Wiki: The World Giving Index (WGI) is an annual report published by the Charities Aid Foundation, using data gathered by Gallup, and ranks over 140 countries in the world according to how charitable they are. The most recent edition was published in September 2018, with Indonesia, Australia and New Zealand ranking as the top three. The United States, Ireland, the United Kingdom, Singapore, Kenya, Myanmar and Bahrain complete the top ten. The countries that scored the lowest were Yemen, Greece and China.
Market Watch: The U.S. is the No. 1 most generous country in the world for the last decade. Between 2009 and 2018, interviewers asked respondents whether they had done the following in the last month:
- helped a stranger or someone they didn’t know who needed help
- donated money to charity
- volunteered their time to an organization
The U.S. peaked on the World Giving Index in 2014, but has declined since then. Two out of three Americans donated to charity within the last year. Some 71% said their debt prevents them from donating as much as they’d like. Some postulate that the U.S.’s 2017 tax overhaul affects Americans’ donations to charities, because many have stopped claiming tax deductions for their charitable donations.
Giving USA: Americans gave $427.71 billion to charity in 2018 amid complex year for charitable giving.
- Giving by individuals totaled $292.09 billion, declining 1.1%
- Giving by foundations increased by 7.3%, to $75.86 billion
- Giving by corporations increased by 5.4%, totaling $20.05 billion
The most notable changes in giving by sector:
- Giving to religion declined by 1.5%
- Giving to education declined by 1.3%
- Giving to foundations decreased by 6.9%
- Giving to public-society benefit organizations decreased by 3.7%
- Giving to international affairs increased by 9.6%
- Giving to environment and animal organizations have increased 3.6%
- Other sectors (human services, health organizations and arts, culture, and humanities) remained relatively flat
Overall, Charitable giving showed solid growth, climbing to $449.64 billion in 2019, one of the highest years for giving on record. Also encouraging to note, Charitable giving increased 7.5 percent in first half of 2020. According to the PND report, donations of less than $250 jumped 19.2 percent in the first half of the year, while mid-level gifts of between $250 and $999 increased 8.1 percent and major gifts of at least $1,000 increased $6.4 percent.
How has the Coronavirus affected philanthropy? Charity is off the charts amid the coronavirus. The charitable acts have come in all shapes and sizes. Small checks to food pantries, foundations issuing emergency grants to desperate nonprofits and, most conspicuously, billionaires doling out big-dollar gifts with all the attendant publicity. It’s not just the large gifts — there is a generosity taking place at the community level by everyday people and sometimes really heroic acts where people are stepping up to help their neighbors. LA Times.
- “If you can’t feed a hundred people, then just feed one.” —Mother Teresa
- “We make a living by what we get, but we make a life by what we give.” —Winston Churchill
- “Attention is the rarest and purest form of generosity.” —Simone Weil
- “Happiness is not made by what we own. It is what we share.” —Rabbi Jonathan Sacks
Give to the charity of your choice. Find one that inspires you at GuideStar, Charity Navigator or GoFundMe.
Give. Pray. Post. 