Stanford Social Innovation Review : Articles : A New Take on Tithing (August 29, 2006)

Stanford Social Innovation Review : Articles : A New Take on Tithing (August 29, 2006): "Too often, individuals make decisions about how much money to donate to charitable causes on an ad hoc basis. As a result, many people give less money than they can actually afford. If the affluent contributed as much to nonprofits as the authors believe they can, charitable giving in the United States would increase by $100 billion a year – enough to solve many of the world’s most pressing problems.


By Claude Rosenberg & Tim Stone
Fall 2006

Malnutrition, illiteracy, disease – the problems of the world often seem insurmountable. But we see grounds for hope. According to our calculations, individual charitable donations in the United States alone could increase more than $25 billion a year if affluent households donated as high a proportion of their assets to charity as do the middle class and those below. This 17 percent “generosity gap” is our low-end estimate of how much additional money could be donated. If affluent donors gave as much as we think they could afford, based on our conservative donation benchmarks, charitable giving in the U.S. would rise by about $100 billion per year."

Tags: NPGiving