[ April 18, 2024 ]
President Donald Trump’s economy has resulted in unemployment statistics below 4 percent, better trade wheelings and dealings and now, accorrding to a new report, record-breaking highs for charitable giving from U.S. citizens.
The Giving USA report shows charitable giving in America topped $410 billion in 2017.
That’s historic; never before has this stat hit over $400 billion.
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The Associated Press has more:
Fueled by a surging stock market and huge gifts from billionaires, charitable giving in the United States in 2017 topped the $400 billion mark for the first time, according to the latest comprehensive report on Americans’ giving patterns.
The Giving USA report, released Tuesday, said giving from individuals, estates, foundations and corporations reached an estimated $410 billion in 2017 — more than the gross domestic product of countries such as Israel and Ireland. The total was up 5.2 percent in current dollars (3 percent adjusted for inflation) from the estimate of $389.64 billion for 2016.
“Americans’ record-breaking charitable giving in 2017 demonstrates that even in divisive times our commitment to philanthropy is solid,” said Aggie Sweeney, chair of Giving USA Foundation, which publishes the annual report. It is researched and written by the Indiana University Lilly Family School of Philanthropy.
Giving increased to eight of the nine charitable sectors identified by Giving USA. The only decline was for areas related to international affairs.
The biggest increase was in giving to foundations — up 15.5 percent. That surge was driven by large gifts from major philanthropists to their own foundations — including $1 billion from Dell Technologies CEO Michael Dell and his wife, Susan, and $2 billion from Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg and his wife, Priscilla Chan.
Other sectors with increases of more than 6 percent included education, health, arts and culture, environment and animal welfare, and public-society benefit organizations — groups which work on such issues as voter education, civil rights, civil liberties and consumer rights.
Despite the record-setting total, Americans’ level of generosity is no higher than it was decades ago. For 2017, giving by individuals represented 2 percent of total disposable income — down from 2.4 percent in 2000 and the same as the rate in 1978. Similarly, total charitable donations have hovered around 2 percent of the gross domestic product for many years; for 2017, that figure was 2.1 percent.
Una Osili, a dean and economics professor at the Lilly Family School of Philanthropy, says the school’s research shows that the percentage of U.S. households making charitable donations has declined steadily in recent years, from about 67 percent in 2000 to 56.6 percent in 2015 — the latest year for which data is available.
She said giving rates for lower- and middle-class families had dropped significantly since the 2008 recession, while the giving rate for the wealthiest 20 percent of households was relatively steady.
Stacy Palmer, editor of the Chronicle of Philanthropy, said many fundraisers in the U.S. — while pleased with the recent increase in gifts — are unsure what lies ahead.
If trade wars break out, she said, that could weaken the economy to the point at which it deters some donors. She said fundraisers also worry that some middle-class donors may cut back on giving if changes in the new tax law no longer give them a deduction for their charitable donations.
Alluding to the surge of mega-gifts by the wealthy, Palmer added, “Some people feel they don’t need to give any more.”
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6 Comments
5 years ago
Capitalism floats all boats. This is antithesis to what DEMS, who are Communists want. This is why DEMS tax you so much. THEY want to be the ones that redistribute your money – NOT YOU! You shouldn’t have any money. This is why they want a Time ATT&T merger. They want a centrally planned economy where they CONTROL everything. You need to be content receiving a few crumbs that they bestow on you, if they LIKE you and meet their submissive criteria. Ideally they also want the public to support state owned companies like solar panel maker, Solandra that YOU financed and the government controlled and of course went out of business at YOUR expense. I believe China bought it out on the cheap.
Obama prioritized illegals, refugees and the opposite of what we would want as immigrants. Your job was to subsidize them through high taxes while others go it for free! DEMS now love monopolies for control – Facebook and the entertainment industry is helpful for censorship and propaganda. Small and medium sized companies threaten control if they are allowed to thrive. DEMS and liberals view the world through zero sum gain eye. DEMS are way past socialism. Vladimir Lenin is right, “The goal of socialism is communism.”
5 years ago
There is another problem. It is typically the LIBERALS that have all the money. They donate to further our destruction with their anti-American causes. This may be a good time to DEFUND the arts and humanities. All they seem to do is tear down our culture too. Let PRIVATE donations fund it.
