| Summary: | The COVID-19 pandemic presented a unique opportunity to undertake a cross-national study of how people living in different countries manifested generosity behaviors during the crisis. Cross-national data allow us to consider how generosity presented in countries with various welfare and health systems, as well as varying public and private responses to manage the effects of the pandemic. The present study also provides valuable insights about which actions philanthropic organizations and governments can take to promote a strong, viable social sector and to support societal wellbeing during times of crisis. To this end, philanthropy researchers across 11 countries studied the generosity responses emerging in their own country during the early COVID-19 crisis in 2020. The 11 countries included in this project are Australia, Austria, Finland, Germany, Iceland, Israel, Norway, Sweden, the Republic of Korea, the Russian Federation and the United States of America. In 11 individual country reports, the researchers compared generosity behavior data for their country with data from the other participating countries.2 Second, they expounded what both philanthropic organizations and governments could learn from the findings, with the goal of facilitating people’s future generosity responses more effectively, especially during crises. Individual generosity behavior across 11 countries during times of crisis Our findings, which resulted from surveying over 44,000 people from 11 countries, revealed a clearly predominant philanthropic activity: the donation of money to philanthropic organizations. There was significant variation in the beneficiaries of donor funds—for example, with some countries reporting as many as 53% of donors giving to philanthropic organizations in health and social services, while in other countries, only 22% of donors gave to the same types of organizations. Overall, giving to philanthropic organizations appeared relatively stable compared to pre-pandemic times. However, upon closer look, we found ...
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