Charitable giving would jump by $27.5-billion a year if every wealthy American donated at the same rate as the most affluent people in the nation's five most-generous states, according to a new study by a San Francisco charity. That amounts to a 15 per-cent gain in the amount individuals contribute annually.
The study, based on an analysis of five years of Internal Revenue Service data, was conducted by NewTithing, a San Francisco nonprofit organization that works to increase charitable giving
Its research determined that wealthy individuals — those who reported incomes of $200,000 or more on their tax returns — in the five most-generous states — Georgia, Minnesota, Nebraska, Oklahoma, and Utah — gave an average of 1.1 percent of their assets to charity. That compares with an average of 0.7 percent donated by people at that income level.
The five states where affluent taxpayers gave the smallest percentage of their assets to charity, according to the study, were Alaska (0.4 percent), West Virginia (0.4 percent), New Hampshire (0.5 percent), Arkansas (0.5 percent), and Hawaii (0.5 percent).
The 10 states with the largest amounts of wealth — those where the total assets held by residents were the highest — did not rank in the top 25 percent of most-generous states, the study found. Those states are California, Connecticut, Florida, Illinois, Massachusetts, New Jersey, New York, Ohio, Pennsylvania, and Texas.
If affluent people in just those 10 states increased their giving to match the most generous states, that would produce an additional $19.6-billion for charities or donors' foundations, according to the report.
"Unless there is a conscious culture of philanthropy in a community, people generally tend to give emotionally to charity," says Tim D. Stone, executive director of the NewTithing Group. "A lot of people who are quite affluent eyeball how much they can afford to give, but they have a tendency to underestimate that. This study points out the potential that's out there."
Copies of the study are available on the NewTithing Group's Web site; http://www.newtithing.org/frames/research_sept06.html.