questions about hispanics and fundraising

NEW DIRECTIONS FOR PHILANTHROPIC FUNDRAISING, NO. 37, FALL 2002 © WILEY PERIODICALS, INC.

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To understand Latino traditions of philanthropybetter, the fundraising profession should considerasking some new questions.

4Questions about Hispanicsand fundraising

Mike Cortés

A SESSION OF a recent workshop organized by the Association ofFundraising Professionals addressed the following question: Whatare the values of the Hispanic culture, and how do Hispanic Amer-icans practice generosity?

Hispanics are of growing interest to people who raise funds forthe nation’s nonprofit sector. The 2000 U.S. Census reports thatHispanics comprise 12.5 percent of the nation’s population, upfrom 9.0 percent ten years earlier. The Census Bureau expects thattrend to continue and estimates that by the year 2050, 24.3 percentof the nation will be Hispanic (Cortés, 2001).

The question posed at the fundraisers’ workshop about Hispanicvalues was quite broad, as it would have been for any othernational or ethnic culture. In this chapter, I suggest a narrowerfocus by addressing several more specific questions about the rela-tionship of cultural values to philanthropy and the implications forfundraising.

46 FUNDRAISING IN DIVERSE CULTURAL ENVIRONMENTS

How does Hispanic identity affect fundraising?Widespread use of the term Hispanic to refer to people in theUnited States of Latin American, Spanish-speaking ancestry wasinitiated by the Census Bureau in the 1970s (L. Estrada, interviewwith the author, Oct. 15, 1992). The term lumps very different cul-tural groups into one statistical category. People whose familieshave lived in the American Southwest since the seventeenth cen-tury are thrown together with recent immigrants from every coun-try in Latin America, each with its own distinctive cultures andtraditions.

Latinos who favor greater civic engagement, community devel-opment, and broader participation in regional and national politicscan appreciate the Census Bureau’s success at creating such a tran-scendent demographic category. By adding Hispanic to the nation’sactive vocabulary, it has helped to create a common identity thathelps the nation’s many Latin American cultures coalesce aroundtheir common interests. Common identity can be helpful for com-munity organizing, coalition building, and political advocacy todefend and advance the shared interests of Latin Americans in theUnited States.

The common identity might be helpful as an umbrella term, butHispanic is not necessarily the best name for it. Rather thanembrace an English label established by a federal bureaucracy,“Hispanics” increasingly refer to themselves as “Latinos.” Theadvertising and marketing industry has already found it moreeffective to refer to Latinos, not Hispanics, when appealing to thatdemographic category.

Among Latinos themselves, specific cultural group identitiesoften take precedence over the recently invented pan-Hispanic orpan-Latino identity. Many Latinos prefer to label themselves bytheir land of origin, for example, Mexican (Mejicano), PuertoRican (Puertorriqueño or Boricua), Cuban (Cubano), Salvadoran(Salvadoreño), Guatemalan (Guatemalteco), or Nicaraguan(Nicaraguense).

Valuing one’s geographical origins is hardly unique to Latinos,but for Latinos, it is an especially prominent value. When some-

47QUESTIONS ABOUT HISPANICS AND FUNDRAISING

one asks a Latino, “Where are you from?” the answer will morelikely be a birthplace than a current domicile. U.S.-born Latinosof Mexican heritage might identify themselves as a Tejano (a nativeTexan of Texan and Mexican heritage), a Chicano from Denver’sNorth Side, or a Mexican American from East Los Angeles. Latinoimmigrants born outside the United States also often identifythemselves with a specific region or jurisdiction within their coun-try of origin.

Latinos are like other people in their maintenance of multipleroles and attendant identities. For example, I call myself a husband,a father, a member of my university’s faculty, a U.S. citizen, a Cal-ifornian, a board member, a Latino, a Chicano, Eduardo’s son, andthe grandson of a postrevolutionary mayor of the City of Guadala-jara in the State of Jalisco, Mexico. Different identities matter atdifferent times. One’s preferred identity can depend not only onethnic and cultural traditions but also on the context of themoment.

Rather than overgeneralize about Latinos, experienced fundrais-ers will want to learn more about each prospect’s own chosen iden-tity, interests, and concerns. Rivas-Vázquez (1999) describes manyprospective Latino donors’ interest in helping people or organiza-tions in communities with which the donor identifies, be they geo-graphical or ethnic, local or regional, pan-Latino or populationgroup defined by a specific nonprofit program area or need. Welack statistical population studies on the relative importance toLatino donors of ethnic identity. Nevertheless, Rivas-Vázquez’sstudy suggests that many, if not all, wealthy Latino donors want togive in ways benefiting their own cultural group, however broadlyor narrowly they might define it.

