Citizenship Foundation Voices

Working on Go-Givers, I’ve seen time and time again, that given the right tools, many children will give up their time or money for a good cause, - and I’m sure that my friends over in G Nation will attest to the same thing. So, I was interested to read research published by the Charities Aid Foundation (CAF) on the charitable thoughts and habits of children and young people.

This week, Charities Aid Foundation (CAF) published their research in conjunction with FIVE News- in the run up to their ‘Britain’s Kindest Kid’ competition. Some of CAF’s findings reflect the trends highlighted by the Citizenship Foundation’s Giving Nation research - Cancer Research, RSPCA and Children in Need coming out as popular benefactors in both cases, for example. More surprisingly, CAF’s research tells us that 27% of young people had given money to charity in the past 6 months, a low figure when compared with the 55% cited by G Nation’s 2007 research.

After reading the CAF figures, what struck me, is that 75% of the children surveyed would like to give more to charity. Furthermore, 85% believe that charities need to do more to get children interested in their work. So, how to bridge that gap? Well, schools taking part in the Giving Nation Challenge seem to have done a pretty good job of it - in the 08-09 academic year, groups of young people in schools across the UK worked together to raise £295,123.86 for charities of their choosing. On top of that, kids in London primary schools were busy with the Make a Difference Challenge - fundraising was a focus for some, whereas others decided that petitioning or awareness-raising were more appropriate ways to support their chosen cause.

Beyond just fundraising, kids taking part in these programmes feel a real sense of achievement. A 9 year old working on a local regeneration project recently told me “I am proud of what we are doing. I hope there will be change” adding that “Helping society is fun!”.

I always enjoy it when the Economist publishes a feature called something like ‘why do people give?’ It appears to start from the principle that altruism is a behaviour so conspicuously irrational that its psychosocial determinants need to be unpacked – as if this irrationality could creep into something much more significant than philanthropy such as – er – the financial markets, perhaps. Fundraisers often play the same game at their professional conferences with seminars asking which people give and why – is it because they are from religious families? Is it for the gratitude that comes back to them from being seen as a giver? Is it for social networking or social justice?

My view is that asking why people give is a little like asking why people have babies in modern British society. Most people do not have children as an insurance policy for care in old age any more, and yet they spend thousands on clothes, holidays, bikes and ipods, which is surely as irrational as giving to charity if putting money into something which does not yield a return to the investor is always to be construed as irrational. An economist might quickly point out that we need young people and migrants to form the workforce to pay for our ageing population – but if you can find me a parent who had a child so that their tax contributions could pay for the care of the lady up the road, I’ll eat my hat. However, I can easily believe that a person might want a child just because they believe that they would love to have children, and also make a contribution to an Alzheimer’s charity because he or she would love people to be able to cope better with Alzheimers Disease.

I think that people give to charities because they see it as a means to make something happen that they would love to see in the world – such as vulnerable elderly people having better care, or children in developing countries being able to drink safer water. We know we cannot as individuals reach all the solutions by ourselves –the greatest talents in business, sports or entertainment have great teams working with them. So we form associations, and link with others by sharing our resources – emotional, intellectual, and financial – with associations we think will bring about the good thing we seek. Nothing so irrational about that, is there?

Bex (16), a student from Rushcliffe Comprehensive School, winners of the 2008 Giving Nation national award, reports on her experience of the Giving Nation Awards day in Westminster.

This is Bex‘s report on her and her charity team‘s experience of the Giving Nation Awards day in London and winning a trip to the Cameroon to support the Rainforest Foundation. (more…)