CAF Disaster Monitor A survey of the UK general public’s donations to overseas disaster appeals Summary of trends December 2011 Author: Liz Lipscomb, Head of Research Support: George Worlledge, Project Analyst

Project Background Aim The UK general public has a history of being incredibly responsive when countries are in urgent need of help. This aim of this project is to track donations to overseas disaster appeals longitudinally, in order to understand any differences between this and other giving trends. CAF tries to survey the general public about a range of appeals, and to conduct a survey once a year. The intention is for the knowledge gained from a range of surveys over several years to allow CAF to draw conclusions about the general public’s engagement with a variety of disaster appeals. Methodology Five overseas disaster appeals have been tracked to date:  Asian Tsunami  Burma Cyclone 2008  Asia-Pacific disasters 2009  Haiti Earthquake 2010  East Africa drought 2011 For more information, please see the final slide

Higher donation amounts, fewer donors  Whilst 5 percentage points fewer people donated to the East Africa Appeal than the Burma and Asia Pacific appeals, it has generated £62.7m more in funds than the Asia Pacific appeal and £52.5m more than the Burma appeal  The Tsunami raised the largest donations (per donor) than any other appeal at £9.55 per head; but it is closely followed by the East Africa appeal which is already at £7.90 before the appeal has closed (The £m figure is the DEC appeal published total)

Women More Likely to Give More  Women continue to be more likely to donate to disaster appeals than men  Women are on average 5.6 percentage points more likely to donate than men

East Africa appealed to young and retirement age donors  The East Africa appeal has particularly attracted the attentions of the 65+ age group followed by the 25-34s.  The age group most likely to give alters according to the appeal:  Haiti:  Asia Pacific:  Burma:  Tsunami:25-34

ABs continue to be most likely to donate  For the East Africa appeal, the social class most likely to have donated was the ABs, but by a small margin. This mirrors to situation with Haiti donors  For the Tsunami and Asia-Pacific appeals, the AB and C1 groups were on equal terms with regard to being the most likely groups to have donated  Only the Burma appeal has recorded the DE group as the most likely to have donated  The percentage of donors to the East Africa appeal by social class were the lowest recorded by the Disaster Monitor, with the exception of the percentage of C2 donors to the Asia Pacific appeal

Yorkshire & Humberside most likely to give  The region with the highest percentage of donors alters with the appeal. Northern Ireland is the only region which has had the highest percentage of donors twice: for the Asia-Pacific and Haiti disasters  People in Yorkshire & Humberside were most likely to have donated to the East Africa appeal, followed by people in Wales.

Singles consistently least likely to donate  People who are married/living as married are on average most likely to have donated to disaster appeals, closely followed by widowed/divorced/separated people  Single people were the least likely to give to the East Africa disaster appeal, and this is a consistent pattern across all four appeals  People in the widowed/divorced/separated group were the most likely to have given to the East Africa appeal, which was also the case for the Burma appeal

Part-time workers most likely to donate, for the first time  Full-time workers on average have tended to be the most likely to give to disaster appeals, but in the East Africa appeal, part-time workers were most likely to have donated  During the East Africa appeal, those not working were the second most likely group to have donated, and full-time workers the least likely. This is a complete change from the general pattern of full-time, then part-time then not working

Media influence on donor motivation: Traditional media continues to increases its dominance  Traditional media continues to be the most influential in motivating people to give, seeing an overall rise of 5 percentage points since 2008  New media is least likely to influence, and its influence is dropping (Traditional Media = Television, newspaper and radio; New Media = Online, text/SMS, s)

Media influence on donor motivation: Television is the most effective communication method  Television has by far the biggest influence on people becoming motivated to donate, despite a 5 percentage point decline since the Haiti appeal  Online and communication have seen a small drop in influence, and texts have not altered their draw during the East Africa appeal  Newspapers still have some influence on donations, but this has dropped 4 percentage points since 2008 (Traditional Media = Television, newspaper and radio; New Media = Online, text/SMS, s)

