Donation Trends in Japan③: Individual Donations (Giving Japan 2015) Reports

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Posted on June 07, 2016
by Giving Japan

Four years from the Fukushima earthquake disaster – Donors remains as 40% and the total amount of donations was increased to ¥740,900 million.

A rough estimate of the total amount of individual donations in Japan in 2014 was ¥740,900 million, equivalent to 0.2% of nominal GDP. Compared with the last survey in 2012 (the survey was not conducted in 2013) which the total amount of individual donation was ¥693,100 million, it is a 6.9% increase. It is estimated that 43.6% of the population aged 15 and over made a donation and the number of donors was 44,100,000 people. Details of the estimation method are shown at the end of the book. Compared to 2012, the ratio of donors decreased by 3.1%. The total amount of membership fees that is substantially considered as donation was estimated at ¥312,900 million, a 3.0% decrease from 2012. The total amount of donation and membership fees was ¥1,053.800 billion, a 3.7% increase from 2012 (Fig. 1-5).

GivingJapan2015.fig.1-5Fig.1-5 Transition of total amount of individual donations, membership fees, and rate of donors

The breakdown of the total amount of individual donations, “Category 1” such as emergency disaster relief and international cooperation/exchange accounts for 37.2%; and the total amount of individual donations excluding “Categories 2” such as religious related activities, the community chest and the Japanese Red Cross Society is estimated at ¥275.6 billion (Fig. 1-6).GivingJapan2015.fig.1-6Fig.1-6 The breakdown of total amount of individual donations

According to GIVING USA 2015, the total amount of individual donation in the United States in 2014 was $258,500 million (about ¥27,350,400 million), a 5.7% increase from the previous year, equivalent to 1.5% of nominal GDP. In addition, bequests were $28,100 million (about ¥21,976,200 million), a huge increase by 15.5% from the previous year, which is almost three times more than the growth of individual donation (Giving USA Foundation, 2015). There are no statistics about bequests in Japan.

According to UK GIVING 2014, the total amount of individual donation in the UK in 2014 was £10,600 million (about ¥11,810 billion), equivalent to 0.6% of nominal GDP (Fig. 1-7). This is almost the same as the previous year. 64% of persons aged 16 and over make a donation; and 44% of adults (aged 18 and over) or about 22,900,000 people make a donation as a monthly average (Charities Aid Foundation, 2015).

GivingJapan2015.fig.1-7Fig.1-7 Rate of total amount of individual donations which accounts for nominal GDP in 2014

GivingJapan2015.table.1-4Table1-4 International comparison of US & UK for total amount of individual donations in 2014

Table of Contents

  1. Index
  2. 43.6% of people donated money and 24.6% of people donated goods. More than half make a donation a year.
  3. Four years from the Fukushima earthquake disaster – Donors remains as 40% and the total amount of donations was increased to ¥740,900 million.
  4. 47.1% of female, 40.3% of male make a donation. More than half of people aged 60 and over make a donation.
  5. Online donation increases slightly. “Hometown tax donation” and “Gifts with donation” are expected to see a future increase as more people showed an interest.
  6. “Sympathy to organization” and “Social contribution awareness” are particularly high with donors who make a donation of ¥50,000 or more.
  7. Important criteria for donors to consider when making a donation – “the use of monetary donation,” “the meaning/purpose of the activity,” etc. ranked high. Those two are viewed more important by donors who have an organization that they wish to support than those who don’t.
  8. Corporate donation is ¥698,600 million (2013 fiscal year) and 16.2% of all the corporations has reported as donation expenditures.
  9. Donations are certainly gaining its momentum.

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