Report Says Donors Could Give Billions More

By GRANT WILLIAMS

Americans last year could have “comfortably” donated to charity more than double the estimated $150-billion that they actually did contribute, according to estimates released by a San Francisco organization that is trying to encourage wealthy people to give more.

The financial calculations were made by the NewTithing Group, an organization formed by Claude Rosenberg, a philanthropist and retired investment manager.

The organization said that its findings, which were extrapolated from the latest I.R.S. data, suggest that individuals could have given a total of $320-billion to charity in 2000. “This assumes a conservative historical stock-market total return of 5 percent, which is considerably lower than annualized long-term historical returns,” the NewTithing Group said in a statement.

According to the organization’s estimates, virtually all of the $170-billion in “affordable” additional giving could have come from people in the three wealthiest tax brackets.

Average tax filers in the top bracket — with adjusted gross incomes of $1-million or more and approximate investment assets of $18.1-million — donated an average of $122,940 but could have given 10 times that amount, the report said. In contrast, the report said that filers in one of the lowest tax brackets — those with adjusted gross incomes of $25,000 to $49,999 and approximate investment assets of roughly $64,000 — donated an average of $661 to charity each year, a figure the organization said was “sufficiently generous.”

Mr. Rosenberg has long promoted the idea that many people could easily double their charitable contributions without affecting their standard of living. His organization’s premise is that Americans should base their donations to charity “on annual surplus income and the market value, after debt, of investment assets (excluding personal housing).”

Said Mr. Rosenberg: “The markets may be lackluster, but many filers in the wealthiest three tax brackets accumulated so much capital over the years that they still could have comfortably given more than what they gave.”

For more information about the report, go to the organization’s Web site, http://newtithing.org.