Let's Read A Paper: Who Gives To Animal Charities?

People who give to a lot of places, unfortunately

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I recently read Donation Preferences and Attitudes Among People Who Donate to Animal Causes, a paper put out by Faunalytics.¹ Overall, the paper creates a very distinct image of who donates to animal charities.

Only about a quarter of American donors donated to an animal charity in 2014. Animal-cause donors were somewhat more likely to be women and to be white, but otherwise were quite similar demographically to other donors. They are also less likely to be motivated by their religion to donate.

However, animal-cause donors’ giving behavior was quite different. The average animal-cause donor gave to 5.8 charities; the average donor gave to 4.2 charities. Animal-cause donors were almost twice as likely as average donors to give money to more than eight charities. As you might expect, animal-cause donors were more likely than the average donor to give to almost every other cause (the exception is donations to a place of worship, in line with animal-cause donors’ greater secularism). While animal-cause donors gave the same amount as non-animal-cause donors, the average animal-cause donor’s largest donation was only about sixty percent of the average donor’s. As you might expect, animal donors tend to prefer giving small donations to giving larger ones.

Animal-cause donors also donate in different ways than the average donor. Animal-cause donors donate by a lot of different methods: for example, they might donate at a store checkout, buy something at a charity shop, make a donation online, give money to someone who came up to them on the street, give to a crowdfunding campaign, and give some money in honor of someone who died. Conversely, average donors tend to donate in fewer ways: maybe they just write a check at a fundraising event, or just make a donation online. Animal-cause donors are also more likely than average donors to prefer to be solicited by a charity itself than by friends and family.

Animal cause donors don’t tend to prioritize animal charities: only 24% said that animal charities were the charities that were most important to them.

I think this creates a pretty clear image of what the average animal-cause donor is like. They don’t particularly care about animals. However, they like to give lots of small donations to lots of different charities. Animal charities can be “good enough” to pass their low threshold for donating.

Of course, to some extent you’d expect people who donate to lots of causes to be overrepresented in any sample of people who donate to a particular cause. But I think the trend is striking enough that it’s not just a statistical artifact. I think that this data suggests that animal causes are less likely than other causes to have dedicated donors that care a lot about the issue. Conversely, animal causes more likely than other causes to have donors who go “eh, this charity is good enough, I might as well write them a check now that I have been prompted to think about it.”

(Of course, these donors almost all give to companion-animal charities, not charities that help farmed animals.)

This is a little dispiriting? Animal welfare is plausibly one of the most important problems in our world today. It would be nice if animal-cause donors were people who realized that it was important, instead of people who have some positive affect around cute puppies. To me, the average animal-cause donor seems to be someone who is buying warm fuzzies, not someone who is thoughtfully directing their money in the way that would best make the world a better place.

Unfortunately, there are way too few people who donate to farmed-animal welfare for this dataset to say anything about them. It is possible—indeed, probable—that people who donate to farmed-animal welfare are quite different.

I personally am not very optimistic about the possibility of persuading general animal-cause donors to donate to farmed-animal and wild-animal welfare, much less to treat it with the seriousness that such an important issue requires. If we’re looking for more people who prioritize farmed-animal and wild-animal welfare, it might be a good idea to look somewhere else.

1. Disclosure: I volunteer for Faunalytics. They didn’t read this and I only speak for myself.