NewTithing reviewed data on the country’s 400 wealthiest tax filers—who gave $20.2 billion to charity between 1997 and 2000—and claims that by harnessing tax-advantaged giving approaches and other techniques, they could have given an additional $19 billion.

The report does not address crucial factors behind our decisions regarding our charitable giving. Among these factors are the gneral decline in confidence in charities since 2001, competing demands for capital and investment opportunities, and the effects of the efforts to make charities more efficient. (See “Rebuilding Giving,” page 30.) It merely examines affluent American’s financial capacity.

“In the four-year period from 1997 to 2000, average salaries for the 400 wealthiest U.S. tax filers more than doubled to approximately $30 million a year,” says Tim Stone, NewTithing Group’s president and executive director.

“Average assets for such filers, not even counting the value of their personal homes and possessions, nearly doubled to over half a billion dollars each. Given such extraordinary wealth accumulation, we estimate that in aggregate over four years, the top 400 U.S. filers could have donated an additional $19 billion to improving communities, health, medical research, education, social services, whatever causes they wanted to help, and still be in very solid financial shape, in fact, wealthy beyond most people’s wildest dreams.” He adds, however, “The top 400 U.S. filers donated an impressive 7 percent of all individuals donations made in 2000, the year for which we have the latest available data.”

These taxpayers donated $2.4 billion in 1997, or 2.4 percent of all individual giving that year, according to the report. However, NewTithing claims they could have donated three times that amount without affecting their lifestyle. In 2000, the top 400 filers contributed $10.1 billion, 7 percent of all individual giving that year, but they could have given $4 billion more, the report claims.

Many donors fail to take advantage of the best tax breaks for giving, the report also says.

If all taxpayers with $1 million or more in income had replaced their average cash donations of $52,000 with donations of long-term appreciated assets, the group would have avoided a combined $693.5 million in capital gains taxes, or an average of $2,893 for each filer, NewTithing claims. When those filers were combined with taxpayers with an AGI of $100,000 or more, the group paid $2.7 billion in avoidable capital gains taxes, according to the report.

NewTithing advocates an approach to philanthropy that not only includes income, but also investment assets, the fluctuation in the values of those assets, anticipated expenditures, and tax savings from charitable gifts.

Along with the report, NewTithing launched PrudentPal, an online charitable giving planner. PrudentPal asks a series of questions about earnings, assets and goals to guide an individual in deciding how to contribute to charity most effectively. The report and PrudentPal can be found at www.newtithing.org.