San Jose, 2 other Bay Area cities dig deep for charity, study finds

The U.S. routinely ranks among the world’s most charitable countries, experts say. Americans can pat themselves on the back for donating about $292 billion to charity and contributing a jaw-dropping 6.9 billion volunteer hours last year, according to SmartAsset, a personal finance website. Some parts of the country, however, dig a little deeper in the old pockets than others.

To find the exact spots in the U.S. where people give the most to charity, SmartAsset compared 200 metro areas across five metrics that measure charitable donations and volunteerism. Key variables include charitable contributions as a percentage of income, percentage of tax returns with charitable contributions, average charitable contribution as well as the volunteer rate and the hours volunteers spend rolling up their sleeves to help out.

Given the massive wealth generated in Silicon Valley, it should come as no surprise that the San Jose, Sunnyvale and Santa Clara metro region cracked the top 25 cities in the nation. In fact, the three South Bay cities got 19th place in this ranking. More than a third (34.6%) of tax returns in the area showed charitable contributions, the report shows.

“San Jose performs particularly well in three of the five metrics we considered,” says AJ Smith, vice president of financial education at SmartAsset, who oversaw the research. “Out of all 200 metro areas we analyzed, San Jose has the highest average charitable contribution per tax return with charitable contributions, at $26,436. Charitable

contributions also represent a large chunk of the metro area’s total income reported to the IRS, ranking third highest in that metric.”

It should also be noted that no California cities made the top 10 in the list, which is a little surprising given that the Golden State became the world’s fifth largest economy last year, surpassing the United Kingdom.

California’s gross domestic product rose by $127 billion from 2016 to 2017, surpassing $2.7 trillion, according to federal data.

Instead, Utah leads the pack on generosity. The top three metro areas in the study are all in Utah. They all scored highly in four of the five metrics considered.

Oklahoma City, meanwhile, came in dead last in the study.