Giving Compass' Take:

• A new report by the Women's Philanthropy Institute released information about how men and women give differently, and men are shifting their approach to giving toward impact investing. 

• The report says that one reason for this shift is that women tend to think about change-making as transformational, while men view it as more transactional. Do you agree with this? 

• Read the full report to learn more about the differences in how men and women approach impact investing?

For years, wealthy donors who wanted to make change in the world had pretty much one option: donate to charity. That’s changed with the rise of impact investing, which offers people the chance to back social ventures and potentially receive a financial return.

A new report has found while women typically think about change-making in transformational terms, men are often more transactional. “The motivations for women to engage in philanthropy are more altruistic versus men who see engagement as somehow helping themselves as well,” says Debra Mesch, the director of the Women’s Philanthropy Institute at the Indiana University School of Philanthropy.

In this case, that means the survey found that men are far more likely make impact investments at the exclusion of traditional charitable giving, while women seem to seek a balance between the two.

That’s a problem because the best way to make holistic change in any field is to spread out how you’re delivering aid. If you want to solve the problem with a minimal amount of continued suffering, some charities and nonprofits may be good and delivering immediate relief efforts, while some impact investments might help curb long-term contributing factors.

These findings come from a new report by the WPI, which found that among a representative sample of wealthy donors (people with an annual household income of at least $200,000, or net worth, without including their house, of at least $1 million) nearly one-third were practicing impact investing.  Overall, single men were nearly twice as likely as single women to choose the financially-incentivized way of making a difference over just donating to a nonprofit:  19% of them are already practicing that way, compared to 11% of women.

Read the full article about the shift toward impact investing by Ben Paynter Fast Company