Workplace Giving: Employee Attitudes, Perceptions and Behavior

EXECUTIVE SUMMARY: The W. Alexander Gerbode Foundation funded this study of employee attitudes about charitable fundraising and giving in the workplace by the Institute for Nonprofit Organization Management at the University of San Francisco. This study is significant for several reasons. First, while the overall charitable behavior of Americans has been documented in several recent national surveys, the changing workplace fundraising scene remains largely unexplored. Second, the San Francisco Bay Area is an ideal laboratory for a study of workplace giving that analyzes ethnic differences along with other variables related to charitable attitudes and behavior since the Bay Area has some of the fastest growing minority populations in the country. The Asian population increased 45% between 1980 to 1985, while the number of Blacks increased by 11% and Hispanics by 20% during the same time period. California led the nation in minority population growth during the first half of the decade and is now home to one-third of all Hispanics and Asians in the United States, new federal estimates show ... (McLeod, 1989, pg A2). Third, annual workplace fundraising campaigns conducted by local charities reach and affect millions of Americans each year. While these campaigns create ideal opportunities for local charities to educate donors and elicit funds for the community, they also shape peoples\u27 attitudes about charity as well. This research looks at workplace campaigns through the employee\u27s eyes and analyzes both the positive and negative impact of workplace fundraising. By looking squarely at the workplace campaign from this perspective, it is possible to address a broad range of issues of interest to employees, campaign managers, department heads, and CEO\u27s alike. Historically, workplace campaigns have been conducted by local chapters of the United Way of America for the benefit of local member organizations. Increasingly, however, the traditional United Way workplace campaign is being challenged by alternative charitable federations and independent funds seeking access to potential donors in private and public workplaces. As nonprofit organizations of all types and sizes have re-vitalized their public fundraising efforts in response to a decade of government cutbacks, workplace fundraising has become a more competitive and aggressive enterprise. Since charities can reach potential donors during workplace campaigns and payroll deduction has been documented as a popular donation vehicle among donors, many charitable groups and federations, in addition to United Way, see the workplace as a major fundraising arena. United Way workplace campaigns alone raise over $2 billion annually. The cost of payroll deduction fundraising is low, employers encourage participation, and employees have been shown to make a larger donation when contributions are deducted from their pay. Thus, competition between United Way and various alternative funds will continue to be a major issue in philanthropy and nonprofit management since workplace campaigns represent a potentially, lucrative source of revenue. While there is substantial controversy relating to workplace fundraising, there is no systematic information on employee\u27s perceptions of workplace fundraising campaigns. The goal of this research is to outline employee attitudes about workplace giving, motivations for giving, preferences in allocations, and the level of giving; further, the study explores the demographic dimensions of these variables. Drawing on questions developed in earlier philanthropic studies and cognizant of the debate over the nature of open campaigns (United Way and other charities) and closed (exclusively United Way) workplace campaigns, this research explores the characteristics and behavior of workplace campaign donors in both types of campaigns. The project was also designed to expand our general understanding of why employees do not donate to the annual workplace campaign and what changes in strategies might produce more effective workplace campaigns, regardless of the setting or number of charitable options. The four major research questions which guided this research and structured the analysis can be summarized as follows: 1. What is the overall charitable behavior of employees in the sample? 2. What factors influence giving through the workplace campaign? 3. What are the similarities and differences in workplace giving in the public and private sectors? 4. What are the characteristics and attitudes of non-donors? Employees in both public, municipal and private, corporate organizations were asked a series of questions about their motivations for giving or lack of giving, their attitudes toward charitable giving, and their giving behavior during the charitable workplace campaign recently completed in their workplace (1988). The survey consisted of a two-page self-administered questionnaire which was mailed to a total of 2,500 employees in the San Francisco Bay Area. Five worksites were selected on the basis of location and willingness to participate; five hundred employees at each worksite were then randomly selected to receive the questionnaire. There were two municipal governments and three large corporate worksites - - one large bank, a wholesale distributor, and a supermarket chain. Of the original 2,500 questionnaires, 548 were returned for a 22% response rate. Over half of the responses, 61.5%, came from the private sector while 38.5% of the public sector employees completed the survey. The response rate varied dramatically between worksites, ranging between 41% and 13% at the private worksites, and 25% and 16% at the two public worksites

