Americans donated almost $390 billion to charity in 2016, placing number 5 on the list of 140 countries on the 2017 World Giving Index. According to the National Philanthropic Trust, 72 percent of the billions of dollars in funds donated last year came from individuals.
But American do more than reach into their pockets to help others, with nearly 63 million people who volunteer in the U.S. The personal finance website WalletHub has come up with a Charity Calculator which determines the best method of contributing.
Analyst Jill Gonzalez says the calculator can help Americans make more calculated decisions about their contributions.
"People don't necessarily know where to give. They want to make sure that it's legitimate and that proceeds are actually going towards this cause. And they also don't know if it's worthwhile more so to give time or money," said Gonzalez. "So you can actually put in the volunteer hours you plan to do per week. You can actually then see how many meals that gives. Or how many vaccinated children there are, how many refugees receive clean water. All of those things. So it kind of converts time and money, and you can see what's more worthwhile."
Gonzalez says the calculator gets a lot of use this time of year.
"We look at annual income. We look at hours per week. And this is all input by you. So you can change that around however much you want to," said Gonzalez. "We basically can list if you work instead of volunteering, you can donate enough money to one of the following charities. Or you can just volunteer."
The 7.9 billion hours in volunteer time by Americans last year is the equivalent to $184 billion in service.
To use the Charity Calculator: https://wallethub.com/charity-calculator/
