Forbes Lists 10 Most Compassionate Cities (& We’re Not One of Them — yet) Boo!

We’ll cut to the chase. Here’s the list:

1. Washington, D.C.
2. Nashville
3. Minneapolis
4. Denver
5. Birmingham
6. Salt Lake City
7. Austin
8. Louisville
9. Jacksonville
10. Atlanta

The list was built from :

• the percentage of income given to social causes (The Chronicle of Philanthropy)
  San Antonio, with a median percent of income give at 4.6% ranks as #19 among the 50 largest US cities. Austin gives 4.1% (#32); Houston 5.0% (#13) and Dallas 5.3% (#9)
• numbers of volunteers (Federal Agency for Service and Volunteering)
  25.1% of people in San Antonio are volunteers, making them #34 of the 51 largest cities. Austin reports 31.7% (#9); Dallas 28.9% (#21) and Houston 23.0% (#38)
• number of nonprofits in the community (National Center for Charitable Statistics)
• San Antonio has 1,298 registered non-profits, which works out to 11.34 organizations per 10,000 persons. Austin has 1,616 organization; 24.62 per 10K people. (Looking over the list, all but Louisville, Birmingham & Minneapolis are state capitals, and I suspect capitals have a disproportionate number of non-profits located there. Just sayin’.) Houston has 2,872 (14.44 per 10K) and Dallas has 1,778 (14.40 per 10K)
• and data culled from the cities that have signed the charter.
  This baffles me. Austin does not have an active Charter campaign. Houton, Dallas and (of course!) San Antonio do.

You can read the entire article here.

Now that you’ve seen the article, you’ll note that it’s written by Toyota, not by a Forbes journalist. We have a Toyota plant in San Antonio. And I think we need to talk to them. The next time the list is published — what can we do to get on it?