Thank you for the great visual and break down of information!  I will be sure to share this with my board!
Amy

My takeaways:
- Americans are better givers than the rest of the world.
- Rich people tend to give in a self-serving way, and poor people kick their butts in terms of giving in proportion to their income.
- Religious donors beat secular donors.
- If you give, watch out for the plethora of inefficient, self-serving charities who pay their CEOs too much.

What a cynical, competitive way to look at the world. This is why so many nonprofits fail to make REAL change in their communities—we refuse to recognize the interconnectedness of our causes, of our communities and of our countries, and pit some against others in order to make people “feel good” about giving.

Why not drop this self-centered “giving makes me a better person than someone else” thing and try a more novel approach—how about giving to make your church, community, country or world a better place?

The “feeling good” can just be a nice side effect.

This graphic is truly a manipulation and exploitation of the idea of karma. Karma is not reward for good deeds or punishment for less savory deeds—it is not competitive. Karma is simply the universe, or the higher power, giving you what you need to grow—on both individual and universal scales. You don’t give to “generate” karma because karma is not something that is produced—it is simply the name for a process as elemental as tectonic shifts or erosion.

The purest giving, as defined by most religious traditions, is done anonymously for a faceless beneficiary. It is not done in order to get to heaven (or keep you out of hell) or to make your friends think you’re generous. It is done out of the knowledge that you are connected to everyone and everything in you community (or country or world), so your gift lifts up the entire community—isn’t that the goal?

Giving WILL make you feel good. But should feeling good (or superior to someone else, or less guilty about being so much better off than someone else) be the goal of one’s giving?

I think this misses the point. If you’re going to analyze your generosity to the nth degree, then it’s no longer about giving, it’s about maximizing effectiveness… which, from a spiritual perspective, is no better than playing the stock market.

That’s probably why conservatives/religious folks give more (if this poster is accurate). They give because they feel God wants them to—not because a spreadsheet says it’s cost-effective.

Sounds like enough people are giving to, and profiting from, charities. I’ve decided to never give again.

Why is this so Eurocentric?

Just another page full of statistical manipulations… inventive bookmaking for the pie chart impaired.

It reads at the start of this paragraph, “Conservatives are more likely to give than Liberals. . .”  “There,” should be spelled “They’re.”  In all honesty, if you actually want me to consider your opinions, you need to have another grammar lesson, or two. They’re is the equivalence of “they are.” Their, is used only to show possession of a person’s belongings. Please, and for everything you stand for and against, have a proof reader.

maybe the reason citizens of other countries give less is because their governments provide more to their needy.  isn’t there some statistics that we have one of the lowest tax base among the industrialised nations?  which also explains our decrepit healthcare system for the middle and lower classes as well as astounding poverty rate for such wealthy nation?

I would guess that Europeans give less to charity because they are taxed more and their governments provide more welfare.

The comparison of European to American donors is unfair—it is an “apples to oranges” comparison.  The Europeans do the same sort of unfair comparison BACKWARDS.  Europeans have no strong tradition of individual donations and give through taxes to their government.  Many institutions supported in the US by charitable giving are supported in Europe by the government.  Europeans are relatively new to fundraising (most development has been in less than 25 years).

Since giving by government in the US is linked to foreign policy for the most part, Americans out on the stingy scale.  This is as unfair a comparison was is the one in this summary.

Kienan, we need to share with mint.com your very good catch of their typo!

As a former Bay Area resident, I have to say that your characterization of the Discovery Museum as “drowning in administration” is totally off-base.  They may technically be a charity because they do school programs or some such thing but what they mostly are is a *museum*, as the name would imply.  It takes a lot of money to run a museum, and an incredibly awesome one at that.

Thanks for that! Im from Germany and I wasnt aware of that fact that we are that “bad” when it comes to giving away something to people who need it. Mindchanging.

M.

The Walmart mention is funny/irksome because I wonder how much charity money goes to helping the families of underpaid Walmart workers. We already subsidize the company through our taxes in the form of government assistance for many workers’ families (e.g. food stamps, Medicaid). And in terms of giving compared to income, Target gives twice as much.

The Most Charitable Companies - Forbes.com http://bit.ly/5zNe5a

money they give as a percentage of their gross national income: USA is in 23 place

you are not so awesome as you imagine

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_most_charitable_countries

I think they may regard to be technically charitable because they do school programs or some such thing.
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