Charitable Giving Hits Record High in Disaster-Ridden 2005

Charity News Online
Lisa Vronskaya

In the wake of a series of huge natural disasters across the globe charitable giving grew in 2005, an annual report on philanthropy released in the U.S. said. Individuals and institutions in the U.S. gave away an estimated $260.28 billion in 2005, a 2.7 percent increase on an inflation-adjusted basis from a year earlier, local papers reported.

Giving for disaster relief accounted for about 3 percent of the total, according to the Giving USA Foundation, an educational and research program of the American Association of Fundraising Counsel, which together with the Center on Philanthropy at Indiana University publishes the annual report.

From December 2004 to October, an estimated $7.37 billion was donated to address the ravages of natural disasters, with individuals accounting for a majority of the gifts. The American Red Cross alone received $2.4 billion to help victims of Hurricane Katrina, and the Salvation Army took in $363 million, more than three times what it raised through its annual holiday Red Kettle Campaign.

Without disaster-related philanthropy, however, giving would have been flat. The stock market increased only modestly last year, and personal incomes fell for the second year in a row.