Mid value donors - anecdotal research in UK

Mark Philips, owner of London charity agency bluefrog, tells us about mid value donors in his blog.

Last year his company interviewed 100 mid value donors 'those who give cash gifts of between £100 and £1,000' (equivalent to donors giving about US$200 to US$2,000).

You can get the full 2007 report here.

Mark tells us "This was a qualitative study and, as such, is about motives, attitudes and feelings behind their giving behaviour."

Recently though, bluefrog followed the same donors up to see 'how the credit crunch has influenced their attitudes to giving.'

Initially they found that:

'1. Unless someone has been directly hit by the crunch, they are in denial and have no plans to make a significant cut back in their general expenditure. If they are questioning spending, giving less to the charities they currently support is not on their agenda.

Some people are looking at having less expensive holidays and one person is taking left-overs into the office for lunch. But are they going to really cut back? No, not at the moment.

2. If things did get bad, they claim they would still want to support their favourite charities at their current level but would give slightly less to the remaining ones. Cutting back on giving to a favourite charity would make them feel very guilty and, for the same reason, they would favour smaller organisations over the larger, well-known charities.

3. Giving to new charities was far less attractive to them. They would continue to give if someone asked them to sponsor them or if they passed a street collector, but setting up a new regular gift, much like any new expenditure decision in this economic climate, would provoke thoughts of should I really be doing this?

The new report is still in progress, but hopefully Mark or someone from bluefrog will comment or email me when it is available.

Sean Triner