How likely are Latinos to give?Survey research offers mixed answers to the question of Latinos’willingness to give. The INDEPENDENT SECTOR’s biennial Survey ofGiving and Volunteering seems to suggest that Latinos are relativelyuncharitable (Hodgkinson and Weitzman, 1992). In a typical year,


the survey found that while 72 percent of U.S. households con-tributed money to charity, only 53 percent of Latino householdsdid. Of those who gave, Latinos tended to contribute smaller per-centages of their household income. The findings vary each yearthe survey is conducted, but INDEPENDENT SECTOR consistentlyreports that Latino giving to charitable organizations in the UnitedStates is below the national average.

A one-time survey by the University of San Francisco Institutefor Nonprofit Organization Management approached the questiondifferently. That survey focused on giving and volunteering in Cal-ifornia. The university project defined philanthropy more broadly,to include informal donations and gifts made to individuals, unin-corporated community groups, and communities outside theUnited States, as well as nonprofit public benefit corporations.Analysis of survey data included multivariate analysis to control forthe effects that income, education, and recency of immigration haveon individual giving and volunteering. The survey drew a repre-sentative sample of the entire population of the state of California,augmented by an additional sample of minorities in AlamedaCounty, an ethnically diverse urban, suburban, and rural county inthe San Francisco Bay Area. Augmenting the sample allowed sta-tistical testing for significant differences among ethnic groups. Thesurvey found that when analysis takes the effects of income, edu-cation, and immigration into account, there are no statistically sig-nificant differences in frequency or amounts of giving attributableto racial or ethnic characteristics (O’Neill and Roberts, 2000).

De la Garza and Lu (1999) reached similar conclusions in theirLatino National Political Survey, which used multivariate analy-sis to control for income, education, immigration, and trust inorganizations: “There are no statistically significant differencesbetween Mexican-Americans and Anglos” (p. 64). Mexican Amer-icans born in the United States give and volunteer at the same rateas Anglos do.

The University of San Francisco study has not been replicated,and no follow-up surveys have been taken to measure variationsand trends over time using the broader, more inclusive definition


of philanthropy for that survey. Nevertheless, the results appearinstructive. Other things being equal, that study suggests that Lati-nos give and volunteer as much and as often as everyone else.

Do different Latino subgroups give differently?Cultures vary in the ways they express generosity and socialresponsibility, and the various Latino cultures in the United Statestoday are no exception. Qualitative cross-cultural ethnographicresearch by Smith, Shue, Vest, and Villarreal (1999) describes dif-ferences among Guatemalans, Mexicans, and Salvadorans living inthe San Francisco Bay Area. These authors found the Mexican tra-dition of godparenthood to be an important vehicle for involvingnonrelatives in patterns of giving within kinship networks of indi-viduals. The networks typically extend far beyond the member-ship of nuclear families. The study found that giving throughextended kinship networks can involve large transfers of moneyand goods from the United States to Mexico. Another tradition ofgiving reported by the study is that Mexican immigrants oftenshare their homes with relatives and friends in need. The studyfound that giving and volunteering by Mexicans to nonchurch andnon-Mexican organizations outside extended kinship networks isrelatively rare.

When they studied Guatemalans in the Bay Area, Smith, Shue,Vest, and Villarreal (1999) found a tradition of providing food andlodging to new immigrants from Guatemala. Unlike the Mexicansthey observed, these authors found that the beneficiaries were morelikely to be nonrelatives whom the Guatemalan donors did notknow well. The Guatemalans in the study also tended to faultmainstream U.S. philanthropic and nonprofit organizations forbeing impersonal, greedy, and ignorant of Guatemalan traditionsof community responsibility.

Smith, Shue, Vest, and Villarreal (1999) found that Salvadoranswere more likely to give to well-established mainstream nonprof-its in the San Francisco Bay Area. At the same time, Salvadorans


expressed distrust of large charitable organizations. They also prac-ticed a tradition of sheltering other Salvadorans in need.

