
Charity: Who Cares? A Visual Guide to Giving - alexandros
http://www.mint.com/blog/trends/charity-who-cares/
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zck
I have two quibbles with their numbers. First, if WalMart gives 1% of
revenues, and they have $400 billion in revenues, they give $4 billion to
charity. They say $13 billion is given to charity by corporations. Note that
U.S. GDP is $14 trillion
(<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Economy_of_the_United_States>), so WalMart
takes in under 3% of that. It seems off that 30% of all charitable giving by
corporations is high for one organization.

Also, it says that public charities "collect a total of " more than $1.4
trillion. But we only give $300 billion to charity. Where does the other $1.1
trillion come from?

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freetard
If giving to charity includes supporting the local church to promote prop 8
like laws, then I'm not impressed. And given that religious donation make up
for 35% of all, it is actually kind of scary.

Countries like France are much less religious so it makes sense that donation
there (to religious institutions and in general) are lower, plus, if you take
out the few US billionaires there, I wonder if the French actually give less
than the Americans. Also note that French and Italians and most European
countries pay much more taxes than the Americans do, and donation are not as
tax deductible in Europe as in the US. You can also consider taxes to be some
kind of charity, in France, minimum wage is huge and people who are unemployed
get almost minimum wage like compensation + health care. So you can consider
that in Europe, the state takes care of charity while in the US, it is taken
care of by the people (with little success for health care).

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jordanb
A donation to Catholic Charities would count as a religious donation although
0% if it will go to the Church's political activities.

A great deal of the aid to the needy in the US is provided by religious-
affiliated charities. Heck, even the Salvation Army is a religious charity.

But I think you're right that the structure of a country like France allows it
to run on less charitable giving. I would imagine that the welfare state
eliminates the need for a lot of food kitchens and shelters, for instance.

American numbers are also inflated by a large number of organizations
operating as 501c3s and collecting contributions that would not be considered
"Charities" by most people. For instance, the second largest 'purpose'
grouping for 501c3s is "education".[1] Is Harvard University really a
'charity?'

Notice that the largest purpose grouping (by revenue) is health care. I know
that Advocate Healthcare -- one of the largest hospital chains in Chicago --
is a 501c3 which has been attacked by health reform advocates for being very
stingy with charity care and engaging in aggressive billing practices.

The "healthcare" segment is over 52% of the 501c3 sector by revenue. Some of
that may be charity clinics, but I imagine the vast majority of it is
institutions like Advocate. If you combine the healtchare and education
segments, they account for over 71% of the entire sector.

[1] [http://nccsdataweb.urban.org/PubApps/nonprofit-overview-
sumR...](http://nccsdataweb.urban.org/PubApps/nonprofit-overview-
sumRpt.php?v=nteeFilers&t=pc&f=0)

~~~
potatolicious
_"Heck, even the Salvation Army is a religious charity."_

Yes, and they have been known to use donated funds to support political causes
(specifically, prop 8).

I support religious charities (currently a Buddhist one), but absolutely
oppose any who will use their influence for political ends. I also oppose any
who count proselytization as one of their primary goals.

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houseabsolute
Interesting that this broke out the religious and secular giving. I've always
heard the statistic that religious people giving more, but I always wondered
if most of that was in tithes. Apparently it's not.

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DarkShikari
_I've always heard the statistic that religious people giving more_

The statistic they showed was religious people _being more likely to give at
all_ : this doesn't say anything about how much they give, or the distribution
of giving.

It's dangerous to extrapolate too much from limited data.

~~~
walkon
There is the part that says "religious people give more to secular causes than
secular people do." Then the stat: 71% of religious give to secular causes
while 61% of secular people do.

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spamizbad
Really wish they'd stop lumping in tithes in with legitimate charitable
causes. It completely distorts the data.

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3pt14159
My church feeds the homeless in Toronto, helps run a rehab clinic in Russia,
and sends food and medical supplies to Haiti. Yes we do spend money on keeping
on the lights and teaching our congregation about lessons from the Bible, but
I've never even heard of the Pastor ever supporting a particular bill or
politician. Maybe its because I'm Canadian.

~~~
roundsquare
Your church may or may not be a great example, I'm not sure.

In part, the issue revolves around if people know what their tithes are going
for and why they tithe. E.g. if they know the money is going to help starving
kids (or whatever charity) and they give for that reason, then it makes sense
to count tithes (or a percent of tithes?). If they would give tithes no matter
what because they are supposed to, then it probably doesn't make sense to
count them (at least if you are trying to analyze who is the most giving based
on money spent or percentage of income, whatever).

