BBB’s Give.org Study Shows Importance of Trust Before Giving is Eroding

Arlington, VA (November 9, 2020) – The importance that donors place on trust before they give to charity has eroded for each of the past three years according to new research from BBB’s Give.org. Between December 2017 and August 2020, the portion of participants who place “high importance” on trust dropped from 73.0% to 63.6%.

The standards-based, charity-evaluation group today released the Give.org Donor Trust Report 2020: The Pandemic and a Three-Year Retrospective. The report releases data from surveys conducted at the end of August (with more than 1,000 adults) and in December 2019 (with more than 2,100 adults). This report includes significant trends observed since 2017, noteworthy shifts in donor trust and giving attitudes within 2020, and charity insights in the midst of the COVID-19 crisis.

“Charity trust is important because it leads to engagement and giving,” said H. Art Taylor, president and CEO of BBB’s Give.org. “Our research shows that individuals who attribute low importance to trust are less likely to donate.”

Taylor added that, “the issue is significant and calls for additional exploration. We suspect that some donors are influenced by a broader unease about the trustworthiness of institutions generally. However, there may be other shifting giving attitudes at play. For instance, age is a factor, as our findings show that younger generations attribute less importance to trust before giving.”

Report highlights include:

• Between December 2017 and August 2020, the portion of participants who place “high importance” on trust dropped from 73.0% to 63.6%. Relatedly, during 2020 donors became less likely to say assessing charity trust is “easy.” African Americans and Hispanics experienced the most significant change (from 24% to 15%, and from 26% to 10% respectively).
• Individuals who place “high importance” on trust were more likely to donate (75.2%) than individuals who place “low importance on trust (65.2%). Similarly, 53.2% of donors who place high importance on trust donated more than $200 in 2019, as compared to 39.0% of their counterparts.
• The importance of financial ratios as a signal of trust has decreased steadily from 35.0% in December 2017 to 18.6% in August 2020.
• Within 2020, trust signals, like third-party evaluations (36%) and name recognition (34%) have become relatively more significant than accomplishments shared by the organization (30%) or financial ratios (19%).
• Impulse to support charities has decreased in 2020. In March 2020, 30.8% said they intended to donate more this year than in previous years. By August 2020, that dropped to 24.4%.

For a free copy of the report, go to Give.org/DonorTrust.

BBB’s Give.org urges donors to give thoughtfully by taking the time to investigate charities before making a donation and to visit Give.org to verify if a charity meets the 20 BBB Standards for Charity Accountability.

ABOUT BBB WISE GIVING ALLIANCE: BBB Wise Giving Alliance (BBB’s Give.org) is a standards-based charity evaluator that seeks to verify the trustworthiness of nationally soliciting charities by completing rigorous evaluations based on 20 holistic standards that address charity governance, results reporting, finances, fundraising, appeal accuracy and other issues. National charity reports are produced by BBB’s Give.org and local charity reports are produced by local Better Business Bureaus – all reports are available at Give.org.

ABOUT BBB: For more than 100 years, the Better Business Bureau has been helping people find businesses, brands, and charities they can trust. In 2019, people turned to BBB more than 183 million times for BBB Business Profiles on nearly 5.8 million businesses and Charity Reports on 11,000 charities, all available for free at BBB.org.

MEDIA CONTACTS: For more information, journalists should contact Elvia Castro (703-247-9322 or ecastro@give.org)