Silicon Valley & Bay Area Charitable Giving Pales in Comparison to Other Areas

I've been meaning to blog about this for a while... for anyone who didn't see the April San Francisco magazine, they reviewed philanthropic giving in Silicon Valley, the Bay Area, and Los Angeles. They got the numbers from the NewTithing Group. Unfortunately I couldn't find out how they differentiate between "Bay Area" and "Silicon Valley" but it's no shock to me that people farther south of San Francisco toward San Jose contribute less philanthropically. However, not that much less. L.A., on the other hand, gives twice as much per capita than the Bay Area.

Nationally, California is way below other states like Oklahoma and Nebraska, whereas Utah is highest on the list. (I don't know if this includes church giving - the LDS church urges most members to give at least 10% in tithing to the church so that could skew the numbers if so.) In any case, California is 22nd in philanthropic giving nationally according to the research done by that group.

While poking around, I found an interesting site for nonprofit benchmarking at The Center for What Works.