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fewer taxpayers itemizing their tax deductions. Even with this change, annual reports from the Internal Revenue Service remain a reliable, consistent source of data for tracking local and state giving trends.

Tax exemption filings are particularly important to monitor because nationally nearly 80% of charitable donations come from individual donors, with corporations (5%) and other sources of donations lagging far behind, according to Giving USA: The Annual Report on Philanthropy for the Year 2019 (2020), Chicago: Giving USA Foundation.

The FNA study shows that Broward’s annual donations peaked in 2017 at nearly $1.5 billion. That one-year spike in reported donations occurred in many places across the country as taxpayers sought to make the most of charitable tax benefits before the standard deduction for tax filers nearly doubled in 2018, due to the changes in federal law.

TOTAL CONTRIBUTIONS PER YEAR IN BROWARD COUNTY, IN MILLIONS

$1,500

$1,477.5

$1,125

$750 $898.1 $961.4 $944.2 $1,016.8 $1,104.8 $1,126.2

$1,077.3

$375

$ Millions

2011 2012 2013 2014 2015 2016 2017 2018