01/04/2005
CONTACT: Michelle Dimarob, (202) 554-9000
Donated $40 Billion in Last Year
Their familiar names appear on Little League uniforms, their banners fly high over community picnics and their brands sponsor high-school yearbooks. American small businesses may not be big in size but they are enormous contributors to their communities, giving roughly $40 billion over the past year alone, according to a poll released today by the NFIB Research Foundation.
Small business plays a key role in the nation’s economy, serving as a job generator, innovator, creator of niche products and buffer to the constant up-and-down business cycles. But less well known is the significance of its part in building and sustaining the social and charitable affairs of communities.
Nearly three-fourths (74 percent) of those surveyed said they volunteered for community and charitable activities during the period, averaging more than 12 hours per month or the equivalent of 18 workdays per year.
“Small-business owners have been deeply involved in community affairs since the nation began,” said foundation Senior Research Fellow William J. Dennis Jr. “Private contributions to community, whether through donations of time or money, have done much to bridge the nation’s ongoing social needs.”
The poll found that in the past year, 91 percent of small employers contributed to their community through volunteering, providing in-kind contributions or cash donations. More than two-fifths of those contributed in all three ways.
Assuming a small employer’s time to be worth, conservatively, $25 per hour, the total amount of donations averaged $6,600 per employer (including non-contributors), putting the value of all types of contributions from small firms to America’s communities around the $40 billion mark in 2004.
Cash contributions came from 70 percent of small-business owners, one in 10 of whom donated more than $10,000. The average cash donation was $3,600. A similar share provided in-kind contributions averaging $4,000 each.
Community activism is not about attracting business, the survey determined. Asked why they contribute, small-business respondents listed personal satisfaction and fulfillment as the most important reason; least important was direct business benefits. “Creating a better business climate” and “making the community a better place to live” were also deemed important reasons to contribute, but these ranked lower than personal satisfaction and fulfillment.
Those who own larger small firms were more likely to see a direct business benefit from their contributions, but they also put personal reasons ahead of customer attraction as their primary motivation.
Although small-business charitable contributions tended to be widely dispersed rather than concentrated, support for educational activities or groups ranked highest at 73 percent; civic organizations that promote communities, such as Lions Clubs and Rotary, were next at 64 percent—a tie with religious groups; athletic and sports groups follow at 58 percent. About half of contributors report one or more donation within the last year to human-services organizations, such as the Red Cross. Environmental groups were the least frequently supported, yet almost one-in-five small businesses contributed to at least one such organization last year.
Dennis noted that despite the size of the contributions that small-business owners provide, they might be injecting into their communities something much more important, but far more difficult to measure: leadership and organizational skills.
“As many as one-in-three small-business owners serve at any point in time as an officer in at least one community service-type of activity or organization,” he said. “That roughly translates into about 1.9 million Americans helping their communities this way.”
Employees of small businesses are active too. The survey found that groups of workers in 39 percent of the companies polled volunteer on behalf of, or in the name of their employer.
Access the complete poll at http://www.nfib.com/object/contributions.html.
The executive interviewing group of the Gallup Organization collected the data for this National Small-Business Poll for the NFIB Research Foundation. The interviews were conducted between Feb. 2 and March 24, 2004, from a sample of small manufacturers and small employesr in all industries. “Small” was defined for purposes of this survey as a business owner employing no less than one individual and no more than 249. The National Federation of Independent Business is the nation’s largest small-business advocacy group. A nonprofit, nonpartisan organization founded in 1943, NFIB represents the consensus views of its 600,000 members in Washington, D.C. and all 50 state capitals.
