Spirit of giving
This compassionate Dallas neighbor ranks among the most caring cities in the U.S.
Give Plano a round of applause. They’ve got the holiday spirit year-round. Personal finance website WalletHub puts Plano at No. 14 in a new ranking of the 20 most caring cities in the country.
Even more impressive: Plano is the only Texas city in the top 20. By comparison, two cities each in Arizona, California, Colorado, Minnesota, Nebraska, and Virginia made that cut. WalletHub released the list December 16.
Plano ranks sixth in WalletHub’s “caring for the vulnerable” category, ninth in the “caring for the community” category, and 77th in the “caring in the workplace” category.
It’s hard to pin down precisely how charitable Plano is, at least from a dollar standpoint.
Throughout Dallas-Fort Worth, donors affiliated with Fidelity Charitable, the country’s largest donor-advised fund, gave nearly $100 million in 2018. The most popular nonprofits supported by those donors were North Texas Public Broadcasting, the North Texas Food Bank, the SPCA of Texas, the Tarrant Area Food Bank, and Southern Methodist University. Meanwhile, the Communities Foundation of Texas’ North Texas Giving Day raised more than $50 million for nearly 3,000 nonprofits this year.
In a release about this year’s North Texas Giving Day, Dave Scullin, president and CEO of the Communities Foundation of Texas, praises DFW as “one of the most generous and charitable” places in the world. A search of the North Texas Giving Day website shows a number of Plano charities participated this year, including the Plano Symphony Orchestra, Plano Art Association, and Plano ISD Education Foundation.
To determine the most generous places, WalletHub compared the 100 largest U.S. cities across 39 key indicators of a “compassionate spirit.” These indicators included number of volunteer hours per capita and share of income donated to charity.
No other Texas city came close to Plano’s generosity. Irving holds down the No. 43 spot, followed by:
- Austin — No. 51
- Arlington — No. 61
- Garland — No. 65
- Fort Worth — No. 69
- El Paso — No. 77
- San Antonio — No. 79
- Dallas — No. 81
- Lubbock — No. 84
- Corpus Christi — No. 96
- Houston — No. 97
- Laredo — No. 98
In 2018, Americans donated an estimated $427.7 billion to U.S. charities, according to the Giving USA Foundation. That’s a key indicator of Americans’ generosity, although it’s hardly the only one.
As measured by financial and non-financial generosity, here are WalletHub’s list of the 20 most caring cities in the U.S.:
- Virginia Beach, Virginia
- Madison, Wisconsin
- Pittsburgh
- Lincoln, Nebraska
- Minneapolis
- St. Paul, Minnesota
- Fremont, California
- Chesapeake, Virginia
- Boston
- Scottsdale, Arizona
- Aurora, Colorado
- New York City
- Denver
- Plano
- Gilbert, Arizona
- Jersey City, New Jersey
- Irvine, California
- Washington, D.C.
- Seattle
- Omaha, Nebraska