The generality of these findings has yet to be tested. We lack sta-tistical research measuring the effects of culture on the ways peo-ple give in the United States. We also lack research showing howdifferences between Latino cultural groups change over time andacross generations. Nevertheless, the ethnographic study by Smith,Shue, Vest, and Villarreal (1999) reports ways that philanthropictraditions appear to vary among Latino ethnic subgroups.

What philanthropic traditions do Latinos havein common?In their ethnographic research on giving in the San Francisco BayArea, Smith, Shue, Vest, and Villarreal (1999) find that the threeLatino groups they studied—Guatemalan, Mexican, and Salvado-ran—have distinctive philanthropic traditions in common. All threesubgroups contribute relatively little time and money to main-stream charities except for churches. The Latinos they studied typ-ically sent money to family, kin, and communities outside theUnited States. They provided caretaking services to the young andold instead of leaving their care to government, nonprofit, or com-mercial agencies more commonly used by other U.S. residents.Relatively affluent Latinos tended to help newcomers to the UnitedStates. Charity among Latinos included an element of traditionalLatin American personalismo, in which personal, intimate, one-to-one relationships shape the nature and extent of giving. And finally,Smith, Shue, Vest, and Villarreal (1999) report that all three groupsdistrusted formal institutions, including philanthropic and non-profit organizations, as well as government and large organizations.

That finding differs from a finding of the survey research by Dela Garza and Lu (1999) that Latinos are more likely than Anglos totrust formal organizations. We lack other quantitative surveyresearch on that issue and on other Latino traditions of socialresponsibility and philanthropy. That difference between the two


studies—one quantitative and the other qualitative—on the ques-tion of organizational trust remains unresolved.

In most respects, the qualitative ethnographic findings and con-clusions by Smith, Shue, Vest, and Villarreal (1999) about Latinophilanthropy are consistent with other qualitative studies, com-mentaries, and personal accounts of Latino philanthropy in theUnited States (Cortés, 1995; Rivas-Vázquez, 1999; Villa Parra,1999). Royce and Rodríguez (1999), for example, interviewedLatino clergy, fundraisers, foundation program officers, educators,community leaders, philanthropists, scholars, and businesspeople,all from various Latino subgroups. They had hoped to study Lati-nos’ formal philanthropic institutions, but found very few otherthan organized religion. The bulk of their findings focused insteadon cultural values that shape Latinos’ highly personalized, infor-mal, noninstitutional patterns of philanthropy.

Throughout our interviews, certain terms and phrases appearedagain and again: personalismo (personalism), familia (family), confi-anza (trust), la importancia de la palabra (the importance of one’sword), el valor de la persona (the intrinsic worth of each person), ser-vicio (service), obligación (obligation), and giving back (Royce andRodríguez, 1999).

How much does culture matter for fundraising?An experienced fundraising professional might say that the valuesreported by Royce and Rodríguez (1999) are important whenapproaching major donors in general, regardless of ethnicity. Thebuilding of personal relationships and trust is a well-establishedprinciple for professionals who solicit major gifts. We lack quanti-tative survey research findings on whether the values they reportedare especially important in the case of Latinos.

Have qualitative researchers and commentators overemphasizedthe role of culture, as opposed to class differences such as incomeand education? Do cultural differences in giving and volunteeringdisappear quickly as immigrants, or at least their progeny, are


assimilated into the dominant U.S. culture and economy?Researchers have yet to produce findings on those questions.

Quantitative research by De la Garza and Lu (1999) and O’Neilland Roberts (2000) tell us that Latinos give as much as anyone elsewould in similar circumstances. Qualitative research by Smith,Shue, Vest, and Villarreal (1999) suggests that Latinos have differ-ent ways of giving. Different cultural groups give differently, but isculture the reason?

There seems to be a causal theory implicit in at least some of thequalitative research published thus far on Latino philanthropy. Ifexplicated, the theory would state that today’s distinctive Latinopatterns and cultures of giving reflect Latinos’ history of relation-ships with dominant institutions in society. The theory might beelaborated as follows.

Most nations in which Latinos live have long histories of cen-tralized government, influential religious institutions, powerful pri-vate employers, and systems of law and taxation that do notencourage the creation of officially recognizable nonprofit organi-zations or philanthropy. When government, industry, commerce,and the church all fail to address certain individual or communityneeds, Latinos do not form nonprofit corporations or make tax-deductible contributions. Rather, they seek help from extendedfamily and friends or existing informal networks of individual re-ciprocal relationships built on trust.

