Growing Generosity in Florida

Thank you to the Jessie Ball DuPont Fund for sponsoring this research, and to Giving Tuesday for researching and writing the findings.

 

In September of 2023, Florida Nonprofit Alliance released Growing Generosity in Florida: Giving Groups Under 45.

This report provides actionable insights for nonprofit organizations, donors, and policy makers about the dynamics of individual givers across Florida. In this study, we focused exclusively on younger people (adults aged 18-45) in order to generate insights about how to best attract and retain them as lifelong givers.

Our goal is to better understand givers throughout Florida, using this knowledge to guide strategies and generate ideas to ultimately increase giving in Florida. This research differs from past surveys in that, this year, we attempted to capture information about the perspectives, attitudes, and values of survey respondents so that we could generate psychographic giving profiles.

Analyzing generosity through the lens of distinct giving groups allows nonprofits to rethink and reorient their messaging to their audiences to attract new donors or reach former donors in new ways. We hope that the synthesis of a whole person approach will fill in gaps in the sector’s approach to engaging whole populations.

Giving Tuesday has made the data in this report available to anyone through a data dashboard. 

Click here to request access

 

Key Findings

  • When we contrast Floridians to a comparable national profile of 18–49 year old adults, we observe that both groups are very similar, but Floridians are slightly more generous and have a minor bias towards giving money.
  • A surprising amount of the total generosity is concentrated in a small fraction of all Floridians. In our sample, half of all monetary dollars came from just 2.3% of the people. Likewise, half the value of all donated items came from 5.5% of donors (107 people) and half of all reported volunteering hours came from 8.7% of volunteers.
  • Financial contributions from younger Floridians (ages 18–45) only encompass one-third of the total value of generous acts. Two-thirds of the value is transferred through volunteer hours and donated items.
  • Higher household income and being more religious are the strongest factors associated with higher generosity in Florida and elsewhere. These two factors lead to people donating more money and items (based on value). The next two largest drivers are age and being solicited, though being asked to give seems to matter a lot to some people and not at all to others.
  • Florida-based nonprofits are generally targeting a subset of people, but current tactics are only effective with roughly a quarter of the population. To grow larger donor bases, nonprofits should target new groups who may require different approaches. 
  • People who gave the most ($2,500+ last year) differed in their self-described identities compared to those who gave small amounts. High dollar donors are twice as likely to think about themselves in terms of being “religious/spiritual”, “patriotic”, or “rooted in culture”. They self-identify less as “thankful”, “compassionate”, and/or “independent” compared to those who gave the least.
  • This study was also instructive about what not to focus on. We did not find race or ethnicity to be an important factor in understanding generosity, and there were no major trends related to age within the 18–45 range of respondents. Newcomers to Florida (within the last 5 years) were likewise similar to other Florida residents of similar age, with few exceptions.
     

Based on all of the analysis, it’s clear that our findings have direct implications for how nonprofits can reach their donor audiences. For example, by segmenting target audiences according to the preferences of these groups, organizations can optimize the effectiveness of their messaging.

Another implication of our findings is that traditional ways of segmenting audiences (by demographic traits such as age, gender, and location) may not yield the best results. These traits are often used out of necessity, but if organizations are willing to invest into understanding their audience with the right kinds of segmenting questions, they could reap the benefits of tailored, targeted appeals for support.

 

Download the full PDF report here.

Download the Growing in Generosity Infographic here.

Download the press release here.