Connections to Community and Their Impact on Philanthropic & Civic Behaviors

• In Event: Understanding Volunteering and Civil Society in Communities

Abstract

As Putnam (2020) demonstrates, social bonds are important indicators of life satisfaction and the ability of communities to come together to solve collective challenges. In this manuscript, we explore social bonds through an individual’s of sense of community; the feeling that “members have of belonging, of significance to one another and to groups, and a shared faith that members’ needs will be met through their relationships” (Peterson et al. 2008). A strong sense of community, especially during times of societal upheaval, may be critical to sustaining philanthropy and civic engagement. An individual’s community connectedness can affect philanthropic behavior (Clerkin, et al. 2012). Further research suggests a strong sense of community is associated with increased levels of civic engagement, driven by a need to contribute to their community (Speller, Lyons, and Twigger-Ross 2002). We explore how an individual’s sense of community impacts their donative and volunteering behavior towards secular and religious nonprofits and whether an individual votes in an upcoming election.

Sense of community is a multidimensional construct based on various aspects of people–place bonding. Building from McMillan and Chavis’ (1986) work, these dimensions include an individual’s sense of membership in a community, ability to influence their community, reinforcement of needs from the community, and shared emotional connection to their community. We use data from a recently completed nationally representative sample of US residents (n=1,000) to examine how an individual’s sense of community is associated with giving and volunteering to secular and religious (church, synagogue, mosque, or other place of worship) nonprofits. Our data are collected as part of a larger panel study with questions asked pre-2022 US election and post-election. Our sense of community and philanthropic data are collected in the pre-election questions, allowing us also to explore the extent to which a person’s sense of community is associated with their actual voting behavior in the post-election survey. We analyze the data using various multivariate regression techniques. We find that sense of community is positively associated with secular volunteering, most likely driving its positive association with any volunteering and count of types of philanthropic activities. sense of community is also positively associated with the probability of voting. Our other measure of connection to place, length of time at current residence is negatively associated with secular volunteering, but positively associated with voting, hinting at the idea that volunteering may be a way that new residents connect and learn about their community and voting is the way that they sustain that connection.

References

Clerkin, R. M., Paarlberg, L. E., Christensen, R. K., Nesbit, B., & Tschirhart, M (2013). Place, Time, and Philanthropy: Exploring Geographic Mobility and Philanthropic Engagement. Public Administration Review, 73 (1), 97-106.

McMillan, D.W. and Chavis, D.M. (1986). Sense of Community: A Definition and Theory. American Journal of Community Psychology 14(1): 6–23.

Peterson, N.A, Speer, P.W., Hughey, J., Armstead, T.L., Schneider, J.E., and Sheffer, M.A. (2008). Community Organizations and Sense of Community: Further Development in Theory and Measurement. Journal of Community Psychology 36(6): 798–813.

Putnam, R. (2020). Bowling Alone: Revised and Updated: The Collapse and Revival of American Community. Simon & Schuster.

Speller, G. M., Lyons, E., and Twigger-Ross, C. (2002). A Community in Transition: The Relationship between Spatial Change and Identity Processes. Social Psychological Review 4(2): 39–58.

Authors

• Richard Clerkin, UNC Wilmington, Department of Public and International Affairs

• Christopher Prentice, University of North Carolina Wilmington