Who Cares

In the world of nonprofit work, there are few things more important than understanding who cares, as the more you know about that, the more effectively you can direct your fund raising work to sustain your organization.

In this book—I’ve posted on this before—by Arthur C. Brooks Who Really Cares: The Surprising Truth About Compassionate Conservatism, is called by James Q. Wilson, one of the most eminent public policy thinkers in the country—who wrote the introduction—that: “It is the best study of charity that I have read, and I think you will find that as well.” (p. xiii)

I have found that to be the case, this is the best book I have ever read on charity.

The author accessed ten major data bases and drew from them informative conclusions about philanthropy that seemed counter-intuitive, until it is fully fleshed out.

One major conclusion is that the conservative donor gives more, a lot more, about 30% more, than his liberal counterpart.

Another is that being charitable will increase your—and the nation’s—income, as Brooks notes:

“Once again, what we find is evidence that GDP and giving are mutually reinforcing: Economic growth pushes up charitable giving, and charitable giving pushes up economic growth. For example, in 2004, $100 in extra income per American drove about $1.47 in charitable giving per person. At the same time, a dollar in charitable giving stimulated more than $19 in income. At the national level, a I percent increase in national giving—about $1.9 billion in 2004—appeared to increase real GDP by about $36 billion.” (p. 148)