Confidence in charities rebounds

The eagle-eyes at The Agitator beat us to this study from Paul Light at NYU's Wagner School. A phone survey of 1,000 adults in July found a bounce from lows immediately after September 11, 2001 - however doubt remains over how organizations spend money.

"In short, even as overall confidence in charitable organizations increased, the underlying structure of public skepticism toward charities either remained unchanged or worsened, even among Americans with a great deal or fair amount of confidence. Asked which problem facing charitable organizations is bigger—the wrong priorities or spending money wisely—only 17 percent of Americans answered that charitable organizations have the wrong priorities, while 73 percent said charities have the right priorities, but do not spend money wisely."

Personally, I would be more interested in seeing the results broken out between donors and non-donors... or maybe even a subsection of Red Cross donors. I'll see if we can email the folks over at Wagner to get more information.