Recently, there have been a few articles related to how charitable giving is changing and also how charitable giving is increasing somewhat dramatically.
Giving USA 2006, which is a compilation of facts and figures on giving in the United States and has information from the Year 2005 ( the latest information available) , stated that Americans gave total contributions of $260.28 billion for 2005, a growth of 6.1 percent. This is a healthy increase in giving and is likely partially attributed to the increased giving due to Tsunami and Hurricane relief, estimated at over $3 billion.
In Arthur Brooks best selling book, "Who Really Cares", the author states, "The data tell us that the conventional wisdom is dead wrong. In most ways, political conservatives are not personally less charitable than political liberals—they are more so."
Brooks goes on to say in the book that the reason for the charitable difference gap isn't so much related to political ideology, i.e. Conservative vs. Liberal, or Republican vs. Democrat, it's that this gap is 100% related to the difference in faith.
That's right, Brooks concludes, "the enormous charity gap remains between religious people and secular people." It seems that because so many people of faith consider themselves to be politically conservative skews the results so that the conservatives appear to give more than liberals. The difference however is the "faith" not the political persuasion, as Brooks discovered in his research that people of faith GAVE, regardless of their political persuasion.
I did some of my own research based on ECFA financial information. ECFA member organizations saw total income increase 13% in the last fiscal year (combination of 2005 and 2006 data). That is more than TWICE the rate of charitable giving overall. ECFA member assets also increased by 22% to a total of more than $30 billion.
While I'd like to attribute the difference between ECFA charities and all charities (13% vs. 6.1%) to something inherent in ECFA accreditation, integrity and financial transparency, I'm going to have to just attribute it to faith.
As it should be!
