Women and Do It Yourself Foreign Aid

Check out the recent (October 24) New York Times Magazine.  It's all about women including an interview with Melinda Gates and an great article about women creating their own foreign aid through their philanthropy.

Women Give More Than Men to Charity Study Shows

Dr. Debra Mesch

Women across nearly every income level gave significantly more to charity than men, nearly twice as much in some cases, according to a study, Women Give 2010, by the Center on Philanthropy at Indiana University.

Nonprofits have long suspected that women were the driving forces behind many of the gifts they receive, but they haven't had much proof. But the results of this study are so decisive and consistent, they can stop wondering, said Debra Mesch, director of the university's Women's Philanthropy Institute.

The study offered several factors the researchers thought contributed to the growing generosity of women: More women are working and their incomes have grown, more have college degrees that yield greater earning power, and the percentage of women who make more money than their working husbands is now about 26 percent.

The study released Thursday found women give more in every income bracket except one: Those with incomes of between $23,509 and $43,500.

The data used for the study was not broken down by gender, so researchers looked solely at households headed by single men or single women, including adults who have been divorced, widowed or never married. They looked at the donating patterns of about 8,000 American households.

Previous research has shown that women encourage their husbands to give to charity and that women seem to be making a lot of charitable decisions in married households, but it's difficult to get hard data on those trends.

"I think the general assumption is that women might be more likely to give, but that they give less money," Mesch said.

That assumption is only half true, according to the analysis of data from a 2007 Center on Philanthropy study. Women gave more often than men and spread out their giving to different charities, but they also give more in total dollars, Mesch said.

"It's going to be a wake-up call that I better pay attention to women," Mesch said.

Where Are The Men?

Buffy Beaudoin-Schwartz

In researching articles about women's philanthropy for our book, Women and Philanthropy: Boldly Shaping a Better World, it became very clear that the super majority of articles were penned by women.  And the tradition continues.  For example, the articles in the publication, Woman to Woman, featuring Buffy (co-author of our book) and giving by women in Howard County, MD, were written by Laura Linley.  Another recent article from the Baltimore area, "Charitable Giving: Women's Philanthropy Emerges as a Force," for The Daily Record, was also written by a woman: Betsy Nelson. 

I think back to Anne Matthews writing that seminal article in the New York Times Magazine in 1991, "Alma Maters Court Their Daughters; Holly Hall's numerous articles, beginning with "Cultivating Philanthropy by Women," for the Chronicle of Philanthropy; Erin Strout's article about courting and reaching female donors in the Chronicle of Higher Education; the People magazine article in 1998 about the Washington Women's Foundation that motivated so many of us to start giving circles; and Joanna Krotz many articles for the annual issue of Town&Country.

On the one hand I mightily applaud all the women in the media who have brought women's philanthropy to the forefront.  But I also greatly lament the lack of men in the media who have written about women's philanthropy.  Where are you?  There are a few "good men" but many more are needed to give validity to a very valid subject impacting all of human kind: women's philanthropy and how it is reshaping not only philanthropy, but the world as well.