146. Where do Latine Americans donate their money?

In this episode, let’s chat about charitable giving among Latino Americans, including formal and informal giving, the surprising role of religious giving, and the huge impact of remittances (sending money back to one’s country of origin) from this community. Let’s also talk about cultural differences in how Latine Americans might discuss (or choose not to discuss!) their charitable giving.

If you are a Latine American listener of this show, tune in for some ideas on how to join forces with other givers within your community. ¡Adelante!

Links from today’s episode:

The Latino Community Foundation

https://latinocf.org/latino-giving-circle-network/ 

Hispanics in Philanthropy

https://hipfunds.org/ 

Latinx Philanthropy: Understanding Generosity Trends Across Latinx Communities in the U.S. | 2023

https://hipfunds.org/latinx-generosity-report/ 

The World's Top Remittance Recipients | Statista June 2023

https://www.statista.com/chart/20166/top-10-remittance-receiving-countries/ 

ICYMI another episode you might enjoy:

Episode#115 Where do Muslim Americans donate their money? Title (recorded before the 2024 rebranding of this show)

Connect With Genet “GG” Gimja:

Website https://www.progressivepockets.com

Twitter https://twitter.com/prgrssvpckts 

Work With Me:

Email progressivepockets@gmail.com for brand partnerships, business inquiries, and speaking engagements.

Easy Ways to Support the Show

1. Send this episode to someone you know! Word of mouth is how podcasts grow!

2. Buy me a coffee (or a soundproof panel!) https://buymeacoffee.com/progressivepockets 

3. Leave a 5 star rating and review for the show!

//NO AI TRAINING: Any use of this podcast episode transcript or associated show notes or blog posts to “train” generative artificial intelligence (AI) technologies to generate text is expressly prohibited. This includes, without limitation, technologies that are capable of generating works in the same style or genre as this content. The author reserves all rights to license uses of this work for generative AI training and development of machine learning language models//

Transcript

Welcome to Progressive Pockets! I go by GG, that’s short for Genet Gimja. This is a show about reclaiming some of our power to build the world we want, with practical changes to our daily money decisions. Where we shop, where we invest, and yes, were we give. Where we donate our money.

I have loved sharing this journey with you and one of the most fascinating aspects to me has been learning about different communities within our country and where we tend to give our money.

Americans are generous people and that is true across all of the groups that I’ve studied. Today I want to talk about the research that’s available about where Latine Americans donate.

This research comes from Hispanics in Philanthropy, an organization that works to advance Latine giving, and the Indiana University Lilly Family School of Philanthropy.

Latines are the second largest ethnic group in America and this research has been tracking the giving habits of Latine Americans for the past 15ish years.

Incomes have stayed pretty much flat for Latine Americans over this past 15 years, and that’s pretty much true for other ethnic groups, but what is different is that Latine Americans have been pretty much always been underpaid, so the income levels stayed flat, but they have always been lower than other ethnic groups.

And yet, Latine Americans continue to be among the most generous Americans. When you combine formal giving and informal giving, they outgive most Americans.

Formal giving has declined over the past 15 years, I’m talking about writing a check to a formal institution like a nonprofit or a church, but is still a big part of the giving habits of Latine Americans.

Informal giving is also big in this community. Informal giving is giving to people who are not members of your household, for example crowdfunding for a neighbor’s medical bills, or sending money back home through remittances, that’s what it is called when someone sends money back to their original country of origin. Remittances are a huge part of some economies.

According to the UCLA Anderson Review, worldwide migrants are estimated to send $650 Billion back to their home countries. And this can form a huge part of the economy. I’m thinking about the Philippines, some estimate that almost 10% of GDP comes from migrants sending money back home.

The same is true for Latine Americans. Mexicans abroad send back about $60 billion a year, that is 4% of Mexico’s GDP. That’s a ton of money. $60 billion. Imagine if Latine Americans were actually paid fairly for the work they do.

With Latine Americans making up such a huge portion of Americans, it hopefully goes without saying that there is a lot of diversity in terms of culture, politics, education, and income within this community.

But on the whole, when you look at the data, Latine Americans tend to give to two groups: family and community.

What would you guess are the top causes that this community tends to donate towards?

The top priority is religious congregations.

The second priority is food, shelter, and basic necessities; 

The third priority is health care and medical research; and 

The fourth priority is education.

When you dive down into the wealthiest Latine Americans, they tend to give towards education, animal rights, and health care.

Latine Americans tend to give more and more the longer they have been established in the United States but even more recent immigrants are already giving at high rates.

So when you combine informal giving like sending money back home or helping neighbors get through crises and giving formally like giving to a house of worship, Latine Americans are punching above their weight in terms of their generosity, that’s the phrase that the researchers kept using when talking about the results of the study.

One of the challenges in understanding how much Latine Americans give is that there can be a different definition of what giving even is.

One study referenced in the research noted that 80 percent of Latine people donated to church, but only 15 percent reported church or church-related activities as an area of interest. So religious giving is so baked into this community on the whole that it isn’t even seen as philanthropy or giving at all. It’s just what you do. You make your money and you portion some of it to share with your church. Imagine your giving practice being so baked in that you don’t even consider it giving.

And then there can be cultural differences about whether or not you are loud and proud about your giving. In the report I was reading about Brazilian culture, two thirds of the population gives, and believes that you should not talk about your giving, you shouldn’t broadcast it.

So I’m only sharing what the data shows today, but like the Latine philanthropy leaders who were interviewed when this research came out, I completely agree that the data is probably undercounting the size and magnitude and maybe even the scope of giving from this community.

If you are one of my Latine listeners, first of all let me acknowledge that you might not identify with this term Latine, you might also hate Latinx, maybe you prefer Latino and consider it to be inclusive, I’m very sympathetic to the friction as the language has been changing over these recent years.

But what I really wanted to say is that if you are looking for an opportunity to form community with other Latine givers, there is a really cool organization that I stumbled across in my research and boy did I go down the rabbit hole. It is called The Latino Community Foundation. 

I’m going to include their link in the show notes if you don’t want to go digging for it. You contribute a thousand dollars a year which is $85 a month and you join a group and you donate your money together to Latino-led organizations. There are so many groups you can join, check out their pictures on the website. You could join the Bay Area Men’s Latino Giving Circle. They look really fun. You could join the LGBTQ Latinx Giving Circle, come on intersectionality.

There are lots of groups in California, I saw one in Las Vegas, Arizona, I’m surprised there isn’t already one in Washington DC maybe you’re the one to start it. Let me know if you do.

So to recap, here’s what we covered today:

• There is a huge amount of diversity within the Latine American community in the US. But on the whole, if you look at a high level at the averages, Latine Americans tend to give to family and community.
• The top causes that tend to get donated towards are religious congregations and then food, shelter, and basic necessities; after that health care and medical research; and then education.
• The giving rates are high whether the givers have been in the US for a long time or not, and there’s a very reasonable guess that there’s some undercounting in this data because of cultural norms around what is even considered giving or donating or philanthropy.

If you have more time today, here’s another episode to check out, that one is episode 115, it was put out at the beginning of Ramadan and it is about American Muslims and where they tend to donate. Again, I just love talking to people about their giving, and finding out how various groups tend to think about their giving. If you’re interested in another slice of America just let me know. Progressive pockets at gmail dot com.

I’d love to hear from you, specifically I’m wondering what other podcasts you enjoy, especially if there are any smaller indie podcasts that you like. Drop me a note any time at progressive pockets at gmail dot com.

Let’s end with a quote…

“The opposite of poverty is not wealth. In too many places, the opposite of poverty is justice.” Bryan Stevenson

Let’s talk again soon!