Donațiile către cauze sociale și rolul acestora în consolidarea solidarității în situații de criză [Donations to Social Causes and their Role in Strengthening Solidarity in Times of Crisis]

Donations to social causes is a common issue nowadays, due to the fact that every society has its people facing various difficult situations who need community support in order to be empowered to cope with their vulnerability. Thus, social donations represent a direct support provided by individuals in society, based on the identified needs of people facing various problems. At the same time, in Romania, the subject of donations to social causes is poorly researched, with no relevant studies presenting this situation applied on the Romanian population. Results of our research indicates that people donate to social causes mainly because they are aware of (and empathize with) the needs of people in difficulty, which is one of the mechanisms described by Bekkers and Wiepking in 2011. Furthermore, the respondents who participated in our study showed that financial donations remain the most common type of support for social causes. It was noted that people make donations to social causes due to social learning, a process that occurs through observation and subsequent imitation of philanthropic behavior.


Keywords: social donations, mechanisms, needs, crisis, vulnerability