Charitable Giving

Happy Friday!  I've been re-tooling my budget this week as I think about where to cut back on discretionary spending in order to have more money to put towards home renovations when I close on the new townhouse.  I started wondering whether I could discontinue my charitable giving for the remainder of 2014.  At the beginning of the year, I set a goal of donating 3% of my take home pay (I know that sounds like a paltry amount but that is up from the 2% I did in 2013, so even if it's low I am making an effort to do more every year).

Still, it got me wondering what most Americans do for charitable contributions.  I wanted to share a few of the stats I found online.

In 2013, total charitable giving was $335.17 billion.  I was surprised to see the majority of this giving comes from individuals (72%), with the remainder coming from foundations (15%), bequests/legacies (8%), and corporations (5%).

Middle class Americans (with household incomes below $100K) lead the pack for most generous donating 3.6% on average!  Those making $100K-$200K contribute 2.6% on average, and those over $200K in household income do a bit better at 3.1%.  Most shocking of all is the $45K-$50K households at 4%, where every other income brackets is less than 4% until you get to the super wealthy with $10M+ (even then the household average is only 5.9%).  How crazy is that?!

Religious organizations receive the largest share of these charitable donations (31%), education is second (16%), human services like shelters and food shelves (12%), health like med research and prevention services (10%), and environment/animals (3%).

A cheeky Huffington Post article titled "One Thing Red States Do Better Than Blue States" turns out to be charitable giving.  Imagine my surprise when Mississippi is the 2nd most giving state of them all!  I really thought Mississippi was the worst at everything; I will have to change my tune.  I think I'll target West Virginia from now on as my base for lowest of the low.  Truly though, 9 of the top 10 most giving states all voted Republican.  The article does point out that if you take out donations to religious organizations and only count secular charities, then the Northeast wins the most charitable award.  No surprise that those crazy Mormons are #1 by a long shot...just over 10%.

I did find myself thinking the Red states better be donating more to charity because that is a basic tenet of how they believe social welfare should be funded, right?  Less government and more individual contribution?  The Blue state platform is the government can collect taxes to fund these programs thereby reducing the need for charitable contributions.  Does that make sense to anyone but me??  Sadly, even with the social programs funded via our taxes, most of these articles point out our country could not survive (or at least would be a much worse place for the needy) without the $335B in charitable donations.

The least amount of giving in any state is 2.5%, and Minnesota ranks in at 34 with 4.1%.  Moral of the story, I can't discontinue my charitable giving in 2014.  I need to at least support my neighbors average around 4%, and even West Virginia does better than my goal of 3%!  Ugh!!!

Source(s): Charity Navigator www.charitynavigtor.org and National Center for Charitable Statistics nccs.urban.org