In the Chronicle of Philanthropy Holly Hall just covered a new study finding that older women (Boomer and older) are more generous than older men, other key factors held constant (similar incomes, number of children, education level). The study, Women Give 2012, was done at the Women’s Philanthropy Institute at Indiana University’s Center on Philanthropy.
Holly reports: “Women are more likely to give a bigger share of their income to charity, and in the highest income bracket the total sums they donate are more than two times as high as men in similar circumstances: For a $100 average gift given by an older affluent man, women of similar age, income level, and other characteristics donate $256 on average.”
I was reminded that I once attempted into delve into a house file and analyze female versus male giving. We randomly selected groups of donors with obvious male and female names, analyzed their giving histories (only giving to that one nonprofit) in terms both of actual giving and response to different types of appeals. All this in a direct mail only context.
We did indeed discover that our females out-gave our males … enough to warrant considering how we might better target women in our prospecting, and perhaps better ‘tune’ our messaging (tone, language) for a female audience.
Unfortunately, it was one of those R&D projects that got overtaken by other, more immediately-rewarding events. We never got to the point of direct testing a ‘female’ and ‘male’ package against the two genders.
I do recall reading some interesting literature at the time regarding copywriting for women versus men (beyond the Mars/Venus stuff).
But when I just went online to see what I could re-discover, ten pages into googling I couldn’t find anything truly riveting. This is the sort of thing that popped up …
9 Reasons You Need a Female Copywriter for Your Natural Health Website (shades of Peggy Olsen), and a webinar (now history) promising that this expert would cover:
- 7 Specific Truths between feminine copy and copy that’s
so testosterone-laden you’ll feel the need to shave; - Copy Makeover Strategies that translate your testosteronal
copy into language that’s female-friendly; - Her priceless 3-Step Copywriting Formula for selling to
women that puts your marketing on autopilot; - Hot psychological triggers for each of the 4 Archetype
Personalities that entice her to take action right away
based on her psyche; - Insider Language Of The Sisterhood: which specific words
that flip on her “Must Buy” Switch. - And more!
Wow … sorry I missed that one!
Seriously, though, have any Agitator readers looked into the female/male giving thing? Anything actionable come out of it? Know any good literature on the subject?
Tom
P.S. And back to the study itself, well worth a read. Good analysis of Boomer (and older) giving in general.
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I often see stats that women are better donors than men so we are surprised to see our data indicates the opposite.
This is based on tens of thousands of donors signed up in Ireland in street, door and private sites. What we find is average gifts higher for men and attrition slightly better for men. Maybe it’s Ireland? Or maybe F2F?
I wonder if the trend reflects that women might be the more likely person of the household to send in and sign the check. The gift may be a household gift, but the woman might be the one more likely to be the one to put the check in the mail.
I know our organization captures our donor data based on the check signature.
Maureen,
In this study, to avoid the possibility you raise, the samples compared only non-couple households (i.e., single adult-headed households, either male or female).
Tom
This is a feature of American philanthropy that is unrelated to mail (but is easy to see in mail) and holds true for social media also. Facebook COO Sheryl Sandberg says that 62% of fb posts, comments, likes are women, as they are for most general online sites. (Quoted in NY Times) My clients have seen this gender tilt for a long time but something makes organizations reluctant to “target” women as a special category, despite their higher level of social and giving activity. I suspect our sector, embracing egalitarianism and shunning stereotypes, avoids gender-specific campaigns, even though we readily target people via wealth screening, presence of e-mail address, and other “gender neutral” criteria. Data like that which you cite, and data from social media, should nudge us to distinguish between promoting cultural stereotypes and matching our fundraising to key groups’ behavior. Hispanics, for example, have long outpaced Anglos in many social media actigities, seniors prefer email to texting, etc. Anyone who doesn’t think women and men react differently when asked for money should talk to major gift fundraisers and, well, pay more attention at home!
We just wrote a “women’s package” for an acquisition test for a client–featuring a client story of a girl rather than a boy (their control). We had fun with it and are crossing our fingers that it will work for them. They are targeting lists by gender and mailing both packages to see what happens.
The University of TN did extensive research on women’s philanthropy and covered multi-generations. As a result of this research, the University of TN Alliance of Women Philanthropist was established. This group has become one of the most successful fundraising channels in UT history. We have nonproift hospitals who use “Women’s Giving Circles”. This membership group acquires new donors with a $1,000.00 gift and a committment to annual gifts of $1,000. These donors become prime prospects for planned giving! The members pool there total gifts in an annual meeting and are given funding choices. They vote as to how their accumultate gifts will be allocated.
We haven’t yet done any serious analysis or specific testing at my organization, but anecdotally I would say that a significant percentage of our donors are older women, and we do consider that when we’re writing copy.
I am also reminded of the story that came out in April about five words that positively influenced women’s giving: http://philanthropy.com/article/Five-Words-That-Helped-a-Local/131572/
The conversation about gender and philanthropic giving is certainly entertaining at the least. But….there’s a potentially fatal flaw that many development shops run the risk of when attempting to do any real analysis of their file – if the gift entry clerk doesn’t have a keen sense of which name(s) to mark as “head of household” on the file, the NPO runs the risk of perpetually soliciting the wrong spouse which obviously creates a problem for our gender analysis. I recommend the check writer/signer be marked as such, but an inexperienced gift entry person who simply looks at the name(s) on the top of the check could be doing more harm than good. Reading checks for clues is a topic that perhaps begs more attention to at a later time. Subtleties like shaky handwriting, financial institutions making the distribution, and even the return labels that donors use on the reply envelopes all provide potentially valuable insights.
That’s my two cents…
At The Stelter Company, we’ve studied bequest giving patterns nationwide and have also identified gender differences. Among Americans who currently have a charitable bequest in their will, 54% are women and 45% are men. The gap widens when looking at a nonprofit’s best prospects. Among people who say they will “definitely” or “probably” name a nonprofit in their will in the future, 57% are women and 43% are men. You can read more about gender differences in bequest giving in our report: http://www.stelter.com/research-whitepapers/DIR-Gender.pdf. We’ll be releasing the results of our latest research on influencers and activities that trigger planned gifts, including insight into gender differences, in early September.
One great book I have read focusing on female donors is called, “The She Spot: Why women are the market for changing the world–and how to reach them.” This is written by Lisa Witter and Lisa Chen. I have seen Lisa Witter speak and this is a very good book when wanting to understand why and how to focus on women donors.
It’s so important to know your target market. In our line of work (as an animal and environmental protection lobby group), women make up the majority of our donor base.
It is because of this fact that we embarked on a community feature film project – Saving Dinah – about a strong woman who is determined to find her stolen dog. We hope the strong female lead character will appeal to current and potential supporters.
When the stats are in, we’ll let you know our results!
http://www.animalalliance.ca
http://www.savingdinah.com