Pittsburgh Is the Top City For Giving

It's testament to the collective goodwill within us that even the most turbulent economic conditions cannot send our drive to give offtrack. In spite of one of the worst economic downturns of the past century, Americans will have given some $300 billion to charitable organizations over the course of this year according to a recent press release from Charity Navigator.

For those of you keen to do the math, that's approximately $1,000 of per capita generosity.

And in precisely the same way that not every one is giving an equal $1,000 amount, the differences in the levels of charitable donation also vary by geographic location. Who comes out on top for kindness in 2010? The findings by Charity Navigator may come as a surprise.

Well, you've already read the headline, and you've seen the accompanying picture, and perhaps you saw Tonic's Live Blog piece earlier that gave mention of the findings, so perhaps the answer, which is Pittsburgh, isn't all that surprising at this point. But we'd maintain that it is an interesting if not so much a surprising result.

Long known as a center of activity for steel manufacturing, Pittsburgh had seem some challenging days before more recent revitalization and resurgence by way of vitality in such sectors as arts, education, healthcare and technology. Having been in recent years named by several sources as one of America's most livable cities, Charity Navigator finds it to be among our most generous to boot.

Not a newcomer to the list of top five cities for citizens' donations to charity, Pittsburgh climbs from fourth place last year to the top spot in 2010. Rounding out the remaining list of what Charity Navigator calls the five most "charity-consciousness" cities are Houston, Dallas, San Francisco and Kansas City.

The organization's press release describes the methodology, which does understandably make certain shortcuts and assumptions, in coming up with their ranking. Among the findings, the group notes that such factors as cost of living, market maturity, and propensity for a region to more strongly identify with particular causes have pronounced impact on the results.

The exercise in gathering and reviewing the data turned up some additional points of interest as the press release explains. According to Charity Navigator, San Francisco is home to the fastest rate of growth among charities. Seattle's charities do the best job of getting more donations in exchange for their administrative and overhead expenditures. And Cincinnati's charities are most likely among major US cities to have enacted clear privacy policies that keep a tight hold on donors' personal information.

Photo by Dr. Cash via Wikimedia Commons.