By Sophie Roback, Alliance Intern from Colorado College ’24
We have good news. Giving a donation makes a difference for a nonprofit and you. How? Numerous studies show giving increases your happiness, life satisfaction, and overall health on a level similar to exercise and a healthy diet. A UC Berkeley researcher cites studies showing “we are hardwired to give — it lights up the pleasure centers of our brains, giving us a ‘warm glow’ feeling, sometimes called ‘the helper’s high.'” UC Berkeley points to past research that spending money on others gives greater wellbeing than spending money on ourselves.
Giving is found to be positively related to life satisfaction, based on a study by the Women’s Philanthropy Institute as reported by Psychology Today. “This study reinforces the findings of a previous study from 2007 which found that donating to charities activates neural activity in the same areas of the brain linked to reward processing, such as eating and sex. Similarly, a 2008 study from Harvard found that ‘spending money on others leads to lasting improvements in people’s overall happiness,’” Psychology Today reports.
Spending money to benefit others is proven to increase the happiness of the giver, according to a study by Harvard Business School (HBS). The study reviewed 15 past experiments to determine what aspects of prosocial spending resulted in the greatest positive effects on individuals’ moods. In one study reviewed, they found a “small but reliable increase in positive mood” among people who gave away their gift rather than keeping it for themselves.
Through their review, HBS found three important factors that boosted the happiness of the giver. First, “if you’ve just finished enacting a helping behavior, that action tends to be associated with greater benefits as opposed to just reflecting on a time that you helped others.” In addition, individuals expressed greater joy when they had more control over whether and where they were donating to.
They also found greater results when people were able to see the direct impact of their contribution and felt more connected. Therefore, HBS promotes donating to local community nonprofits that allow this direct connection and choosing one that aligns well with your personal values.
And finally, there are health benefits from giving donations. A paper in the journal Health Psychology shows that giving can lower blood pressure, a simple measure of cardiovascular health, reports UC Berkeley’s Greater Good Magazine. “Participants who had initially spent the most on causes had lower blood pressure than participants who had spent less money.” Another study found that “the participants who had spent money on others had lower blood pressure at the end of the study. Notably, this effect appeared to be as large as the benefits of a healthy diet and exercise,” according to Greater Good Magazine.
It’s wonderful that people are so generous. During 2021, the second year of the pandemic, a global survey revealed that 36.7% of people had donated to a charity in the past month which is 6% higher than estimates from before the pandemic. Ashley Whillans and her colleagues wanted to “understand how to create conditions where helping people might feel good for the actor.” They hoped this would reinforce a positive feedback loop because “if giving has made you feel good in the past, you are more likely to give again.”