Cause Marketing

A new study out Monday, June 6, 2011 finds that contrary to conventional wisdom, religious people are more likely to donate to causes that aren’t strictly religious than to those that are. The study, conducted by Grey Matter Research and Consulting in Phoenix and commissioned by Russ Reid Company of Pasadena, shows that just 41 percent of donors who attend religious worship services regularly support a cause they described as “religious,” other than the contributions they make to their place of worship. Instead, religious donors are more likely to have given toward disaster relief (68 percent), domestic hunger or poverty relief (66 percent), helping people with disabilities (56 percent), health care or medical research (54 percent), and veterans’ causes (52 percent) than they are to have supported specifically religious causes. In short, religious people aren’t ‘lost causes’ for fundraisers and charity work that isn’t explicitly religious. “There tends to be a stereotype that relig...