The Columbus Dispatch

Trust in charities steady, poll finds

- Dan Parks

After years of declines, Americans' trust in civil-rights and communitya­ction charities increased in 2020, according to a new study, which also found that trust in charities overall held steady as millions more Americans came to rely on nonprofits amid the pandemic.

The share of people with high trust in civil-rights and community-action groups fell steadily from 25% in 2017 to 13% in 2019 before reversing course in 2020 to 16%, according to the annual “Profiles in Charity Trust and Giving” survey, conducted by Give.org, a charity evaluator affiliated with the Better Business Bureau.

Elvia Castro, a manager at Give.org and one of the authors of the report, said the racial justice movement almost certainly is behind the shift in Americans' trust for organizati­ons that they perceive as being in favor of social change.

Sam Graddy, diversity giving officer at Jackson Laboratory, said donors may see civil rights organizati­ons as problem-solvers in an area that has generated tremendous public attention in recent years. “I can see where trust would go up in those types of organizati­ons. They seem to be about the solution,” said Graddy, who works to persuade donors to support researcher­s from diverse background­s and to support scholarshi­p on what's behind health disparitie­s between whites and people of color.

Overall, 18% of people surveyed in 2020 place high trust in charities, a figure that has held steady from 17% to 19% since 2017. At the same time, fewer people say trust in charities is highly important to their giving decisions, declining from 73% in 2017 to 63% in 2020.

As for the broader finding of a persistent lack of faith in nonprofits generally, Graddy said it likely reflects societal trends of heightened suspicions of people toward their fellow Americans. “There's just not a whole lot of trust in society,” he said.

The Give.org report is based on a survey conducted in December 2020 of more than 2,100 U.S. adults. It has a margin of error of 2%.

The study pointed to a key finding for fundraiser­s: People of color are more likely to be open to charitable solicitati­ons. For example, 22% of African Americans and Hispanics said they would like to be approached more by charities to give, compared with 9% of whites. The figure was 11% for Asian Americans.

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