A sliver of the country funds the rest

Cumulative share of all individual donor dollars (vertical) against cumulative share of adults (horizontal), counties ordered from highest giving-per-adult to lowest. The straight diagonal is what perfect equality would look like.

Takeaway: the curve leaps almost to the ceiling while still near the left edge — a small share of adults accounts for most of the money.

Counties sorted by donor dollars per voting-age adult, descending. Source: Stanford DIME v4.0 (individual donors’ career real-2024 dollars by most-recent county) × county adult population.

The donor archipelago

Donor dollars per voting-age adult, by county (log scale). Darker = more money per adult; the palest counties are donor deserts.

Career real-2024 donor dollars summed by most-recent county, divided by 2024 voting-age population; log color scale. Alaska excluded. Source: DIME v4.0 × county demographics.

What predicts a county’s giving

Correlation of county demographics with donor dollars per adult (log). Positive = more giving.

Pearson correlations across counties; dollars-per-adult logged to handle the heavy right skew. Source: DIME v4.0 × county demographics.

More diplomas, more dollars

Median donor dollars per adult, by county quartile of college-degree share.

Counties grouped into equal quartiles by adult college-degree share; bars show the within-quartile median of dollars per adult. Source: DIME v4.0 × county demographics.