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Survey of Donors 2000

The Partnership's research report, Planned Giving in the United States 2000: A Survey of Donors, is available for purchase. The cost for the report is $30. Click here (pdf) to order the survey. 

What you'll learn in the report...

The incidence of planned giving in the United States increased slightly between 1992 and 2000, according to a national survey of more than 1,500 planned gift donors. Legal and financial advisors appeared to play a much more significant role in the gift planning process in 2000 than they did in 1992, perhaps because of increasing affluence and financial sophistication of donors in a strong economy. However, the desire to support charity remained the primary motivation for most donors, while tax and other financial considerations continued to be secondary.

Increased efforts of charities to secure planned gifts are also evident in the survey. The percentage of donors citing a contact with the charity as their first source of the idea for a bequest or charitable remainder trust increased substantially between 1992 and 2000. The majority of planned gift donors in 2000 reported having made multiple gifts to charity, including outright gifts of cash and various planned gifts.

These conclusions are based on data collected from respondents to the National Committee on Planned Giving’s second major survey of planned gift donors. The first survey was conducted in 1992. NCPG (now the Partnership for Philanthropic Planning) employed NFO Research, Inc., to screen 170,000 U.S. households to locate living donors of three types of planned gifts: bequests, charitable gift annuities and charitable remainder trusts. A sample of those donors, balanced to represent the U.S. population, then received a detailed questionnaire that asked about their relationship with the beneficiary(ies) of their gifts, their giving history, the factors motivating them to give and many other facets of their philanthropic behavior. More than 1,500 questionnaires were returned, providing a statistically valid look at the characteristics and behavior of American planned gift donors.