The Pentera Blog
Americans Trust Nonprofits but Know Little About Them, Study Finds
Considering the large and important role nonprofit organizations—from charities to hospitals to universities—play in society, a new Indiana University Lilly School of Philanthropy report shows Americans know very little about the nonprofit sector.
The report, What Americans Think About Philanthropy and Nonprofits, found that just 5.4% of American adults believed they or anyone in their immediate family was served by a charitable organization or nonprofit in the past year. Given that there are 1.8 million nonprofits in the country, including churches, theaters, museums, health care facilities, and colleges, employing 12.3 million Americans, “it appears that many Americans do not recognize their own engagement with nonprofits or understand the nonprofit services they are unknowingly receiving regularly,” the study’s authors note.
The study, based on a survey of 1,334 adults taken in 2022, also found that Americans were largely uninformed about top-of-mind concerns in the nonprofit sector, such as the large decline in the percentage of the population that donates to nonprofits during the past 20 years, proposals for changing rules governing donor-advised funds and private foundations, and the recent lapse of the universal nonitemizer tax deduction for charitable giving.
On the plus side, the study found Americans have a positive view of the nonprofit sector relative to other entities. A plurality, 39%, said they completely or mostly trusted nonprofit organizations to “do what is right.” That was more than said they similarly trusted other entities in society, such as religious institutions (31.3%), colleges and universities (20.4%), Congress (5.9%), or large corporations (5.8%).
You can read the full report here.
