Donors of the future
Not only the people from the Western countries are helping the poor. Today, the number of donors from the emerging economies and even the developing countries has been increasing faster than that from the traditional sources of charity.
Almost a year has passed since the devastating earthquake in Haiti. The private donations for the Carribbean country have reached 3.4 billion dollars by now. After Katrina in 2005 the donations reached 4.6 billion, and after the floods in Pakistan, 1.6 billion.
The rapid economic growth of some countries like China and India in the years to follow could lead to a drastic change in the ratio of donations on a global scale. The group of sponsors is constantly expanding and diversifying. It is also possible that the new philanthropists will generally alter the destination of the donated funds, because there is a rising trend that they are getting more involved with problems in their own countries.
The international United Way Worldwide network which is the biggest charity organisation in the world in terms of annual funds, has reported that as early as 2008 nearly half of the donations made by non-US donors had come from developing countries. It has been calculated that in terms of per cent from the BNP, the biggest share of charity after the Haiti disaster were not in the most developed countries, but in places like Guyana and Ghana. As the World Giving Index for 2010 shows, the willingness to do charity depends much more on the perception of satisfaction with one's quality of life (which is a complex term containing a myriad of subjective factors along with the objective ones), rather than the mere economic dimensions and results of a country, which may not necessarily correlate to the former.
Still, the US remains a world leader in the global structure of charity, and the funds it generates amount to 2.2% of its GDP, which is remarkable.
The question whether "throwing money at problems" is good or not has been discussed here before, but you are welcome to touch on that aspect of the issue if you like for the purposes of discussion. Still, this was mostly meant to be an informative piece about the current changes occurring in the structure of global charity, and though it lacked a clearly stated opinion (which could be easily deduced anyway) I hope it will be allowed to stay.
Almost a year has passed since the devastating earthquake in Haiti. The private donations for the Carribbean country have reached 3.4 billion dollars by now. After Katrina in 2005 the donations reached 4.6 billion, and after the floods in Pakistan, 1.6 billion.
The rapid economic growth of some countries like China and India in the years to follow could lead to a drastic change in the ratio of donations on a global scale. The group of sponsors is constantly expanding and diversifying. It is also possible that the new philanthropists will generally alter the destination of the donated funds, because there is a rising trend that they are getting more involved with problems in their own countries.
The international United Way Worldwide network which is the biggest charity organisation in the world in terms of annual funds, has reported that as early as 2008 nearly half of the donations made by non-US donors had come from developing countries. It has been calculated that in terms of per cent from the BNP, the biggest share of charity after the Haiti disaster were not in the most developed countries, but in places like Guyana and Ghana. As the World Giving Index for 2010 shows, the willingness to do charity depends much more on the perception of satisfaction with one's quality of life (which is a complex term containing a myriad of subjective factors along with the objective ones), rather than the mere economic dimensions and results of a country, which may not necessarily correlate to the former.
Still, the US remains a world leader in the global structure of charity, and the funds it generates amount to 2.2% of its GDP, which is remarkable.
The question whether "throwing money at problems" is good or not has been discussed here before, but you are welcome to touch on that aspect of the issue if you like for the purposes of discussion. Still, this was mostly meant to be an informative piece about the current changes occurring in the structure of global charity, and though it lacked a clearly stated opinion (which could be easily deduced anyway) I hope it will be allowed to stay.