A data-driven look at which states give the most — in dollars and in deeds — and what the findings reveal about the changing nature of American generosity.

When most people think about “generous states,” they picture a simple leaderboard of who donates the most money. But that framing has always been incomplete — and in 2026, it’s more misleading than ever.

This year’s Most Generous US States Ranking moves beyond dollar signs to measure what generosity actually looks like across all 50 states: the financial sacrifices people make relative to their income, the hours they spend volunteering through organizations, and the quiet, uncounted acts of neighborly help that hold communities together. The result is a more honest picture of American altruism — and it contains some surprises.

Let’s dig into the key findings.

The Headline: Utah Is Still #1, But the Real Story Is Everywhere Else

Yes, Utah tops the list again. With a giving ratio of 6.61% of adjusted gross income (nearly double the national average), a 46.6% formal volunteer rate, and a 68.2% informal helping rate, the Beehive State remains the gold standard for integrated generosity. The cultural infrastructure of tithing and community service — driven in large part by the state’s significant Latter-day Saint population — creates a flywheel where financial giving and hands-on service reinforce each other.

But the more interesting stories emerge further down the rankings.

Wyoming (#2) exemplifies what researchers are calling the “Small Population Paradox.” In low-density states where government services may be geographically distant, neighborly assistance isn’t a nice-to-have — it’s a survival mechanism. Wyomingites donate nearly 4% of their AGI and contribute an average of 29 volunteer hours annually, with an informal helping rate of 68.0% that rivals Utah’s.

Maryland (#3) leads the nation in the percentage of taxpayers who donate money (over 16%), while Minnesota (#4) ranks third nationally in formal volunteering at 40.3%. These states demonstrate that when economic stability meets strong educational infrastructure, the result is a professionalized yet deeply engaged civic culture.

The Full 2026 State Rankings

The composite score weights financial giving (50%) and service engagement (50%) equally. The Financial Giving Index incorporates each state’s “Giving Ratio” — charitable deductions as a percentage of AGI — and the share of residents who itemize charitable deductions. The Service Index draws on formal volunteer rates and informal helping rates as reported by AmeriCorps and the U.S. Census Bureau.

Five Key Findings That Challenge Conventional Wisdom

1. The People Who Give the Most (Relative to Income) Are the Ones Who Can Least Afford It

This is the finding that should stop every nonprofit fundraiser in their tracks. Households earning under $50,000 contribute approximately 14.2% of their income to charitable causes. Households earning between $500,000 and $2 million? Just 3.9%.

This U-shaped curve of generosity — where the greatest financial sacrifice happens at the economic margins — has profound implications for how the sector talks about donors. The language of “major gifts” and “high-net-worth individuals” obscures the reality that, proportionally, the most generous Americans are the ones stretching every dollar.

For nonprofits, this means rethinking stewardship. Your $25/month recurring donor may be making a greater sacrifice than your $10,000 gala attendee. Are you treating them that way?

2. The Biggest Growth in Generosity Isn’t Happening Through Organizations — It’s Happening Between Neighbors

Here’s the number that should reshape how we think about civic health: more than 54% of Americans — roughly 137.5 million people — engaged in informal acts of helping in the past year. That’s up from 51% in the 2017-2021 period, representing 12.9 million new informal helpers.

We’re talking about watching a neighbor’s kids, running errands for elderly community members, lending tools, helping someone move. These acts don’t show up in any nonprofit’s annual report or any foundation’s impact dashboard. But they represent an enormous and growing reservoir of community resilience.

This “resurgence of the neighbor” is particularly pronounced among Millennials and Gen Z, who increasingly favor direct, unmediated impact over institutional participation. For nonprofits, this trend is both an opportunity and a warning: the impulse to help is stronger than ever, but it’s increasingly bypassing formal organizations entirely.

3. Some States Are “Capital-Rich, Time-Poor” — and Vice Versa

The most fascinating tensions in the data emerge when financial generosity and service engagement diverge sharply.

New York is the poster child for “Capital-Rich, Time-Poor.” The state ranks 2nd in total charitable giving — thanks to its massive concentration of wealth and corporate philanthropy — but falls to 40th in volunteering and service. The culprit? Time poverty. In high-cost urban environments, long working hours leave little surplus time for hands-on service. New Yorkers effectively “buy” their impact through donations to professionally staffed nonprofits.

