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How much can we afford to give? Claude Rosenberg, a retired and successful investment manager in San Francisco, believes that people of high net worth should base their calculations of how much they can afford to give each year, not just on salary income, but on their total investment assets. Rosenberg has founded a charitable organization called NewTithing Group to promote this strategy for calculating how much one can afford to give. The giving strategy then structures the gifts to take optimal advantage of tax laws. The NewTithing Group's Web site (www.newtithing.org) contains a "calculator" for users to input their own numbers to determine how much they can afford to invest in philanthropy in a given year. NewTithing Group is also developing an "affordability index" for each state and income group each year. The index is based on the IRS Statistics of Income Bulletin data. It's the percentage of shortfall between the actual average itemized charitable deductions (ICD) and what a state or group can afford to give, using the NewTithing system. State percentages are then ranked. Based on the most recent statistics available (1997), Washington state's highest income group ranks 34th among its peers nationwide. |
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| Affordable donations for the average filer earning an adjusted income of $200,000 or more |
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| State rank | State | Number of filers |
Salary and non- investment income (per filer) |
Investment assets (per filer) |
Actual donations (per filer) |
Additional affordable donations (per filer) |
Total affordable donations (per filer) |
NewTithing Optimal Donation Score (NODTM) |
| 41 | Idaho | 4,683 | $165,168 | $4,272,132 | $19,703 | $83,046 | $102,749 | 19.18% |
| 5 | Montana | 2,998 | $138,688 | $3,490,130 | $20,683 | $37,878 | $58,560 | 35.32% |
| 13 | Oregon | 18,814 | $182,411 | $3,082,980 | $17,528 | $41,160 | $56,688 | 29.87% |
| 34 | Washtington | 37,684 | $244,922 | $3,700,986 | $17,919 | $58,222 | $76,141 | 23.53% |
| Source: New Tithing Group, San Francisco, October 1999. Includes 1997 IRS data: Statistics of Income Bulletin (latest available data) | ||||||||
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