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00:00This is a story about giving back, and in particular, the single place in America that does it better than anyone else.
00:07Earlier this year, we brought you the story of the wealthiest spot in the country.
00:11The residents of Teton County, Wyoming, have an average annual income of around a half a million dollars.
00:17They also donate more per person than anyone else.
00:21But then, it's easy to give more when you have more.
00:24So who gives the most as a proportion of how much they make?
00:28That's another story altogether.
00:32It's a chilly autumn morning in western Michigan, and today, like every Sunday, people here are heading to church.
00:43It's a small town. I mean, we have, what, two lights, maybe?
00:47You know, we're not very big. But I do know that they're very giving.
00:51We genuinely do care about the people that are right next door to us.
00:55You know your neighbors. You know the people that your kids go to school with. You see them on a daily basis.
01:01Of all the cities, towns, and communities across the United States, building stands apart when it comes to lending a helping hand.
01:09But to understand why, we have to think about the nature of giving.
01:13Generosity is more than just money. It's being a family. It's being part of the community.
01:18Community is something Pastor Ryan Snyder and his congregation think a lot about, even more so when we told them what we found.
01:29After years of research, Harvard economist Rod Shetty and his team launched the Social Capital Atlas,
01:36a project analyzing tens of billions of data points from Facebook to learn about the social fabric of America.
01:42Among the factors they studied was volunteerism. In this case, the share of people in a given place who are members of a volunteer group.
01:50And there is one town, one single zip code that stands above the rest. You guessed it.
01:57We're just a little tea on town. I mean, we don't, Belding? Are you kidding? We have nothing famous.
02:02I know that Belding has its flaws just like everybody else does.
02:05But one thing I can say about Belding is that Belding is willing to support when support is necessary.
02:11Anytime that there's a need, everybody will always step up, no doubt.
02:16According to the Social Capital Atlas, about 7% of people nationwide are part of a volunteering group.
02:22In Belding, zip code 48809, that figure is 56%.
02:28I was born and raised in Belding. I lived here for a long time, and I'm still in this community.
02:33Community isn't just you being in your house and you happen to live next to others.
02:39Community is that you're willing to help others regardless of your beliefs, regardless of your political stances, regardless of what they look like.
02:49Generosity is an individual act, but it also is an act that responds to the social environment.
02:58Kevin Fitzpatrick is the director of the Community and Family Institute at the University of Arkansas.
03:05Whether it's an individual characteristic or something that our family always did or now it's something that our church does,
03:14I mean, people are brought to generosity through a lot of mechanisms.
03:17Although Belding might have an especially strong community, it's just one remarkable place in a particularly remarkable state.
03:25Take a look at membership and volunteer groups across the country as a whole, and the competition isn't close.
03:32Michigan is in a league of its own.
03:34We asked Michigan native and former Blackstone vice chairman Tony James why that might be.
03:40I was born in Wyandotte, as you point out. Not many people actually know that. No one's heard of it.
03:45But now my real connection is I have a summer home in northern Michigan, and people say,
03:49do you have a house in your Hamptons? Do you have a place in Nantucket?
03:51No, I go to northern Michigan. I love northern Michigan. It's absolutely beautiful.
03:56There aren't many New Yorkers there.
03:58If I told you that of all the states in the Union, Michigan ranked at the top in terms of volunteering, would you be surprised?
04:06I was very surprised, honestly. Having said that, that whole Midwestern Bible Belt area was pretty much the same green color.
04:15So it got me thinking about why.
04:17And I think what distinguishes that part of the country is small towns, not really rural like the American West,
04:26where there's lots of empty space and certainly not urban,
04:29but small towns and towns that have been struggling, I guess, economically for the last 25 or 50 years,
04:37shrinking manufacturing base and so on.
04:39So I think those towns have certain common factors like strong church, strong social institutions,
04:47the 4-H club, the Boy Scouts, the Elks club, the VFW, a lot of engagement with kids' schools.
