Wealthiest Donors Gave 9 Percent of Their Income in 2007, Study Finds

* Local charities won by far the biggest share of wealthy people’s dollars. Even among those who had a second residence, organizations in the state where people spent the most time won 62 percent of their dollars.

* People from the Northeast gave the most money to charities, followed by inhabitants of the Great Lakes region. Wealthy people from the Midwest donated the least.

* Donors with master’s and bachelor’s degrees gave the most, while those with doctorates or professional degrees or without college degrees gave the least.

* Wealthy people, like all Americans, volunteered less in 2007 than they did two years earlier. Seventy-percent of affluent individuals lent their time to charities, a 15-percent drop.

* In 2007, nearly half of rich people volunteered on nonprofit boards, the most popular form of volunteering. From 2005 to 2007, providing professional services became far less popular among donors, with just 28.4 percent of people reporting they did such volunteer work in 2007 compared with 79.4 percent in 2005.

* Those who provided free professional services, meanwhile, gave more to charity ($158,194) than did volunteers who performed other kinds of tasks.

* Wealthy donors frequently switch their support from one charity to another. In 2007, 38 percent of rich people stopped supporting one charity, while another 43 percent stopped giving to two or three groups to which they had previously donated.

The complete study, the “2008 Bank of America Study of High-Net-Worth Philanthropy,” is available on the company’s Web site.