It’s the most wonderful time of the year again, and as always, the holiday cheer has Americans across the US in charitable spirits. Ahead of a month filled with gifting, we set out to understand the active donors across the country, and the range of nonprofits and charities they choose to seek out during the giving season.

Objective / Methodology

To learn the traits and motivations behind US donors, we broke down the major charitable organisations into 9 categories: Arts & Culture, Women's Issues, Animal Welfare, Environment, Medical, Homelessness, International Crisis, Education and Children's charities. From there we analysed over 55 thousand charity followers to break down the biggest tribes and discover the specific demographics, interests and professions that influence their preference of charity.

Insights & Analysis

Our largest philanthropic tribe are the Mainstream Moms. This is a group that stays up to date on all things pop culture and mainstream. They know exactly what’s happening in the world around them, from the latest music to the newest reality show. As constant consumers of content, it’s not surprising that nearly 30% of this group support Arts & Culture nonprofits. Our research also found that the majority of this tribe (42%) interacts with Animal Welfare charities, offering a new potential audience for organisations in this sector looking to expand their reach further into the general public.

The second largest group of donors are the Community Leaders. Made up of primarily teachers, educators, parents and leaders, this tribe is strongly involved in the development and betterment of their communities, particularly with younger and future generations. With this in mind, they typically tend to support community driven charities, focusing on Education first and foremost, with International Crisis, Children’s and Homelessness organisations as additional priorities.

Coming in next are Professional Parents. We see Children’s Welfare and Homelessness charities resonating the most with this group, whose members also interact with accounts such as Save the Children, PBS, and Habitat for Humanity. Data shows the tribe is heavily entrenched in strong family values and faith & religion, with tribe demographics revealing a geographical lean towards the southern half of the country.

In an unsurprising discovery, our fourth tribe of Healthcare Professionals are highly engaged with charities that revolve around just that, healthcare. 61% of this group is focused exclusively on charities surrounding health & medical research, treatment centres, and various forms of health and science organisations. They are passionate and dedicated in their work; if there is any health & science content on the internet, odds are this group is seeing it, so organisations need to be creative in their marketing to stand out amongst an overly saturated crowd.

Culture Vultures & Creatives, who typically focus on Arts & Culture charities, tend to have an even distribution across various other charity sectors, including Women’s Issues at 8.1%, Environment at 5.3%, and Animal Welfare at 6.4%. This makes them a relatively flexible audience and charities across any sector could resonate with this tribe if they provided a strong enough campaign.

Other prominent tribes include Engaged Environmentalists and Progressive thinkers. Much like the healthcare professionals, these groups tend to stick with what they know when it comes to charities, engaging with accounts and organisations that are involved with environmentalism and climate issues, and politics, social issues and advocacy, respectively. Because of this, targeting these tribes for sectors other than their own may prove difficult for marketers.

While each tribe is different from one another in terms of professions, interests and influences, it’s important to point out that women were the leading gender amongst all groups, making up over 60% of each prominent tribe. Marketers of all organisations may benefit from this knowledge when it comes to understanding who exactly it is they’re targeting.

Conclusion

As we enter the holiday season, evaluating the people contributing to charities and nonprofits are important for lasting strategies. A tribe’s interests and passions last for more than just a few months, and remaining informed on the various audiences can lead to better tailored campaigns that prompt charitable action all year round.

To learn more about how Fifty can help you understand your audiences, get in touch with us at [email protected] or book a demo directly with our team.