PhilMur's thoughts on biz/tech/money/life

An article came up a couple of months ago in the Austin Business Journal stating that the city was #7 in the nation in “Online Giving”.

In 2003 a study was released by The Chronicle of Philanthropy that showed Austin ranked 48th in giving of 50 largest cities in the country.  However, Austin’s population puts it nationally as the 15th largest city.  So if the city’s per-capita giving was “average”, you would expect their charitable giving rank to be similar to their population rank, but obviously that is not the case.

So after such a disappointing rank of overall giving, we now show up high in a list of cities participating in online giving.  What gives?  Why is this so?  A few key points should be made here.

First of all, Austin ranks as #3 on Wired.com’s list of “Top 10 Tech Towns”.  Obviously a town that is very comfortable with technology (and certainly Austin, which is the home of Dell’s world headquarters and countless other chip makers, software, and online businesses, would fit the bill) would be more likely to have a disproportionate amount of their giving online.  Note also the overlap between the Wired.com list and the top 10 list in the article announcing online giving rankings — several cities appear on both top 10 lists – Seattle, and Cambridge (adjacent to and part of the Boston area), just to name a couple.

Secondly, the company that provided the information to the Austin Business Journal for their article mentioned above is Convio, Inc., a well-respected Austin-based software company that provides solutions for non-profit organizations for fundraising, online marketing, and donor tracking.  According to the Austin Business Journal article mentioned above where Convio announced the results, “The rankings are based on the online donations Convio processed on behalf of thousands of nonprofits between January and August”.  I think it is worth suggesting that Convio may have a disproportionate amount of non-profit customers in the Austin area, given that this is their home, and so this may skew the results somewhat.  It must be mentioned, however, that it is encouraging to read in the article that Austin grew from a rank of #14 last year to #7 this year.  This jump in rankings for Austin may be a result of the reality of the broader national economic downturn not affecting Texas, and especially not Austin, as badly as it has affected other cities, resulting in a more constant level of giving while more severely affected areas’ giving dropped.  Evidence of the relatively good economic shape of Texas and Austin in particular is BusinessWeek’s reporting on October 23, 2009 that San Antonio and Austin were the 1st and 2nd strongest economies in the nation.

Finally, Austin is a very young city — according to Wikipedia, the city’s age makeup is such that over 93% of the population is under age 64, and over 76% is under age 45.  Accordingly, one could make an assumption that the average household’s wealth is less given their early career and life stage that much of the city finds itself within.  Therefore, charitable giving could be expected to be less common.

Interestingly, Austin ranks 3rd in the nation in volunteerism rates.  So while Austin’s wallets may not be as open (or as large) as much of the country, people appear very willing to give their time.  (Click here to see more information about volunteerism in Texas).

I predict that as (and if) the population in Austin ages over time, we will see the increased levels of wealth that tends to come with age in a highly-educated city and an increased level of giving. In fact, there has recently been a push locally in Austin for people to give more in general and also to also give locally. “I Live Here, I Give Here” is an organization that was created in recent years to tackle the issue of low rates of giving in the area, and they mention the problem right on their front page. Their mission, as stated online on the day of my writing this blog, in fact, is “to deepen and expand the culture of personal philanthropy in our community by inspiring Central Texans to give more and more Central Texans to give”.

Surely there are signs of hope, and people working on expanding the population’s understanding of non-profit work and the need for financial contributions.  Hopefully this will start a trend in the city that is not just reflective of our high rank in the “online giving” category, but in our giving overall.