More and More Americans Say Giving Money Is Easier Than Volunteering Time

Americans’ perception of their ability to help charitable causes has shifted in the past year, with half of the respondents in a recent national poll saying they find it easier to open their wallets than to volunteer their time.

In the survey, conducted in December and released last month by Thrivent Financial for Lutherans, in Minneapolis, about half of the people said it was easier to give money than time, an increase of 13 percentage points from 2004. The percentage of people who said it was easier to volunteer than to give money dropped 10 points, to one in three.

Fourteen percent of those surveyed said the two options were equally easy.

But the survey, conducted by phone with 1,000 adults, also found that people volunteered at the same rate in 2005 as those interviewed in 2004. In both years 57 percent of Americans said they volunteered at some point, the survey found.

Thrivent is a nonprofit membership organization that provides financial services to its members, and sponsors charitable activities through several foundations it operates.

Brad Hewitt, a senior vice president at Thrivent, says he believes changes in people’s views about how to help charities stem in part from the size and scope of recent natural disasters.

It was impractical for most people to travel to Southeast Asia and volunteer to help after the tsunamis in late 2004, he says, and many charities initially asked for money after Hurricane Katrina devastated New Orleans and the Gulf Coast last August.

“It was pretty clear that dollars were needed,” he says.

“People are pretty good at sorting out whether time or money is needed, and I actually found that pretty encouraging.”

Age a Factor

The survey found that age, income, and geographic location all had an effect on volunteerism.

For example, people who were affluent were more likely to volunteer than those who earned less money. Just one in three people who live in households that earn less than $25,000 a year volunteered, while half of Americans with household incomes of $25,000 to $50,000 volunteered, as did two-thirds of people with incomes of $50,000 to $75,000. Three out of four people with household incomes of $75,000 or more volunteered.

Young people (age 18 to 24) were most likely to volunteer, while people age 55 to 64 were most likely to donate money. People from states in the West were slightly more likely to have volunteered than those in other regions, followed by Midwesterners, Southerners, and people from the Northeast.

But when asked about the ease of giving money versus time, the regional differences were more pronounced. Sixty-four percent of residents of the Northeast picked money as the easier of the two, followed by 52 percent of Southerners, 46 percent of Midwesterners, and 39 percent of Westerners.

The survey did not ask how much money people donated to charity or how many hours they spent volunteering in 2005.

For more information about the survey, go to the “newsroom” section of Thrivent’s Web site, http://www.thrivent.com.