Blog

By Dale Berkey

President, BBS & Associates 

 A brand-new report on evangelical mid-level donors offers extremely useful, eye-opening data for you and your non-profit!  

 Mid-level donors are critical for many donor-supported organizations, including Christian ministries. But while their giving impact is substantial, evangelical mid-level donors represent only a tiny portion of the overall U.S. population, making them challenging to study. Meaning there is very little research available on this important population.  

 Until now.  

 At BBS & Associates, we’ve done the work for you! We have been working with and studying mid-level donors for more than a decade already — with the goal of helping you not only understand this important group of donors, but to also make the most of their contributions and involvement all while meeting their felt needs within the framework of your organization. 

 We recently teamed up with an excellent firm, Grey Matter Research, to discover answers to questions like: 

1. How does faith factor into the giving patterns of evangelical mid-level donors? 
2. Are their mid-level gifts unusual, or habitual? 
3. How do they prefer to give, and to receive information from the organizations they support? 
4. How do they differ from other evangelical donors, and other charitable donors in general? 

 And what we learned was fascinating!   

 Some key findings include: 

•  Larger givers don’t give more just because they have more resources, but because they’re more generous. 
• There’s no evidence from this or other studies that higher giving outside of church reduces giving inside the church. In fact, it’s exactly the opposite: those who give more outside church also give more inside (and vice versa).  
• About half of evangelical donors (mid-level or otherwise) give the most money to an entirely secular organization.  
• 7 out of 10 gave during some type of special activity by an organization.  
• Mid-level donors are more likely than other evangelical donors (and any donors in general) to be part of a monthly giving program; nearly half are sustainers.  

You’ll read more in our report … it also includes a list of questions and recommendations for you to consider based on what we’ve learned.  

For questions about this report, or to receive a copy of it, please email Jared Matthews at jmatthews@servantheart.com.  

We look forward to hearing from you!