Patterns of Giving in COPPS 2001

Abstract

Serious researchers of philanthropy have bemoaned the lack of panel datasets for studying giving behavior. That gap is beginning to be filled with the start of the Center on Philanthropy Panel Study (COPPS). COPPS provides the first comprehensive panel study of giving and volunteering in the U.S., and one of the only such studies worldwide to date. Previous U.S. panels studies of giving have employed tax return data, which are limited to gifts of money and property by (in most years) itemizers and include only the financial and limited demographic data reported on those returns.