Cool Numbers: Giving

Remember these? I barely do either... But either way, here is another cool number!

According to GivingUSA, charitable giving in 2006 reached a record $295.02 billion, which Slate's Moneybox noted was something like 2.2% of our nation's GDP. Excluding disaster gifts from the year previously, (remember 2005?), that's a yoy increase of 6.6%. Pretty cool, yeah? Now, part of that 2006 record comes from Warren Buffet's 1.9billion donation (which will amount to $30 billion over the next 20 years).

The Moneybox article's focus is actually less uplifting - the author suggests that our economic turmoil has recently, and will continue to hurt charitable giving in the near future. This is because, not surprisingly, "...philanthropy is tethered directly to the health of the overall economy, and in particular to the health of the upper-middle-class consumer."