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Nonprofit leaders are often accused of being risk averse. It appears so are donors to their organizations. New research shows 82% of American charitable donors prefer to support tried-and-true methods of addressing needs, while just 18% would rather support new methods which might be game-changers but are not yet proven.
The donors cited a preference for playing a small part in addressing an issue affecting many people, rather than making a difference for one specific causes (72% to 28%). They also want tangible results, giving to programs providing food, clothes, healthcare, shelter, or water (83%). Only 17% of responding donors prefer supporting more intangible help, such as human rights, education, spiritual growth, or getting laws changed.
The study was conducted by Grey Matter Research & Consulting, a consumer insights firm. A nationally projectible sample of people who said that they gave money to a charitable organization (other than a local house of worship) during the past 12 months were surveyed digitally about their giving. The resulting report is Donor Patterns: How Donors Typically Give.
Respondents were screened for recent donor behavior, with 1,139 active donors completing the study. Respondents qualified if, during the past 12 months, they had given at least $10 to a charitable organization other than a local place of worship. Data was gathered July 2025.
Donors 50 and older strongly preferred tangible giving (29%) versus younger donors. In households with income of less than $100,000, 31% were more likely to give to tangible causes.
“Tangible things such as healthcare or clean water are easier for people to visualize, easier for organizations to show the need, and easier to demonstrate results,” said Ron Sellers, president of Grey Matter Research & Consulting. “Raising funds for mental health, human rights, or missionary work can be more challenging, because these are not concrete. It’s easy to show someone receiving a new pair of shoes. It’s harder to demonstrate someone finding relief from anxiety or having greater freedom of religion,” he said.
Donors also tend to value familiarity. That includes supporting the same organizations over and over again rather than finding new organizations to support (77% to 23%), focusing on a few specific organizations rather than spreading their money around to a variety of organizations (72% to 28%), and focusing on a few causes rather than spreading their giving around to a variety of causes or types of work (69% to 31%).
The complete report is available free upon request to ron@greymatterresearch.com. It provides full data on these and other donor patterns, along with breakdowns of differences by age, religious affiliation, total charitable giving, and other factors.
