Giving trends...on the other hand

I'm not the only one wondering about a down year for charitable giving - this article from Slate predicts a "Charity crisis" - ands builds the case off the same informal predictor of giving trends that I use - the Robin Hood Fund's annual fundraisingpalooza.

Daniel Gross's article has some useful insights:

• Drops in philanthropic giving and recessions have a long history together;
• Charitable giving is a "lagging indicator" of economic well-being (bills get paid first);
• "Swanky" giving and "Salvation Army" giving rise and fall in similar waves

So if foreclosure rates, gas prices, food costs, "disaster fatigue," and airplane baggage fees haven't already convinced you that 08 (and '09, if the indicators really lag) may not be boom years for giving that we've seen in the past then the Slate article might.

On the other hand (and there is always another hand), unofficial peeks at online giving sites  GlobalGiving (on track so far in 2008 to double 2007 giving) and Kiva show that the giving may be moving in other ways, on other sites, in other trend directions.

Over at SocialActions Peter Deitz has done some data compiling on online sites. I continue to think that these sites - and the industry as a whole - need to be RSS feeding, mashingup, or otherwise aggregating and compiling their data in a (somewhat) real-time way so we can truly begin to see "the other hand" of philanthropic trends.

Tags: philanthropy, robinhood, slate, hedgefunds, globalgiving, kiva, socialactions, trends