Mass. generous after all, study finds
State ranked 11th in giving to charity
It was almost enough to give Yankee thrift a bad name. Year after year Massachusetts ranked near the bottom in the nation when it came to charitable giving. Only New Hampshire was worse, ranked a granite-hearted last.
But a new study by the Boston Foundation suggests that the region's Scrooge-like image, as measured by the so-called Generosity Index, is undeserved.
''It's a very unflattering idea of Massachusetts," said Paul Grogan, president of the Boston Foundation, one of the city's largest charitable groups. ''It's a very important matter to clear up once and for all."
The foundation's new study paints a very different picture of Yankee frugality. Taking into account the region's high cost of living, and correcting for what it terms are the biases in the Generosity Index against high-income states, the study ranks Massachusetts a respectable 11th in the nation for charitable giving.
The Generosity Index was developed in 1997 by the Catalogue for Philanthropy, a Massachusetts organization dedicated to encouraging charitable giving. Spokesman Martin Cohn said that the Generosity Index never was supposed to be scientific, and that the catalogue's only goal is to get people to talk more about philanthropy, which the organization feels will increase charitable giving.
''We've never purported this to be a scientific study -- it's an index," he said. ''An index by definition is an indication."
But that index has been so widely quoted that many assume it to be some approximation of the truth. The index is the subject of roughly 500 stories nationally when it is released annually; each time, the highly rated Southern states celebrate their generosity, while the press bemoans ''Yankee stinginess" in the North.
Milton J. Little Jr., the new chief executive of the United Way of Massachusetts Bay, said he had heard about Massachusetts's supposed stinginess even before he thought about taking a job here. But since moving here from the New York City area a year and a half ago, he found residents to be very generous.
''There was a piece of me that was nervous," he said. ''But at the same time I knew this United Way had been very successful over the years. I believed we'd be able to find the things that captured the concerns and the generosity of these donors around here."
The Boston Foundation commissioned the Boston College Center on Wealth and Philanthropy to perform the study. Using Generosity Index calculations, the study shows that even if residents increased their giving by 10 times, 1,000 times, or 100,000 times their current amount and all other states stayed the same, Massachusetts would never rank higher than 23d on the index. Likewise, if residents of Mississippi -- the most generous state, according to the index -- stopped giving altogether, the state would not fall below 26, the study found.
Cohn said his organization sought to stimulate discussion in the media by ranking the states. By that measure, Cohn said, the index has worked.
The New York Times called the rankings an example of ''Yankee frugality." The Florida Times-Union put it more bluntly: ''Northern liberals talk about compassion for the less fortunate, Southern conservatives act."
''A lot of times when we give, we give in a vacuum," Cohn said. ''This is just a way to compare one state to another."
But the Boston Foundation study attacked the idea of ranking the states, calling it a justification for chiding people. ''Those who use the scolding model of fund-raising approach donors, implicitly or explicitly, with . . . edicts that are cajoling, guilt-based, admonishing, or demanding," the study's authors, John J. Havens and Paul G. Schervish of Boston College, wrote.
The authors argued that a fairer index would compare states' share of total charitable contributions donated by residents, relative to the share of income earned by those residents, where income is adjusted for taxes and state differences in the cost of living.
The Generosity Index uses residents' adjusted average gross income and itemized charitable donations, both sets of data from the Internal Revenue Service, in its calculations. It ranks both those categories by state, then takes the difference between the two and ranks them. It does not take into account cost of living, critics say, and underestimates contributions of residents of high-income states.
The Boston Foundation ranking system, in contrast, compares the share of total charitable contributions donated by residents of each state to the share of total income earned by those residents. The authors say that removes the bias against high-income states.
Executives at the Museum of Fine Arts said they have seen rankings showing Massachusetts to be stingy, but it does not conform with their experience. The museum has raised $313 million over the last four years; in September, it announced it had received 76 gifts worth more than $1 million. ''It doesn't sound very stingy to me," said Pat Jacoby, the museum's deputy director for external relations.
Sasha Talcott can be reached at stalcott@globe.com. 