Maryland Named Third Most Charitable State in U.S.

Despite the many hardships and challenges that 2020 has brought, the state of Maryland has risen above to be one of the most giving states in the U.S.

According to WalletHub’s newly released Most Charitable States for 2021 list, Maryland is shown to be the third most generous state in the country. Utah was first and Minnesota placed second.

WalletHub is the self-proclaimed first-ever website to offer free artificially intelligent financial advice, providing free credit scores and full credit reports.

According to WalletHub, U.S. donors gave more than $449 billion to charity in 2019, with 69% of the funds coming directly from individuals, according to the National Philanthropic Trust.

In addition to being very generous financially, Americans are shown to be giving with their time as well. The article reports that “over 77 million people volunteer in the U.S., serving a combined total of 6.9 billion hours per year, the equivalent of $167 billion of service.”

Some volunteer opportunities this year may have been disrupted by the COVID-19 pandemic, but “donor grantmaking was up 16% in the first four months of 2020 compared to the same period in 2019. Plus, the COVID-19 stimulus will allow Americans to take an above-the-line tax deduction of $300 per person for charitable donations in 2020,” according to the article.

To determine the most philanthropic states, WalletHub compared the 50 states across two key dimensions, “Volunteering & Service” and “Charitable Giving.”

They evaluated those dimensions using 19 key metrics, which were graded on a 100-point scale, with a score of 100 representing the “most charitable.” Those 19 key metrics can be read in the methodology section of the article. The data set ranges from the volunteer rate to the share of income donated to the share of sheltered homeless.

WalletHub then determined each state’s weighted average across all metrics to calculate its overall score and used the resulting scores to rank-order the states.

Maryland ranked fifth for its “Volunteering & Service” rank and sixth in the “Charitable Giving” rank, but the weighted average of the study placed the state in third overall.

About Nicolle Schorchit

Nicolle Schorchit was a senior dual degree student in plant sciences and multiplatform journalism at the University of Maryland during the fall 2020 semester when she interned with Montgomery Community Media.

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