Human Services News

New York Times

None of this happens naturally in a free-market economy, because the efforts cost money that will never be fully recouped.

In San Francisco, a retired money manager named Claude Rosenberg has founded a small organization called New Tithin g Group.

It tries to persuade Americans to base their charitable giving on their assets as well as their income, given how many now have substantial assets.

And using tax returns, NewTithing has put together a devilish ranking of the 50 states.

Then, with the same federal tax data, it calculated what percentage of those assets the households have given to charity, on average, in recent years.

Nebraska ranked third, with its affluent residents giving away just over 1 percent of their assets each year.

What is striking about the top of NewTithing's list is that it is dominated by a group of states that run from the Rockies through the Plains and down into the Southeast.

The only ones ahead of Nebraska were Utah (where the Mormon Church asks members to donate 10 percent of their incomes) and Oklahoma, while Minnesota and Georgia came next.

As Emmett D. Carson, president of the Minneapolis Foundation, points out, these are places that do not have many beaches, famous cultural institutions or other obvious ways to attract residents.

"So how do you build a community that is a destination?"

"You have to be a lot more intentional about it."

The average affluent resident of New York (23rd on the list) or Florida (41st) owns about one-third more assets than the average affluent Nebraskan, but the Nebraskan still gives away a bigger pile of money.

The NewTithing ranking, by its nature, also fails to count donations that are not tax-deductible, like informal gifts and time spent on community service.

But the ranking makes an important point.

The middle of the country has developed a culture of philanthropy that the coasts and the Southwest, for all their wealth, do not yet have.