The two keywords for this edition of Reading tea leaves, Philanthropy UK’s regular update on the impact of the recession on UK philanthropy, are ‘care’ and ‘confidence’. Donor care and donor confidence to be precise.

The Chronicle of Philanthropy has described a number of initiatives illustrating the renewed efforts of charities, in the face of decreased giving levels, to increase efforts to show donors that their support is valued and appreciated. For example, the development director of a civic theatre in Michigan puts hand-written notes on the seats of any donors attending shows, a nice touch to which she attributes a 3% rise in donations over the past year. Other attempts to focus on donor care have seen a shift towards using staff time for more one-on-one interactions with donors, instead of organising time-consuming and expensive events that are said to be questionable in terms of generating long-term supporters.

Such efforts, described as a ‘back to basics approach’, have long been advocated in the UK, notably by Ken Burnett whose seminal book Relationship Fundraising argues that building meaningful relationships with donors is the cornerstone of fundraising. The recasting of donors as an organisation’s friends, rather than as a source of funds to be tapped with whatever aggressive marketing ploy is deemed effective, was revolutionary when it was first published in 1992. Nearly two decades later its message is perhaps more potent than ever, as charities fear that the lag in impact of the recessionary effect will hit their income harder now that the recession is officially over.

A corollary to increased focus on donor care ought to be a resulting increase in donor confidence. When people know that their money has been safely and gratefully received, and understand how it has been carefully and effectively spent, their confidence in the charities they support - and potentially in the wider charity sector - ought to be riding high. A new survey reports that donor confidence is indeed ‘inching higher’ in the early months of 2010, after dipping towards the end of 2009. The Donor Confidence Index is based on a poll of over 500 US donors’ self-reported expectations about their future giving, their view of the non-profit sector and the national economic health, amongst other factors. Despite overall donor confidence rising by 1.1 points since the previous poll in December 2009, the survey’s authors describe the findings of the latest poll, conducted on 3-5th March 2010, as an indication that, “individual American donors appear to be holding their collective breath”. Only 52% of donors expect their giving to return to previous levels, most of the rest are unsure of what the future holds, and a third of older donors (aged 66+) expect their giving will never return to pre-recessionary levels. Perhaps unsurprisingly, donors expressing the most confidence are those with the highest incomes, though men of all income levels are found to exhibit slightly more confidence than women, and Generations X and Y (those born since 1965) tend to be less optimistic than older generations of donors.

Whilst the recession is not the only factor behind reduced giving, the survey highlights the magnitude of this factor. Fully 73% of donors who plan to give less in 2010 attribute this decision to the state of the economy; only 2% blame factors within the charitable sector, and in only 1% of cases is the decision driven by something related to a particular charity.

Donor confidence and donor care are two extremely important factors that have the power to affect voluntary income, and unlike much of the fall-out of the recession, charities have some control over these factors. Investing in providing the highest level of care to those people who support a charity, potentially at the expense of investing in efforts to recruit new donors, and ensuring that donors have every reason to be confident they have made the right decision in giving their money to charity, are clearly two strategies worth taking seriously in this post-recession phase, when the ongoing impact of the economic downturn is still causing so much fear and alarm amongst UK charity leaders.