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Charitable Visits and the Economy
January 12, 2009
Over dinner at the Citigroup Entertainment & Media conference last week, one of the most popular questions discussed revolved around which Internet sectors were moving counter to the sinking economy. In preparation for my keynote this coming Saturday at the Operation Smile World Summit (a wonderful medical charity that focuses on helping children with cleft lips, palates and facial deformities), I've been studying the pattern of traffic to the 300+ charitable sites that we track in the U.S.
I was surprised to discover that the month of December 2008 was an all-time high for charitable websites over the last three years, more than doubling traffic from Spring 2007. Here's a quick chart that compares visits to charitable websites against monthly closings for the DJIA.
While the data, showing only one cycle of the economy, is anecdotal in terms of the relationship between the Dow and charitable website visits, the rise in visits since to the category since June 2007 is quite impressive.
One of the most interesting facets to this story is the change in household income levels visiting charitable sites. Care to guess what the difference is when comparing household incomes between January 2007 and January 2008? Look for my follow-up post later this week for the answer.
Posted by Bill Tancer at 01:38 PM
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I'm tempted to say lower-income folks because they'd be less impacted by the stock market (I think). But, if they're not impacted by the stock market, then the rise in charitable contributions would be unrelated to the stock market drop. And that won't make for a fun post. So I'll guess high-income folks visiting more charitable sites.
On a side note, I can only find a way to access older posts via the Archive dropdown which is only available on individual writer pages. So if I don't visit for a few weeks, I'd have to see what I missed writer-by-writer. There should be a way to just look at previous posts, either via a Previous Posts link, or a calendar link that shows posts by all authors. Just one small usability critique.
Posted by Mike | January 21, 2009 05:05 PM