Who tends to donate more to social causes? Men or women? The rich or the poor? What kind of causes do Filipinos favor for their donations?

These were some of the questions tackled at a workshop last week organized by the Venture for Fund Raising for nongovernmental organizations. Many of these NGOs have depended mainly on grants from foreign donors. With the Philippines now considered a middle-income country, many of these donors are reducing their grants here, or are pulling out completely, so NGOs have to think about how they can diversify their funding base.

People tend to associate donations with large corporations and foundations, but Venture’s forte has been in the area of gift-giving, i.e., getting individuals to donate. These donations may seem small, but they can be significant because the donors tend to repeat their giving to the same causes. Many schools, for example, benefit immensely from regular individual donors.

Venture recently released the results of the First Nationwide Survey on Giving, which was conducted in 2006 by the poll group Social Weather Stations (SWS), and they are packed with information about Filipino donating behavior and suggestions on how to get Filipinos to give more. The survey was conducted using SWS’ usual sampling size of 1,200 adults, aged 17 to 65, equally divided between males and females, covering the entire country and including different socioeconomic groups.

Based on that survey, Venture estimates that Filipino individual gift-giving amounted to about P33.5 million in a year. That means less than P1 per Filipino. I suspect though that the P33.5 million is an underestimate. There are a growing number of Filipinos, not wealthy tycoons but, in the words of one benefactor I know, “comfortably rich,” who will donate, as individuals, from P50,000 to P500,000 a year for scholarships and other support for schools.

Trust

Mayan Quebral, who heads Venture, had many touching anecdotes about people who give. Citing the nationwide survey’s results, she notes that it’s the poor who are more generous. Class E, the poorest socioeconomic group, gives the most frequently. When she worked at UNICEF, overseeing their fundraising, which mainly used solicitation letters, she got people like schoolteachers to come in to donate.

The survey reports that women’s donations are almost double those of men. Mature adults give three times more than young married people, presumably because there’s more disposable income. Urban residents give more than those from rural areas.

Quebral says fundraising is really friend-raising. The most important, and most difficult, part of fund-raising is getting people to become a “friend,” making a first donation. When I had to raise funds in the 1980s for health NGOs, mainly in the United States among Filipino-Americans, I found an incredible amount of cynicism, with suspicions that corruption had spilled over into those asking for donations.

There is still some of that cynicism today, reflected in Venture’s survey, with 24 percent of respondents agreeing with the statement “Most NGOs are hiding places for money from illegal activities.” But the survey also shows that trust levels are increasing. Church-based organizations still have the highest trust ratings (83 percent), followed by NGOs (36 percent), government (18 percent), small and medium enterprises (15 percent) and even big Filipino businesses (14 percent).

Giving still centers on religion, with “supporting a religious cause or program” leading the list of traits that respondents wanted to see in an organization that they would donate to. “Informs donors,” “has interesting programs” and “has a good reputation” came in second. “Genuine motivation to serve,” “helps needy help themselves,” “promotes a cause I believe in” and “thanks me for donations” ranked third. It was interesting that the lowest ranks for desirable traits in an organization were “tax-deductible donations” and “has high profile people associated with the organization.” (If you give to an accredited NGO, your donations can be tax-deductible.)

Causes

What are the priority causes? Education for those unable to study topped the list, followed by “orphans/street kids/abused’s welfare,” “needs of abused women,” “white slavery/prostitution” and “family planning/reproductive health.” Lowest priorities were “cleaning of the environment and preservation of endangered species,” “rehabilitation of drug dependent youth,” “caring for the elderly/disabled” and “caring for indigenous peoples/cultural minorities.”

My reading of these results is that people want to donate to causes where they can see tangible results in the short term. The giving to religious causes, mainly through church collections, is part of a religiosity of habit, an automatic giving. The religious groups themselves will need to educate their constituencies on the need to understand what they are giving to, and why.

I think, too, that people aren’t giving more because they hear far too little about the groups that are doing good work. For the top priority social cause of education for those unable to study, no NGO or church-based organization came out as top of mind! Instead, about 41 percent of respondents named the Department of Social Work. The survey asked respondents what organizations they were aware of and for the “top of mind” responses (meaning without prompts), the answers that came out were mainly Department of Social Work, Bantay Bata, Gabriela, Trust (yes, the social marketing firm that distributes condoms!), and Knights of Columbus. Even Gawad Kalinga was cited by only 15 percent of respondents, compared to 75 percent for the Department of Social Work’s programs with orphans and street children.

It’s important that NGOs come out more to the public, not so much for fund-raising than to propagate new ways of thinking about development work. Many NGOs are against dole-out charity and instead look for self-help initiatives in various areas, from health to housing. Scholarships are popular with Filipinos because it is a self-help initiative, helping young people to get out of poverty. As more Filipinos donate to other self-help causes, and see their peso going a long way, they might be willing to give more, and more often.

PS: In last week’s Sunday Inquirer Magazine, I had an article about alternative giving, including donations to non-profit groups. I wanted to add a few more groups here that you might want to consider supporting as part of your Christmas giving. There’s the Philippine Educational Theater Association, which doesn’t just do stage plays but has community extension programs (+632 7256244). Pathways Philippines (+632 4266001, extensions 4045 to 4049, www.pathwaysphilippines.org) at the Ateneo Social Development Complex in Loyola has various educational programs. Check out their Christmas gift packs. Then there’s the Coalition of Services to the Elderly, or COSE (+632 7220418, +632 7256567), which takes care of an increasingly neglected sector in the country.

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Email: mtan@inquirer.com.ph