5 years ago
Reply to
felix1999
I think liberals may have more influence in some places, yes, but many conservatives are also quite wealthy.
5 years ago
Awesome, Americans are such nice people! And they top the list of the world’s most generous nations!
https://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/americas/america-new-zealand-and-canada-top-list-of-world-s-most-generous-nations-a6849221.html
5 years ago
Some web sites are not feeling the affect, ya know?
5 years ago
Private charity is God’s way and good. When government steals money from it’s citizens and redistributes it, often to wicked people, organizations or counties, it is sinful and a crime;
“…[T]he government of the United States is a definite government, confined to specified objects. It is not like the state governments, whose powers are more general. Charity is no part of the legislative duty of the government.”
-James Madison
In 1794, when Congress appropriated $15,000 for relief of French refugees who fled from insurrection in San Domingo to Baltimore and Philadelphia, James Madison stood on the floor of the House to object saying, “I cannot undertake to lay my finger on that article of the Constitution which granted a right to Congress of expending, on objects of benevolence, the money of their constituents.”
-James Madison, 4 Annals of congress 179 (1794)
“When the people find that they can vote themselves money, that will herald the end of the republic.”
-Benjamin Franklin
“For even when we were with you, this we commanded you, that if any would not work, neither should he eat.” 2 Thessalonians 3:10
“To take from one, because it is thought his own industry and that of his fathers has acquired too much, in order to spare to others, who, or whose fathers, have not exercised equal industry and skill, is to violate arbitrarily the first principle of association, the guarantee to everyone the free exercise of his industry and the fruits acquired by it.”
-Thomas Jefferson, letter to Joseph Milligan, April 6, 1816
“A wise and frugal government … shall restrain men from injuring one another, shall leave them otherwise free to regulate their own pursuits of industry and improvement, and shall not take from the mouth of labor the bread it has earned. This is the sum of good government.”
-Thomas Jefferson, First Inaugural Address, March 4, 1801
“Congress has not unlimited powers to provide for the general welfare, but only those specifically enumerated.”
-Thomas Jefferson
“When all government, domestic and foreign, in little as in great things, shall be drawn to Washington as the center of all power, it will render powerless the checks provided of one government on another and will become as venal and oppressive as the government from which we separated.”
-Thomas Jefferson to Charles Hammond, 1821. The Writings of Thomas Jefferson, (Memorial Edition) Lipscomb and Bergh, editors, ME 15:332
“The natural progress of things is for liberty to yield and government to gain ground.”
-Thomas Jefferson, letter to E. Carrington, May 27, 1788
“The moment the idea is admitted into society that property is not as sacred as the laws of God, and that there is not a force of law and public justice to protect it, anarchy and tyranny commence. If ‘Thou shalt not covet’ and ‘Thou shalt not steal’ were not commandments of Heaven, they must be made inviolable precepts in every society before it can be civilized or made free.”
-John Adams, A Defense of the Constitutions of Government of the United States of America, 1787
James Madison, the Father of the Constitution, elaborated upon this limitation in a letter to James Robertson:
“With respect to the two words ‘general welfare,’ I have always regarded them as qualified by the detail of powers connected with them. To take them in a literal and unlimited sense would be a metamorphosis of the Constitution into a character which there is a host of proofs was not contemplated by its creators.”
“If Congress can do whatever in their discretion can be done by money, and will promote the general welfare, the government is no longer a limited one possessing enumerated powers, but an indefinite one subject to particular exceptions.” James Madison, “Letter to Edmund Pendleton,”
-James Madison, January 21, 1792, in The Papers of James Madison, vol. 14, Robert A Rutland et. al., ed (Charlottesvile: University Press of Virginia,1984).
“An elective despotism was not the government we fought for; but one in which the powers of government should be so divided and balanced among the several bodies of magistracy as that no one could transcend their legal limits without being effectually checked and restrained by the others.”
-James Madison, Federalist No. 58, February 20, 1788
“There are more instances of the abridgment of the freedom of the people by gradual and silent encroachments of those in power than by violent and sudden usurpations.”
-James Madison, speech to the Virginia Ratifying Convention, June 16, 1788
