Christians defy downward trends in charitable giving
Canadian giving still on the decline overall
LANGLEY, BC—On a recent flight in the United States, Trinity Western University ethics professor Paul Chamberlain got talking with an American who, he writes in an e-mail, “expressed aloud his frustration over the fact that the USA continues to send foreign aid around the world even while its own national debt is spiraling out of control.
“‘Shouldn’t we get our own house in order first before we try to help so many others?’ he wondered.”
Most Canadians would endorse that isolationist attitude. A new Ipsos Canada survey notes that 88 per cent of Americans—and 75 per cent of Canadians—“agree that, given the difficult economic issues at home, we should focus less on the world and more at home.”
A separate Fraser Institute study appears to back that up. It found that in 2011, only 22.9 per cent of Canadians made a charitable donation, and even that was only 0.64 per cent of their aggregate incomes.
Chamberlain blames this trend on soaring personal debt levels. “The feeling seems to be: let’s get our own personal debt down and then we’ll be in a position to give,” he says. But numbers alone may not tell the whole story, especially where Christians are concerned.
Ipsos CEO Darrell Bricker believes that far from turning their backs on the world, Canadians are in fact practicing what he calls “conditional isolationism.”
“The right mission, the right cause, the right issue, sold the right way still get a good response from Canadians,” he says. “The problem is that they are a bit more demanding. There’s a desire that whatever we do get engaged in we can actually positively affect.”
Compassion Canada president Barry Slauenwhite has noticed that same trend.
“Our donors are asking lots of questions. They’re doing tons of research. And they are very specific in how they allocate that gift,” he says. “In fact, many of them will demand certain reports or even to physically audit or monitor how those funds have been used.”
No longer will most Canadians simply write a cheque in good faith that a charity—or even governments—will put their money to good use.
“With the growth of people’s ability to actually track the performance of the organizations that are asking for their donations, and a willingness to challenge in ways we haven’t necessarily seen in the past,” says Bricker, “it means that they have to do a better job of demonstrating what their impact is.”
But Slauenwhite also says that contrary to the Fraser Institute’s findings, Christian donors overall are “more generous and more responsible givers” than non-Christians. And even if they decide they can no longer afford to support a charitable cause, such as sponsoring a child overseas, they tend to make that the last budget item they cut rather than the first.
“Our staff report to me daily that when people call in and say they’re at that point when they have no other option, it’s usually very emotional,” he says. “They’re crying, they’re weeping. They’re telling us that this hurts more than any other thing they’ve had to cut.”
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