July 19, 2010 | Read Time: 1 minute
Giving USA, the widely cited measure of giving, is re-examining the approach it uses to determine how much Americans donate.
In a presentation to fund-raising consultants who belong to the Giving Institute, Patrick Rooney, director of research at the Indiana University Center on Philanthropy, acknowledged that Giving USA’s finding that individuals gave just as much last year as they did in 2008 has generated much skepticism. The Giving Institute finances the research done by Mr. Rooney and his colleagues and makes the key findings available free.
Among the reasons questions are growing about the data: Last week the Internal Revenue Service noted that the amount Americans deducted for charitable gifts fell by 11 percent in 2008, the first year of the recession. That was a far steeper sum than Giving USA had estimated. It said donations dropped by 2.7 percent that year.
And as The Chronicle reported in June, Paul Schervish and John Havens of the Boston College Center on Wealth and Philanthropy have calculated a very different picture for 2009: They say individuals gave 4.6 percent less to charity last year, on top of a 6.1-percent decline in 2008.
While the IRS data have intensified questions about whether the Giving USA methodology needs to be adjusted to take into account the worst economy since the Great Depression, Mr. Rooney says the study’s methodology has proved extremely accurate over time.
With the exception of one year, he noted, Giving USA’s tally has fallen with 1 percent of the total of itemized charitable donations reported by the Internal Revenue Service. The IRS releases those data two years after any given tax year, which is what makes it so hard for economists and other scholars to determine with precision how much has been donated.
