With the Korean economy growing continually its society embracing a greater sense of social responsibility, a growing number of Koreans have made contributions. Given their limited financial resources, private service organizations need to retain indi...
With the Korean economy growing continually its society embracing a greater sense of social responsibility, a growing number of Koreans have made contributions. Given their limited financial resources, private service organizations need to retain individual donors on a continued basis in order to ensure sustainable funding. For these private service providers, the significance of individual donors and their contributions is ever growing, and a wide array of methods should be taken into account to engage and retain them. By age group, the individual donors have differing determinants of their intentions to contribute. As the old-aged group, in particular, is well expected to grow in size, from a demographic point of view, and to enjoy a higher social status by the day, it is crucial to attract and maintain those in this age group as major contributors in the future.
This study examines determinants of individual donors' intentions to contribute and divides these donors into the old-aged and young-aged groups to analyze how the two groups differ in their contributing intentions and models determining whether to donate and if the age groups that these donors are in have moderating effects on the determinants of their intentions to contribute. The aim of such analysis is to help non-profit organizations formulate age group-tailored strategies for fundraising and gain essential knowledge for focusing strategically on old-aged contributors in the increasingly aging Korean society. This study has conducted a survey on 200 old-aged persons (i.e. aged 55 or over) and 200 young-aged ones (i.e. 20-39 years of age) residing in Seoul, Korea. A total of 386 questionnaires have been retrieved, with 348 copies of them being utilized for the analysis. Using SPSS, hierarchical multiple regression analysis, independent samples T-test and technical analysis have been carried out.
The results of the analysis can be summarized as follows:
(a) The impact of individual-related variables for individual donors on their intentions to contribute: An individual-related variable, "internal donating motivation of individuals" significantly influences their intentions to contribute. This study analyzes the impacts of contribution-related variables for individual donors on their intentions to contribute, and it is demonstrated that the levels of influence from donation-related variables differ between when the contributing intentions of individual donors are analyzed separately and when all of them are put together for the analysis. "Religious experience," and "volunteering experience" as part of contributing experience, are shown to affect their intentions to make volunteering contributions. Meanwhile, variables significantly influencing their intentions to make financial contributions are: "volunteering experience" and "financial contributing experience" as part of contributing experience; and individual-related variables such as "internal motivation of individuals" and "external motivation of individuals." Variables significantly affecting the intentions of these individual donors to contribute their property after their death include: "level of education"; "volunteering experience" and "financial contributing experience" as part of contributing experience; and "attitude toward the organization" which is one of the organization-related variables. There are certain variables influencing specific types of donation, and they should be taken into consideration when formulating a donation strategy. In general, however, the aforementioned, contributing experience-related variables have the greatest influence on three types of donation.
(b) Differences between age groups in contribution-related variables: The old-aged and young-aged groups do not show any statistically significant differences in their individual-related variables. When their organization-related variables are compared, the two groups do not differ significantly in "attitude toward the organization" while they do have statistically significant differences in the accessibility of contributing methods as recognized by individual donors.
(c) Differences between age groups in determining models for their intentions to contribute: Determining models vary by age group. For the old-aged group, "volunteering experience," "religious experience," "financial contributing experience," "level of education" and "internal motivation of individuals" prove significant, so it may be fair to say that these five variables constitute the determining model for the old-aged group. Meanwhile, "volunteering experience," "financial contributing experience" and "internal motivation of individuals" are shown to be significant for the young-aged group, and the three variables form their determining model.
(d) Moderating effects of age groups on determinants of contributing intentions: While age groups fail to moderate the impacts of individual-related variables on individual donors' intentions to contribute, "accessibility to recognized donating methods," an organization-related variable, does have moderating effects on their contributing intentions.
The contributing experience and internal motivation of individual donors, this study indicates, are the determinants of their intentions to contribute. Although age groups do not always provide significant values moderating the impacts of all variables on their contributing intentions, they do have different models for determining such intentions. This implies that each age group has its own determinant of contributing intentions. For fundraising purposes, it will be more effective, therefore, to divide individual donors into different age groups and analyze/characterize them from various angles. Therefore, this study proposes the followings: (a) Those who already have contributing experiences should be secured as regular donors; (b) Donation strategies should be formulated in a way that maximizes the internal donating motivation of