Evangelical mid-level donors represent only a tiny portion of the overall U.S. population, making them difficult to find and expensive to research in a statistically representative manner. “Understanding Evangelical Mid-Level Donors 2022,” a 70-page report from BBS & Associates and Grey Matter Research conducted in early to mid 2022, sheds light on this rarely studied group.

Among the main findings:

• In their annual giving beyond a local church, only 2 in 10 give the most money to primarily spiritual work; 3 in 10 give to a Christian organization doing benevolent work, and the remaining half (5 in 10) give to a secular organization, such as Red Cross or Save the Children.
• In their giving beyond a church, half of mid-level donors do not have a personal contact at the organization they are financially supporting.  Having a personal connection to the organization is far more common as people age. Just 8% of donors under age 45 cite this as a driving factor, compared to 19% in the 45–64 age group, and 33% of older individuals. Having a personal contact is also more common as people give more.
• Evangelical mid-level donors don’t just keep supporting the same organizations over and over; nearly half have either added a new organization to their giving or stopped supporting an organization over the past two to three years.
• Higher charitable giving is less in competition with church giving, but instead, higher charitable giving is connected with higher church giving.
• While the average evangelical donor supports 3.8 organizations outside of church, the average mid-level donor supports 4.3 organizations.

The research defined mid-level donor as anyone who either made a one-time gift of $1,000 or more to any single organization in the past 12 months, or who gave a total of at least $1,500 over the last 12 months to any one organization. (No upper end amount was defined.)

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