IU receives gift to study gift giving

The IU Center for Philanthropy received the ultimate gift that will continue to give Thursday thanks to the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation. \nThe Seattle based foundation -- co-led by the Microsoft chairman -- donated $750,000 to the Center on Philanthropy Panel Study, the largest and most accurate national study on charitable giving in U.S. households over an extended time. \n"We are grateful for this support because it helps us cover much of the cost and gives us the kind or momentum to raise the kind of money we need for the panel study," said Gene Tempel, executive director for the Center on Philanthropy. "Future inclusion of the philanthropy module, the panel study itself, buys time to ask questions about giving and volunteering."\nCOPPS, a long-term study focusing on the same 800 households, looks at giving and volunteering overtime and the economic, public policy and lifestyle changes that occur in everyday life. \nTempel said the study represents "a very rich way to do this type of research" partly because the COPPS focuses on second-generation households as well, allowing researchers to see the impact of parental behaviors on their adult children.\nResearchers then compare their results to a national panel study on income dynamics where factors can be combined with other national findings to locate trends describing how donating changes with people's life course. \nThe Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation also finds the study helpful in executing their foundation's main objectives because of its unique ability to follow giving over time.\n"It's not a snapshot; it helps you to understand what changes affect what people do," said the Gates Foundation's Senior Policy Advisor, Monica Harrington. "We think that COPPS is extremely important to understand what affects people's charitable giving overtime, and that's helpful to philanthropic institutions and people who make policies town charitable giving."\nThe Foundation's donation not only benefits the study. Harrington said the research will prove to be very effective in insuring the foundation's goals are met and accomplished.\n"We have big beliefs in philanthropy and encourage people to get involved and give generously," Harrington said. "We understand the facts that are important to make people give charitable donations, and we also like for people who are making important decision for our sector to see what really effects charitable giving."\nAccording to an annual study by the Giving USA Foundation -- which was researched and written at the Center on Philanthropy at IU -- the results show the encouragement is working. In 2004, charitable giving rose 5 percent, an increase of $250 billion for all size organizations. Individual giving, the single largest source, rose an estimated 4.1 percent.\nThe panel study on income dynamics, where most of IU's data is compared, dates back to the same 5,000 households in 1966 and now exceeds over 7,400. Over time, COPPS has found that much of the rise in donations is associated with many lifestyle trends, including heriditary giving and older Americans whose religious giving corresponded with their income growth, though secular giving did not. \nCOPPS is working on providing data that isn't as sophisticated.. This is the first contribution the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation have made to the Center on Philanthropy. In the past, they have donated to the Herman B Wells library and the Kelley School of Business.