One third of Americans have little confidence in charities
Howard Lake | 17 October 2005 | News
Nearly one third of Americans have little or no confidence in charities, according to a new survey, “Rebuilding Public Confidence in Charitable Organizations,” by the Robert F. Wagner Graduate School of Public Service at New York University.
A majority of the American public, according to the research, believes that charities or nonprofits are particularly bad at managing or spending donations. The survey said that 66% of recipients believed that charitable organisations “wasted a great deal or fair amount of money”.
The report examines Americans’ views on charities’ use of money and on their operations. It lists a series of criteria that indicate whether a person is likely to have confidence in charities. Interestingly these include confidence in a few named major charities such as the American Red Cross and the United Way. So, bad press or actual poor performance by these organisations, can, according to the survey, reduce trust in other organisations.
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The report concludes that there is one key method of countering this lack of public confidence, and that is to “do a better job of producing measurable results.” Its authors argue that charities should avoid cutting overheads or investment simply to reach public expectations of how much a charity should spend on administration. Instead, charities have to become more effective at explaining why they spend money on technology, people and expertise.
The survey of 1,820 people was conducted by telephone during Summer 2005.
The report can be downloaded in Adobe Acrobat/PDF.
About Howard Lake
Howard Lake is consultant editor of UK Fundraising. He founded the site in 1994 and successfully sold it in 2022. As director of Giving X Ltd he is exploring growing giving on a massive scale.
He is the founder of Fundraising Camp and co-founder of GoodJobs.