Intelligent Giving - How much to give - Comments

What percentage of his

Alan D — Tue, 06 May 2008 03:16:36 +0100

What percentage of his wealth does Bill Gates give to charity ?

What about the time factor?

LMC — Mon, 04 Dec 2006 17:38:42 +0000

However wealthy someone is in monetary terms and however much they give to charity as a percentage of that wealth, or in actual numbers, we all only have 24 hours in a day. The extra hours I put in for the charity I work for - at a salary far less than I could get for a similar job in the City - make up for me spending a higher percentage of my salary than most on having a good time. (I waste the rest).

It's practically impossible to assign a £ value to volunteering (I know you guys at IG don't like that word, but until someone can find a sensible and not puke-making single word to describe giving your time, tough). "Volunteers are not paid - not because they are worthless, but because they are priceless" (Anon - one of my favourite quotes).

Having plugged the £ numbers in, I'm officially a stingy [insert choice of insult here]. Do I look bovvered? Calculating my hourly wage from my salary and adding in my time triples that amount, putting it well into "Committed giver" territory. Since I probably should be committed, I can live with that.

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... they nearly thought I am Vlad the Impaler (yep, I was totally honest)

Your donations calculator

hokum — Fri, 01 Dec 2006 10:12:44 +0000

Do your calculations include what people leave in their will? How about suggestions for that?

The poorest givers

Editor Dave — Tue, 07 Nov 2006 19:02:21 +0000

In response to Jo, it's the poorest 20% in the country. For more details on the calculations, click the "Click for our sums" link.

We have been asked to incorporate a minimum cut-off figure, below which you shouldn't have to give anything. But I think you'll find that the poorest 20% don't apply such a thing. Nor do the famously generous Bangladeshis/Indians/Egyptians etc. And anyway we're not forcing anyone to use their figure. We're just letting you know what other people do.

Dave Pitchford, Editor

Its because the website

Steward — Fri, 03 Nov 2006 16:20:26 +0000

Its because the website calculator works on percentages of net income, not actual £££. Poorer people on average give higher proportions of their lower incomes than the average wealthy person. The average American gives a higher proportion than the average Brition.

Ian Clark

HOw do you define the

Jo — Fri, 03 Nov 2006 11:44:24 +0000

HOw do you define the poorest givers?

I was under the impression that American's were considered the most generous in terms of charitable donations yet the avg. american gives only £4 more than the poorest givers

How much to give

admin — Thu, 09 Mar 2006 17:01:42 +0000

Calculate how much to give

WE ASSUME you're not on the breadline. Works best without extravagant spouses or mortgages. How can we improve this?

> Click for our sums

How we calculate
"Giving" statistics vary wildly. What we've done here is take rough estimates based on a range of sources. Our sums work like this:

- Mitigating circumstances: If your income covers more than two adults, you have higher expenses than the average so we take 20% off the amount. More than two children also get you a 20% discount.
- Committed givers are a compromise between the oft-touted 1% figure and the 10% 'tithe' that the big religions set as an ideal. 5% it is (and many people subscribe to it).
- The average Brit gives the smallest amount on this list. It's pitiful. 0.8%. You can afford more than that. Buy cheaper wine.
- The Giving Campaign, a government-sponsored project which ended in 2003, conducted a ton of research and somehow came up with... 1.5%.
- The poorest givers - that's the poorest 20% in this country - are also the most generous. Maybe because they see the problems up close, maybe because they're nicer people... who knows... they give on average 3%.
- The Americans are mighty generous. Much more than us. They give 3.2%.
- Elton John. Someone in the office said they read somewhere that he gives away 23%, though we can't substantiate the figure. It's quite likely as he is famously generous but don't quote us.
- Bill Gates. It's 80%, plus or minus. Of course in his case there's a fair bit left over.