Census politics in deeply divided societies

Population censuses in societies that are deeply divided along ethnic, religious or linguistic lines can be sensitive affairs – particularly where political settlements seek to maintain peace through the proportional sharing of power between groups. This brief sets out some key findings from a research project investigating the relationship between census politics and the design of political institutions in Bosnia and Herzegovina, Kenya, Lebanon and Northern Ireland

Friends or foes? migrants and sub-state nationalists in Europe

How do sub-state nationalists respond to the growing presence of cultural diversity in their ‘homelands’ resulting from migration? Sub-state nationalists in Europe, in ‘nations without states’ such as Catalonia and Scotland, have been challenging the traditional nation-state model for many decades. While the arguments in favour of autonomy or independence levelled by these movements have become more complex, sub-state nationalist movements remain grounded by their perceived national community that is distinct from the majority nation. Migration to the ‘homeland’ of a sub-state nation, then, presents a conundrum for sub-state elites that we label the ‘legitimation paradox’: too much internal diversity may undermine the claim to cultural distinctiveness. We engage with three common intervening variables thought to influence how sub-state nationalists confront the ‘legitimation paradox’: civic/ethnic nationalism, degree of political autonomy, and party competition. Our overarching argument is that none of these factors have a unidirectional or determinate effect on the sub-state nationalism-immigration nexus, which is why the nuanced case studies that comprise this Special Issue are worthwhile endeavours

New Speakers and Language Revitalisation: Arpitan and Community (Re)formation

Today, it is uncontroversial to claim that France’s regional (minority) languages (RLs) are in decline. However, revitalisation movements have nonetheless continued to surface, and this chapter considers one by-product of such efforts: the emergence of new speakers in RL contexts. The term ‘new speaker’ refers to individuals who acquire the target language not through traditional transmission contexts (e.g. home, family), but instead as adults through language revitalisation initiatives. The chapter focuses on revitalisation efforts in the context of Francoprovençal, a severely endangered and understudied RL spoken transnationally across French, Italian and Swiss borders. A critical examination of current studies supplemented with recently collected empirical data shows new speakers to be central agents in a movement championing proto-nation-statehood across national borders, reorienting the region’s traditional sociolinguistic field

Language attitudes, linguistic authority and independence in 21st century Catalonia

peer-reviewedIn a context of increasing linguistic and cultural diversity and political uncertainty in Catalonia, this article reports on a research project which set out to explore the attitudes of members of independence organisations operating in the city of Girona toward the Catalan and Spanish languages. This study approaches language attitudes through the theoretical lens of linguistic authority, in particular, the concepts of anonymity and authenticity. The data, gathered from six focus groups, provide an insight on the nature of linguistic authority in contemporary Catalonia. Two themes emerge in the informants’ discussion of Catalan and Spanish: ‘twenty-first Century Catalanisme’ and ‘Embracing Linguistic Diversity’. The comments of the respondents indicate that, against the backdrop of the independence process in the region, bilingualism and multilingualism have become highly valued in the territory. In addition, this study suggests that a fuller understanding of the situation in Catalonia may be facilitated by qualitative approaches, which explore attitudes in-depth

Internet Daters’ Body Type Preferences: Race–Ethnic and Gender Differences

Employing a United States sample of 5,810 Yahoo heterosexual internet dating profiles, this study finds race–ethnicity and gender influence body type preferences for dates, with men and whites significantly more likely than women and non-whites to have such preferences. White males are more likely than non-white men to prefer to date thin and toned women, while African-American and Latino men are significantly more likely than white men to prefer female dates with thick or large bodies. Compatible with previous research showing non-whites have greater body satisfaction and are less influenced by mainstream media than whites, our findings suggest Latinos and African Americans negotiate dominant white idealizations of thin female bodies with their own cultures’ greater acceptance of larger body types