The Influence of Religion on Philanthropy in Canad

Authors: Ida E Berger

Publish Date: 2006/08/10

Volume: 17, Issue: 2, Pages: 110-127

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Abstract

Recognition of the multicultural nature of the Canadian population has led companies across a wide array of business domains to reach beyond their traditional bases of support to focus on hitherto untapped communities as potential markets for their goods and services Competitive conditions within the voluntary sector have pushed nonprofits along this same path However no systematic Canadian research reports on the attitudes social norms benefits sought expectations opportunities experiences or behaviors of subcommunities in the voluntary sector This paper examines philanthropic behavior by religion using data from the Statistics Canada 2000 National Survey of Giving Volunteering and Participating The paper compares and contrasts the voluntary and philanthropic behaviors of the Canadian population across religious groups compares and contrasts the motivations for and perceived impediments against such behaviors and articulates and examines a model that traces the influence of religion on voluntary and philanthropic behavior in Canada’s multicultural societyThe author acknowledges the staff at the Toronto Research Data Centre and Statistics Canada for making the NSGVP data available and for their support of this work the financial support of the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada Justin Azaria for the data analysis and Mary Foster and Agnes Meinhard for their very helpful comments on an earlier version of this manuscript

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