“Giving goes to social causes – to where people can bring about change, where lives can be improved, where marginalised people can be pulled out of poverty, where services can be provided, where food can be distributed.”    

This statement on the power of giving for society was beautifully put by Shazia Amjad, Executive Director of the Pakistan Centre for Philanthropy at the launch event for our World Giving Report: Donor Insights in early June in Sofia, Bulgaria. We were also delighted to celebrate our International Network partner BCause’s 30 years of strengthening generosity and civil society in Bulgaria at the same time.   

The Donor Insights report tracks people’s attitudes and behaviours around giving in more than 100 countries and territories around the world so that we can better understand global cultures of giving. For our World Giving Report series, we collaborate with partners around the world to combine local insight with global evidence and build a richer, more actionable picture of generosity. We believe that building and sharing knowledge is essential to developing resilient organisations and thriving philanthropic ecosystems, and that it drives giving. 

We witnessed this exchange of knowledge and ideas at the research’s launch event where representatives from philanthropy organisations from Bulgaria, Pakistan, Australia and Brazil, discussed what is driving giving in their countries, trends they are seeing and what more can be done to grow generosity. In chairing the panel, CAF’s America’s CEO and President opened with the research’s most encouraging finding: “Generosity is everywhere. On most continents, most people are giving.”  

Yet we know from the research that routes to generosity differ – what encourages people to give, how and why they give and how they find the charities they want to support, differ around the world and we have much we can learn from one another.  

A key finding about what drives giving is that in countries where social norms drive giving, people are more generous. Social norms, or the unwritten rules of a society, can be influenced by factors such as religion, culture or heritage.   

Read the full article about encouraging giving around the world by Marijana Sevic at Alliance Magazine.