That, in theory, is why the philanthropic values that Royce andRodríguez (1999) listed are so important. Those values makeinformal friendship and kinship networks more durable and reli-able. Given the dominant institutional arrangements of most LatinAmerican nations, Latino philanthropy tends to be more personaland less institutional. Latino cultures of giving have evolvedaccordingly.

The Latino experience in the United States is comparable. Con-tributors to a book edited by Gallegos and O’Neill (1991) suggesta variety of reasons, from U.S. violations of the Treaty ofGuadalupe Hidalgo in 1848 to modern violations of the civil rightsof Latino U.S. citizens, that would lead Latinos to distrust both


public and private institutions. Contributors describe ways in whichU.S. Latinos have resorted to starting their own nonprofit organi-zations to defend their communities against public and private prej-udice and bias.

Latino nonprofits that have earned the trust of local communi-ties might be promising vehicles for encouraging Latinos to adoptU.S. norms of giving to formal organizations (Cortés, 2001). At thesame time, Rivas-Vázquez (1999) reminds us that some wealthyLatinos remain skeptical of Latino nonprofits. Additional researchmight show that existing informal personal networks linking poten-tial donors and beneficiary organizations could help overcomesome of that skepticism, and thereby encourage more Latinos togive to nonprofit corporations.

Researchers’ generalizations suggest issues—but rarely specificinstructions—for individual fundraising practice. Regardless ofwhat theory and research might suggest about the importance ofLatino culture, history, and institutions, fundraisers must still learnthe views and preferences of individual donors. In the final analy-sis, developing successful approaches to Latinos is up to the indi-vidual fundraising professional.

ReferencesCortés, M. “Three Strategic Questions About Latino Philanthropy.” In

C. H. Hamilton and W. F. Ilchman (eds.), Cultures of Giving II: HowHeritage, Gender, Wealth, and Values Influence Philanthropy. New Direc-tions for Philanthropic Fundraising, no. 8. San Francisco: Jossey-Bass,1995.

Cortés, M. “Fostering Philanthropy and Services in U.S. Latino Communi-ties.” In P. C. Rogers (ed.), Philanthropy in Communities of Color. Indianapo-lis: Association for Research on Nonprofit Organizations and VoluntaryAction, 2001.

De la Garza, R. O., and Lu, F. “Explorations into Latino Volunteerism.” InD. Campoamor, W. A. Díaz, and H.A.J. Ramos (eds.), Nuevos Senderos:Reflections on Hispanics and Philanthropy. Houston: University of Hous-ton/Arte Público, 1999.

Gallegos, H., and O’Neill, M. (eds.). Hispanics and the Nonprofit Sector. NewYork: Foundation Center, 1991.

Hodgkinson, V. A., and Weitzman, M. A. Giving and Volunteering in the UnitedStates: Findings from a National Survey. Washington, D.C.: INDEPENDENT

SECTOR, 1992.


O’Neill, M., and Roberts, W. Giving and Volunteering in California. San Fran-cisco: University of San Francisco Institute for Nonprofit OrganizationManagement, 2000.

Rivas-Vázquez, A. G. “New Pools of Latino Wealth: A Study of Donors andPotential Donors in U.S. Hispanic/Latino Communities.” In D. Cam-poamor, W. A. Díaz, and H.A.J. Ramos (eds.), Nuevos Senderos: Reflectionson Hispanics and Philanthropy. Houston: University of Houston/ArtePúblico, 1999.

Royce, A. P., and Rodríguez, R. “From Personal Charity to Organized Giv-ing: Hispanic Institutions and Values of Stewardship and Philanthropy.” InL. Wagner and A. F. Deck (eds.), Hispanic Philanthropy: Exploring the Fac-tors That Influence Giving and Asking. New Directions for PhilanthropicFundraising, no. 24. San Francisco: Jossey-Bass, 1999.

Smith, B., Shue, S., Vest, J. L., and Villarreal, J. Philanthropy in Communitiesof Color. Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1999.

Villa Parra, O. “Hispanic Women: Nurturing Tomorrow’s Philanthropy.” InL. Wagner and A. F. Deck (eds.), Hispanic Philanthropy: Exploring the Fac-tors That Influence Giving and Asking. New Directions for PhilanthropicFundraising, no. 24. San Francisco: Jossey-Bass, 1999.

mike cortés is director of the University of San Francisco Institute forNonprofit Organization Management and a member of the faculty of theuniversity’s College of Professional Studies.

questions about hispanics and fundraising

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