Vermont tells the opposite story. The state ranks 2nd in the nation for formal volunteering (40.5%) and 1st in nonprofit organizations per capita, but only 25th in financial giving. As one of the most secular states in the country — only 17% attend church weekly — Vermont’s generosity is driven by a non-religious civic ethic. Residents compensate for limited financial capital with extraordinary sweat equity.

Neither model is inherently better. But for nonprofits operating in these different environments,

How We Measured Generosity: The “Wallet” and “Work” Framework

Most generosity rankings measure only one thing: money. That’s a problem. A state where residents write large checks but never show up for their neighbors tells a fundamentally different story than a state where people give modestly but volunteer relentlessly. To capture the full picture, the 2026 Total Civic Generosity Report scores each state across two equally weighted dimensions: Wallet (financial giving) and Work (service and community engagement).

The Wallet Score (50% of Total Score)

The Wallet Score measures the financial sacrifices residents make relative to their means. It comprises two components:

• Giving Ratio — Charitable deductions as a percentage of Adjusted Gross Income (AGI), drawn from IRS Statistics of Income (SOI) data. This is the single most important financial metric in the report because it levels the playing field. A state where middle-income families donate 4% of their income scores higher than a state where concentrated wealth produces large absolute totals but a lower percentage of AGI. In short: it measures how much it costs residents to give, not just how much they give.
• Itemization Rate — The percentage of tax filers in each state who itemize charitable deductions. This serves as a proxy for the breadth of formal financial giving. A high itemization rate suggests that charitable giving is distributed across a wide base of residents, not concentrated among a small number of ultra-wealthy donors. (Note: the passage of the One Big Beautiful Bill Act in 2025, which raised the SALT deduction cap to $40,000, is projected to increase the national itemization rate from 10% to approximately 14% — a shift that will meaningfully affect this metric in future years.)

The Work Score (50% of Total Score)

The Work Score measures the time, labor, and human connection residents invest in their communities. It comprises two components:

• Formal Volunteer Rate — The percentage of state residents who volunteered through or on behalf of an organization in the past year, as reported by AmeriCorps and the U.S. Census Bureau’s Current Population Survey (CPS) Volunteer Supplement. This captures structured service: tutoring at a school, serving meals at a food bank, coaching a youth sports team, sitting on a nonprofit board.
• Informal Helping Rate — The percentage of state residents who engaged in unstructured, neighborly acts of assistance in the past year, also drawn from AmeriCorps and Census data. This includes watching a neighbor’s children, running errands for someone who is elderly or ill, helping someone with home repairs, or lending household goods. This metric was added to the framework specifically because informal helping represents a massive and growing share of American civic life — over 137.5 million people in 2024 — that traditional generosity rankings completely ignore.

Why 50/50?

Weighting Wallet and Work equally is a deliberate methodological choice. It reflects the position that a dollar donated and an hour served are fundamentally different expressions of the same civic impulse, and that neither should be privileged over the other. A state that ranks high on both dimensions — like Utah (#1) or Minnesota (#4) — demonstrates integrated generosity, where financial contribution and personal service reinforce each other. A state that ranks high on one but low on the other — like New York (2nd in Wallet, 40th in Work) or Vermont (25th in Wallet, 2nd in Work) — reveals a lopsided civic profile that the composite score is specifically designed to surface.

Data Sources

This research report utilizes data from the following authoritative sources:

• IRS Statistics of Income (SOI): Tax Years 2022 and 2023 state-level data (Historical Table 2), providing the basis for the Giving Ratio and Itemization metrics.   
• AmeriCorps & U.S. Census Bureau: “Volunteering and Civic Life in America” research findings for 2021 and 2023, specifically the Civic Engagement and Volunteering (CEV) Supplement.   
• Giving USA Foundation: 2025 Annual Report on Philanthropy (researched by the Indiana University Lilly Family School of Philanthropy), providing 2024 total giving and subsector data.   
• U.S. Census Bureau Current Population Survey (CPS): 2024 and 2025 reports on income, poverty, and household characteristics.   
• One Big Beautiful Bill Act (OBBBA) Legislative Briefings: 2025 and 2026 analyses of federal tax law changes.