The Rules to Give By Index​,​ the world’s first international index of government support for charitable giving, found that the percentage of people donating money to charity is 12 percentage points higher in nations offering tax incentives to individuals (33 per cent) than in those that do not (21 per cent).

This new study – the product of a collaboration between Nexus, McDermott Will & Emery LLP and the Charities Aid Foundation (CAF) – looks at the presence of certain legal, regulatory and tax instruments that help to encourage charitable giving in all 193 nations that are recognized by the UN. As well as producing an index that scores countries by their legal environment for charitable giving, the partners have published a individual country report for every nation which can be found on the Nexus website.

The study compared tax incentives and other aspects of charity law to people’s likelihood to give as measured by the CAF’s World Giving Index, the international index of generosity. It found that the influence of tax incentives on giving does not depend on a country’s level of economic development. In fact, the Rules to give By Index reveals that while the relationship between the presence of incentives for giving and the rate of giving is strong across the board, the effect is actually strongest in low income nations. The proportion of people giving money to charity every month in high income nations that offer tax incentives to individuals is 24 per cent higher (47 per cent) than in those that do not (37 per cent). In low income countries, levels of giving are generally lower but the relationship of incentives to the activeness of donors seems to be dramatic with the proportion of people giving to charity increasing by 40 per cent when incentives are offered (27 per cent) compared to nations where they are not (18 per cent).

Click here to read the full text of Adam Pickering’s blog on the new index.

To download the report and find out about Nexus’s Global Campaign for a Culture of Philanthropy, visit the Nexus Youth Summit website