I've always heard that that's predominantly religious giving, but never actually looked to see whether that's true til now. It turns out, it is: > Historicall

I've always heard that that's predominantly religious giving, but never actually looked to see whether that's true til now. It turns out, it is: > Historically, Religious groups have received the largest share of charitable donations. This remained true in 2016. With the 2.9% increase in donations this year, 31% of all donations, or $127.37 billion, went to Religious organizations. Much of these contributions can be attributed to people giving to their local place of worship. > In 2016, the majority of charitable dollars went to religion (32%), education (16%), human services (12%), grantmaking foundations (11%), and health (9%). So Americans technically give a lot to charity, but it's mostly to tax-advantaged local religious institutions, who may or may not be doing anything with that; I'm sure some churches do something for their local community to merit that tax advantage, but I'm sure others don't. There's a lot of big buildings out there with crosses on them. Numbers from: https://nonprofitssource.com/online-giving-statistics/ https://nonprofitssource.com/online-giving-statistics/ (it says "online giving" at the top of the page, but the data itself seems to be about all charitable giving.)