How much do people give?

In major gift fundraising, a key to planning and strategy is understanding the wealth and giving of major donors and prospects. We think about how much we believe people can give, but what do we know about how much people do give?
 
With the Australian governments goal to double philanthropic giving by 2030, it is useful to have a look at the existing giving statistics of the wealthiest cohort of Australians.

The $1M+ group is a tricky one and there are enormous variations in giving which skews the percentages, so it is useful to look at this group in more detail.

The largest subset in this group is those individuals whose total income is $1M+ and taxable income is $1M+. This group makes up nearly 95% of the $1M+ earners. There are 18,668 individuals in this subcategory, and 9,082 claimed a charitable deduction (48.6%). This means that over half of the taxpayers in this group do not claim any charitable giving at all. For those who do, the average claimed is just over $43K, which would be a maximum of 4% of total income, and likely a smaller percentage (assuming most have income well above the bottom limit of $1M).

On the flip side, there were 45 individuals with a total income of $1M+ whose taxable income was reduced to less than $6K through various tax treatments – of these 45 individuals, 15 claimed charitable donations totaling a whopping $812M, or an average of $54.1M each. Presumably, these would have been payments into PAFs. Thirty of these 45 individuals did not claim a charitable deduction and reduced their income in other ways.

A key takeaway is that there is not a set amount that people give - regardless of income. The capacity to give and the inclination to give varies greatly from person to person. This highlights the importance of understanding your donors and not only their giving priorities, but the level at which they are comfortable giving.

So where does that leave us? Quite optimistic – there is a lot of potential for increased giving at the major donor level. However, it also tells us that there is a lot of work to do to promote philanthropy among the wealthiest Australians, especially to achieve the Australian government’s goal of doubling philanthropic giving by 2030. A key to achieving this goal is to continue to normalise philanthropy as something that everyone can be a part of.