October 12, 2006 | Read Time: 2 minutes
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-percent 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 Group, 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 across the country.
Lowest Donation Rate
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 greatest 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 were 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.
Tim D. Stone, executive director of the NewTithing Group, said that it is impossible to determine what types of nonprofit groups individuals from different parts of the country are supporting.
A Chronicle study in 2003 found that a key difference between charitable giving in rural and urban states was that individuals in rural states donate far more heavily to religious groups, while those in urban areas gave as much or more to secular charities as those in more rural parts of the nation.
Free copies of “Wealth and Generosity by State” are available on the NewTithing Web site.
