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For all you arts managers and artists who think that you do more fundraising than art-making… here’s a gift you’ll like (and confirmation that you aren’t alone). It’s the Artful Manager Wall Clock. The Artful Manager has a very interesting blog too.
If you received an unexpected bonus of $1,000, what would you do with it? Three per cent of Canadians would give it to charity. More interesting: if a co-worker’s pay stub was laying on their desk 27% of Canadians would sneak a peek.
In conjunction with Vancouver’s National Philanthropy Day breakfast held today, AFP and Ipsos-Reid released results from a poll that are very timely, considering my last entry about people’s self-reporting of their generosity. According to the poll, 94% of people in BC report that they make financial donations to charities at least once per year. That’s well over the 25% and 78% that I wrote about in the last entry. On a happy and more straight-forward note, 41% of people in BC think that charitable organizations are “very trustworthy” and 54% think charities are “somewhat trustworthy.” Only 4% think they are not trustworthy.
Statistics Canada reports that taxfilers claimed a total of $6.6 billion in charitable donations in 2004, up 6.3% in 2003. You can read the full release here. It is interesting to compare this annual StatsCan information on giving to the National Survey on Giving, Volunteering and Participating.
The most recent NSGVP data is from 2000 (they are in the process of updating it using 2004 data and will release that in 2006). Anyhow, StatsCan reports that roughly 25% of taxfilers claim donations on their returns (and this has been steady over the years). NSVGP reports that 78% of the population say they made a financial donation in 2000.
So… 25% vs 78%. That’s a big difference. Of course, many people give without either getting a tax receipt or taking the time to claim it. Blame it on my cynical nature but I have always had the feeling that people are over-reporting how generous they are through the NSGVP.