Media influence on donor motivation: online not dominated by social networking in East Africa appeal  The influence of social networking has been measured for two years, and is certainly not particularly influential for disaster appeals  During the Haiti appeal, those donors who were most influenced by an online communication most often cited a social networking communication that motivated them to donate  During the East Africa appeal, online communications were not particularly dominated by social networking

Donation methods: New Media continues to rise  Donating via New Media methods are increasing in popularity, making its biggest growth of 7 percentage points for the East Africa appeal  Traditional donation methods remain the most popular, despite dropping by 13 percentage points since the Tsunami (New media = online, text/SMS; Traditional = cash, credit/debit card on phone, cheque by post, credit/debit card by post, and DD/SO to a disaster appeal; Other = payroll giving, CAF Charity Account, any other method)

Donation methods: online grows, cash declines  Making online donations has trebled since 2004/05, which accounts for the majority of the increase in new media donations  While cash is still the most popular way to give, there is an overall downward trend in this method, with a 26 percentage point drop since the Tsunami  Cheque donations to the East Africa appeal were the second most popular method at 11% (New media = online, text/SMS; Traditional = cash, credit/debit card on phone, cheque by post, credit/debit card by post, and DD/SO to a disaster appeal; Other = payroll giving, CAF Charity Account, any other method)

Why Donate? International Responsibility  Donors to the East Africa appeal gave for a variety of reasons, but the most popular reason given was the scale of the disaster (82%). 80% gave because they regarded international assistance as being essential.  Notably, having friends/family in the area is at 14% for the East Africa appeal, 11 percentage points higher than for the Haiti appeal. 10% also said that they had visited the area, which is another increase on 2010, but still lower than for the Tsunami appeal

Conclusions There are some clear trends emerging from the data: 1.Incredibly high numbers are associated with the Tsunami appeal, which are yet to be repeated: this is commonly thought to be due to the disaster occurring during the Christmas holiday period, in a popular holiday destination 2.Television and newspapers are consistently the media that motivate people to donate 3.Online donations continue to be popular and are growing in use 4.Cash donations are decreasing in popularity, but still remain the most frequent donation method 5.Despite the overall declining usage of cheques, they remain popular among donors to disaster appeals 6.At the time of the survey, just 18% of the population had made a donation to the East Africa appeal. This is the lowest level recorded by this survey, although has resulted in more donations than some other appeals 7.For the East Africa crisis 65% donated because it was a natural disaster, not man made. This is interesting because some organisations are beginning to recognise some famines as man-made, 1 yet the public have clearly not made this connection yet Further research CAF will continue the CAF Disaster Monitor in future years, and hopes to include additional questions on:  why people choose to donate or not donate to a particular appeal  how ‘external’ factors such as difficult economic times affect donation choices  how the nature of the disaster may affect donation choices  the amount donated 1.

Methodology All of the following surveys were conducted by GfK (NOP) using their telephone omnibus, which covers adults in Great Britain aged 16 and over, and is conducted during the second weekend after an appeal is launched by the Disasters Emergency Committee  Asian Tsunami (January 2005): CAF commissioned an omnibus survey with 1,000 people about whether they had given to the Tsunami appeal, and if they had, what their giving patterns were.  Burma Cyclone (May 2008): in light of the Burma appeal, CAF began the ‘CAF Disaster Monitor’ to track trends in giving behaviours to disaster appeals. This project was endorsed by the DEC. CAF commissioned an omnibus survey with 1,002 people about whether they had given to the Burma appeal, and if they had, what had encouraged them to give, and how they had made their donation.  Asia-Pacific disasters (October 2009): CAF commissioned an omnibus survey with 999 people about whether they had given to the Asia-Pacific disasters appeals, which include the Samoan Tsunami, the Indonesian earthquake, and the flooding in the Philippines and Vietnam. The same questions were used as for the 2008 research.  Haiti Earthquake (January 2010): CAF commissioned an omnibus survey with 1,006 people about whether they had given to the Haiti appeal. The same questions were used as for the 2009 research, with a few new additions.  East Africa drought (July 2011): CAF commissioned an omnibus survey with 1,003 people about whether they had given to the East Africa (Horn of Africa) drought appeal. The same questions were used as for the 2010 research.