When it comes to donating money and time to their favorite causes, Utahns lead the nation with their generosity.
New data released this week by The Urban Institute in Washington, D.C., shows Utahns donate 7.4 percent of their take-home pay annually to churches, charities and other nonprofit organizations, a rate double the national average.
The percentage translates to an average annual donation of more than $5,000 for each itemized tax return filed with the Internal Revenue Service in 2002, according to The Urban Institute.
"We may have a little of that Western frontier mentally still at work in Utah -- the idea we're all in this together and we need to help each other out," said Scott Snow, executive director of the state's Commission on Volunteers.
The donation numbers, though, may be misleading.
Utahns give a lot every year to charities, but that money does not necessarily go to community organizations, said Deborah Bayle-Nielsen, executive director of the United Way of Salt Lake.
"A big percentage of the donations Utahns make goes to their churches," Bayle-Nielsen said, noting the state is well below the national average in terms of the monetary donations its residents make to nonreligious organizations. "From that perspective, we fall to about 48th in the country."
A majority of Utahns are members of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saint, which encourages tithing, the giving of 10 percent of one's gross income.
However, Bayle-Nielsen noted a flip side to large church donations. Utah also leads the nation in the percentage of its residents who donate their time to charitable causes, she said.
Salt Lake attorney Nate Alder has volunteered once a month for the past eight years to deliver a parcel from the Utah Food Bank to a homebound Utahn.
"It is fascinating just to go down there [to the Food Bank] and see their operations," he said. "There are people there who do a lot more than me."
A study released in September by the Points of Light Foundation and Indiana University ranked Utah No. 1 in the nation in the percentage of its adult residents who do volunteer work.
The researchers found that last year, nearly 50 percent of Utahns 16 and older performed unpaid work for an organization. That percentage was 2 percent higher than in 2002 and more than 5 percent higher than second-place Nebraska with less than 44 percent.
The U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics estimates that adults who donate their time to organizations spend an average of 52 hours a year in voluntary service. The number appears slightly higher in Utah.
In January 2003, Brigham Young University completed a study for the Commission on Volunteers in which it interviewed a random sample of just more than 400 Utahns older than 16 and 81 percent said they volunteered a minimum of five hours a month, Snow said.
The Independent Sector, whose membership includes nonprofit and philanthropic organizations nationwide, estimates the value of a volunteer hour is $17.19.