What motivates people to give?

In Barna’s latest release, The Giving Landscape—the first of several journals created in partnership with Gloo and a collective of other partners as part of The State of Generosity series—brand new data highlights the reasons why U.S. adults and practicing Christians choose to give.

People Give Because of Who They Are In this study, givers are defined as U.S. adults who say they have donated any amount of money to charitable organizations, including churches or houses of worship, in the past year.* Sixty percent of U.S. adults and 90 percent of practicing Christians fall into this category.

When it comes to what leads people to give their money to charitable organizations, for some U.S. adults the nature of the request matters. People might give because of the ministry (6%) or the person (8%) who asks them to, or the reason (11%) or way (7%) they are asked. But most of the time—in fact, for a striking 69 percent of adults—people say they give because of who they are. For U.S. adults who are practicing Christians (77%), this deeply individualized response is even more common.

That’s a bold statement: People give because of who they are. It feels elemental to their identity and personhood.