Study Finds Religious Americans Give More

By Alex Daniels

The more important religion is to a person, the more likely that person is to give to a charity of any kind, according to new research released by Connected to Give.

Among Americans who claim a religious affiliation, the study said, 65 percent give to charity. Among those who do not identify a religious creed, 56 percent make charitable gifts.

About 75 percent of people who frequently attend religious services gave to congregations, and 60 percent gave to religious charities or nonreligious ones. By comparison, fewer than half of people who said they didn’t attend faith services regularly supported any charity, even a even secular one.

“If your goal is to connect with donors, it’s clear that one of the things that matters to them is their religious orientation,” says Shawn Landres, Jumpstart’s chief executive and a co-author of the report.

The study of more than 4,800 American households, which covers members of five major religious denominations and people who are unaffiliated with any faith, was derived from two national surveys on giving compiled this year and analyzed by Jumpstart, a nonprofit research group, and researchers at the Indiana University Lilly Family School of Philanthropy. The report used data from two surveys: the National Study of American Religious Giving and the National Study of American Jewish Giving.

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Source: The Chronicle of Philanthropy