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Giving Stats
GiveNow News Edition 8, 2010
Pat yourself on the back :
Australia tops giving index
It’s official. Australia and New Zealand are, jointly, the most ‘giving’ countries in the world, according to the World Giving Index 2010 report issued by the international Charities Aid Foundation (CAF).
The CAF gave both countries a score of 57% (the average of their scores on ‘giving money’, ‘giving time’, and ‘helping a stranger’).
Ireland and Canada were next in the charitable stakes, in third and fourth place respectively. Switzerland and The United States tied for fifth place.
The study, which the foundation says is the most ambitious of its kind, reviews the state of giving in 153 countries, representing 95% of the globe’s population. According to the Index, the link between the giving of money and happiness is stronger than the link between the giving of money and the GDP of a nation. In other words, happier people are more likely to give money than those who are wealthy.
I'd like to see a Survey which showed how much $ Dollar Value got through to the recipient vs Dollars chewed up by badly/fraudulently managed Charities/Foundations. +GDP vs Population vs Cost of Living vs Percentage of persons within each social class.
Because I believe;
Lower Income Earners give their Time as a Donation.
Medium Income Earners give Monetary Donations.
High Income Earners barely give to don't give.
True stats! However, like most things, statistics can be made to imply almost anything. This survey talks about the % of people in a given country who donate to charity, but this favourable statistic must be balanced with the actual dollar amount given per population (ie as a % of GDP) in order to validate its true worth.
The John Hopkins non profit comparitive study, which looks at the overall "spend" of each country places Australia at #13 behind Uganda, Tanzania, and Kenya. This is far below other countries like Canada, the US, & the UK, who Australia usually boxes toe to toe with in most things: http://www.ccss.jhu.edu/pdfs/CNP/CNP_comptable5_dec05.pdf
So now that we have the volume of people donating in Australia, the trick is to get them to donate more so the overall amount is better! We can do it! :)