South African Social Giving Survey 2003

The State of Giving project, established by the Centre for Civil Society (CCS) at the University of KwaZulu-Natal (UKZN), the Southern African Grantmakers’ Association (SAGA) and the National Development Agency (NDA), was initiated to generate information on and analyse the resource flows to poverty alleviation and development in South Africa. One component of the broader project was a focus on individual-level giving, which involved the design, implementation and analysis of a national sample survey on individual level giving behaviour. The sample, a random stratified one comprising 3000 respondents, is representative of all South Africans aged 18 and above. It thus speaks to both the urban and rural and the formal and informal dimensions of our social context. The survey collected data on who gives, why and how much they give, as well as what they give and the recipients of their giving.  The project partners commissioned Strategy & Tactics (S&T) to design, implement and analyse a national sample survey. The focus was on individual-level giving behaviour. This was complicated by the fact that ‘giving’ is often in the eye of the giver. The survey had to measure what is generally accepted as social giving, such as donating money or goods to the poor, or volunteering. But it also measured behaviours that focus group respondents thought of as ‘giving’ but which in fact involved economic exchange in return for a service.