How political fundraising impacts charitable giving

Some fundraisers are living in mortal fear of the coming US presidential election. Not over who might or might not win, but over the awe-inspiring amounts of money the candidates and parties are raising. They're scooping up all our donations, you might be crying.

Don't worry. Some in-depth research done by my colleagues here at Merkle says it just doesn't work out that way.

Examining the Impact of Political Fundraising on Nonprofit Direct Mail Performance (PDF) looks at a lot of numbers around political and charitable fundraising.

The points you most want to know:

• Elections have little impact on charitable contributions.
  
• We largely aren't competing for the same donors. Political donors are typically younger, more likely to be male, and have higher incomes.
  
• While political fundraising grows to new records with each presidential election, charitable giving also continues to grow. Chances are, new political donors likely become better prospects for charitable giving.
  

Technorati Tag: politics

Comments

[Jason DIck]

I'm surprised that elections have no impact on charitable giving. I use OpenSecrets.org quite a bit to learn about the employer and capacity of some of our major donors. And most of our major donors are giving to political candidates.

[Xan Nelson]

Link to video is broken-- can you post youtube URL or fix the link? Thanks.