Interesting stats. I wonder is part of the blockage is a lack of awareness about how to connect. How would a volunteer get involved in a school when we must get a security pass just to visit my grand kids class? I find most people unaware of how to connect. This is a lesson for all of us. It is a lesson for the non profits. What are we doing to make volunteering extremely easy?

— Gary Sweeten Feb 7, 08:17 PM #
Perhaps the financial downturn will also get people thinking about how to help causes they “care” about in ways that aren’t financial. It’s so easy to volunteer at a soup kitchen, to donate last year’s birthday presents (the toys the kids outgrew) to a shelter, or to call up a school and ask if one of their students would benefit from having an adoptive “big brother” or “grandpa” help them with reading or homework!

— MEJ Feb 9, 07:18 AM #
Thank you for this post. I referenced this report in a comment to a post on the Stanford Social Innovation Review website: “The Changing Role of Nonprofits”.
http://www.ssireview.org/opinion/entry/the_changing_role_of_nonprofits/

Respectfully,

— Howard Silverman Feb 11, 12:06 PM #

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