Browsing by Author "Brown, Melissa S."

Now showing 1 - 5 of 5
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    Estimating charitable giving by will bequest for Giving USA
    (11/18/2005) Brown, Melissa S.; Havens, John J.; Rooney, Patrick M.
    In a typical year since 2000, Giving USA has estimated that living individuals contributed 75 percent of total charitable gifts and that estates contributed about 7 or 8 percent, with institutional donors donating the balance. The estimating procedure used for estate contributions relies extensively on amounts claimed by estate tax returns as deductions for charitable contributions. Giving USA supplements the tax return data with an estimate of giving by estates that fall below the tax filing threshold. As the estate tax filing threshold began increasing and tax rates began decreasing in 2001, a number of authors (Joulfaian 2000; Gale & Bakija; Greene and McClelland) predict declining charitable contributions from bequest gifts. With fewer estates tax returns filed, and the possibility that none will be filed after 2010, the impact of the reduced tax rates must be measured using new methods that do not rely so extensively on tax return data. Giving USA has been investigating and continues to investigate alternative methods to estimate charitable bequests that do not rely so heavily on estate tax return data. This paper reports the results of this effort and describes the bequest estimating procedure adopted for use in Giving USA beginning with the 2005 edition. This procedure incorporates survey results showing bequest amounts received at higher educational institutions and estimates charitable bequests made by estates below the federal filing threshold. The paper concludes that to track changes resulting from lowered tax rates and higher filing thresholds adequately, alternative data sources will need to be developed.
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    ESTIMATING CORPORATE CHARITABLE GIVING for Giving USA
    (2003) Brown, Melissa S.; Chin, William S.; Rooney, Patrick M.
    Estimating corporate giving is an important part of the estimation process for Giving USA and is used independently by a variety of practitioners, policy makers, business leaders, and the media. While Giving USA has changed its estimation process over time, it has never previously examined what might be the “best” model for these estimations. We tested hundreds of permutations and combinations of variables and specifications that were used historically and that were suggested to us by scholars and practitioners from around the country. This paper summarizes the problem, the process and the results.
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    An examination of persistence in charitable giving to education through the 2002 economic downturn
    (11/6/2009) Wu, Ke; Brown, Melissa S.
    Using three waves of the Center on Philanthropy Panel Study, a module of the Panel Study of Income Dynamics, fi elded by the Institute for Social Research at the University of Michigan, we examine characteristics of donors who gave to any level of education in each of the years studied (2000, 2002 and 2004). We fi nd that these persistent donors to education are more likely to have higher income (average of US $ 142 603 in 2000) and higher levels of education (bachelor ’ s degree or above) than are less frequent education donors and non-donors to education. There is some support for a positive association between persistent giving to education and the number and age of children in the household. There is strong support for positive association between educational attainment and persistence in giving to education and in giving to other secular causes. Implications for fundraising practice and further research topics are discussed.
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    Giving Following a Crisis: An Historical Analysis
    (1/21/2010) Brown, Melissa S.; Rooney, Patrick M.
    While conventional wisdom in fundraising maintains that donors of all types give in response to need, analysis of contributions from 1939 to 1999, including years of 17 national crises ranging from war, natural disaster, political crisis, and terrorism, shows that economic variables are strongly associated with giving, whereas crisis is seldom a significant factor. Crisis seems to matter in bivariate (giving/crisis) analysis, but not after controlling for economic changes in multivariate analyses. Results are very robust to type of crisis, time period, sources of giving and specification of model.
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    Indexing Giving: Examining State-level Data about Itemized Charitable Deductions Using Known Determinants of Giving
    (11/18/2005) Brown, Melissa S.; Rooney, Patrick M.
    Average itemized charitable deductions by state are widely used as a measure of giving yet grossly misstate “generosity.” Extending a model initially developed by Gittell and Tebaldi (2004), this work finds that when considering state-level measures of economic and social factors determinant of individual giving at the micro-level, six of the 20 states said to be most generous on the popular “generosity index” have average itemized contributions at least 5 percent LOWER than their predicted giving capacity. Nine states in the bottom 20 on the “generosity index” have average itemized giving at or above the predicted levels. Further analysis using household-level survey data from the Center on Philanthropy Panel Study (a part of the Panel Study of Income Dynamics conducted by the University of Michigan) reveals significant differences in total secular and total religious giving by households in different Census regions (analysis is not possible at the state level using this data set). The secular and religious differences in giving largely account for the differing total amounts reported. The paper concludes with an appeal that generosity be evaluated as a percentage of income donated combined with percentage of households that donate in a given region.