The 2016 U.S. Trust ® Study of High Net Worth Philanthropy

The 2016 U.S. Trust® Study of High Net Worth Philanthropy reveals consistent trends in the giving and volunteering behaviors of high net worth individuals and households from previous years, as well as departures from past trends. Most (91.0 percent) high net worth households gave to charity in 2015, and nearly half (49.7 percent) of high net worth individuals volunteered their time. On average, high net worth households gave $25,509 to charity in 2015. By comparison, households in the general population gave$2,124 in 2015

The 2016 Planned Giving Study

Charitable bequests and other planned gifts have historically played a significant role in the funding of higher education institutions. Prominent institutions such as Harvard University, Johns Hopkins University, and the Julliard School have been established as a direct result of bequests, and these gifts continue to have a profound impact today. The field of planned giving has become more sophisticated over time. However, the complexity of various planned giving vehicles and the comparatively long time period required for planned gifts to be formalized make it difficult for researchers to systematically track and examine planned giving behavior. Existing studies, therefore, heavily rely on self-reported survey data or tax returns. This study is one of the first efforts that seek to understand the changing landscape of planned giving and to explore donor life-cycle trajectories at higher education institutions. This whitepaper is the first in what is hoped to be a series of reports based upon data on planned gifts and donors in the field of higher education. The whitepaper discusses findings from five case-study universities located across the U.S. As the study expands the sample to include more universities and colleges in the next phase, this report series will offer richer data and insights into more underexplored, yet important, questions in planned giving

What WorX: Measuring the impact of faith-based service and social justice programs on Catholic youth

The Center for FaithJustice (CFJ) offers innovative programs that engage youth in faith, service, and social justice. With the Indiana University Lilly Family School of Philanthropy at IUPUI, they developed a survey to evaluate their programs and measure their longitudinal impact on alumni in those three focus areas. This report will offer related insights on youth engagement and suggest how CFJ’s programs relate to larger trends of youth disaffiliation within the Catholic Church. This study examines survey results from alumni and parents of alumni of CFJ’s youth programs, which are collectively called the “WorX” programs. These include curricula for middle school students (ServiceworX), high school students (JusticeworX, New Jersey Service Project/NJSP, MercyworX, and CommunityworX), young adults (LeaderworX), and adults (FaithJustice Fellows and adult volunteers). The results of this study focused on CFJ’s three core areas of interest: faith, service, and social justice

Coronal Heating as Determined by the Solar Flare Frequency Distribution Obtained by Aggregating Case Studies

Flare frequency distributions represent a key approach to addressing one of the largest problems in solar and stellar physics: determining the mechanism that counter-intuitively heats coronae to temperatures that are orders of magnitude hotter than the corresponding photospheres. It is widely accepted that the magnetic field is responsible for the heating, but there are two competing mechanisms that could explain it: nanoflares or Alfv\'en waves. To date, neither can be directly observed. Nanoflares are, by definition, extremely small, but their aggregate energy release could represent a substantial heating mechanism, presuming they are sufficiently abundant. One way to test this presumption is via the flare frequency distribution, which describes how often flares of various energies occur. If the slope of the power law fitting the flare frequency distribution is above a critical threshold, $\alpha=2$ as established in prior literature, then there should be a sufficient abundance of nanoflares to explain coronal heating. We performed $>$600 case studies of solar flares, made possible by an unprecedented number of data analysts via three semesters of an undergraduate physics laboratory course. This allowed us to include two crucial, but nontrivial, analysis methods: pre-flare baseline subtraction and computation of the flare energy, which requires determining flare start and stop times. We aggregated the results of these analyses into a statistical study to determine that $\alpha = 1.63 \pm 0.03$. This is below the critical threshold, suggesting that Alfv\'en waves are an important driver of coronal heating.Comment: 1,002 authors, 14 pages, 4 figures, 3 tables, published by The Astrophysical Journal on 2023-05-09, volume 948, page 7