04:54And so I think the communities know each other.
04:58James retired from Blackstone in 2022 after two decades at the firm.
05:03His deep commitment to philanthropy came not so much from his time in Michigan as from his experience in New York and on Wall Street.
05:11At some point, I realized that the people in finance that I most admired weren't just successful in their careers and ran big companies.
05:18They added community service to it.
05:21And it got to the point where the leaders in our industry,
05:24if they had the capability of making a difference and the financial resources to make a difference and weren't doing anything,
05:30I started to lose respect for them.
05:32So I decided that there's a message there and that I should start leaning into getting involved with philanthropy.
05:40And I think people are inherently generous.
05:43They do give to the church or to the United Way or something.
05:45But until you start leaning in, you don't realize how much impact you can have
05:50and how many opportunities there are to make a difference.
05:53Americans spent about 5 billion hours volunteering in 2023, valued at around $167 billion.
06:01But in the richest country in the world, it comes as no surprise that much of our giving is financial.
06:07The U.S. donated almost $600 billion last year, and New York has the highest total contributions.
06:14Teton County, home of Jackson Hole, generally gives away the highest amount per capita.
06:21But the people who donate the most, as a proportion of their income,
06:25live about halfway in between New York and Wyoming,
06:28in a place that happens to be Professor Fitzpatrick's backyard.
06:32If you look at philanthropy across Northwest Arkansas, we would see that over the last several decades,
06:41as the large philanthropic organizations have responded, so too has the individual.
06:48Here in Benton County, Arkansas, the average annual charitable deduction is about 15 percent of residents' income.
06:56That's well above the figure for Teton County and several times higher than the national average.
07:02So what makes this area so unique?
07:05We asked a local philanthropist.
07:07I moved to Northwest Arkansas in 2002 with a little bit of a life transition
07:12and started working for a small family business for an hourly rate
07:17and worked my way up through that company and ultimately was able to buy it from the founder.
07:23Aaron Marshall ran the firm for eight years before selling it,
07:27starting his own nonprofit,
07:29and building housing for hundreds of homeless residents on a site where they had been living in tents.
07:34He called it New Beginnings.
07:37And although Marshall stepped away from his business to spend more time and money on those around him,
07:43he still says the businesses of Northwest Arkansas could be the secret to the area's generosity.
07:49Three businesses in particular.
07:52There's something special about Northwest Arkansas.
07:55It's a unique place.
07:57We're the home of Walmart, Tyson, J.B. Hunt.
08:00You know, those families with names that almost anyone would recognize have not only set a tone by their business success
08:08and entrepreneurship, but they also set a tone for charitable giving and building the community
08:14and making it better over the last 30 years.
08:17For Marshall, giving goes a long way back.
08:20He donated $2 of the very first $20 he ever earned.
08:24But he also thinks it helps to see firsthand the charity of others
08:28and the way that business success and philanthropy can go hand in hand.
08:34I would say that's inspired a whole other tier of people like me
08:39who were running small businesses in support of some of those larger companies
08:44or the other companies from around the country that support them.
08:48And I think that there's hundreds of people like me who live here
08:53whose names you'll never hear and wouldn't recognize
08:56that are doing work quietly behind the scenes to make Northwest Arkansas
09:02one of the best places to live in our country.
09:04In the context of big giving, there oftentimes is medium and small and tiny giving.
09:13I mean, it's an energy and it's an atmosphere of generosity that gets created.
09:20We have these corporate giants that have done such an amazing job
09:27in responding to the needs of not only the local community,
09:31but the regional and state communities
09:33that it's really inspired a whole generation of givers.
09:41Perhaps the legendary investor and philanthropist Warren Buffett put it best
09:46in his note this month to Berkshire Hathaway shareholders.
09:50In the letter, he described his plans to step away from the firm
09:53and give away over a billion dollars, writing, quote,
09:57When you help someone in any of thousands of ways, you help the world.
10:01Kindness is costless, but also priceless.
10:05Whether you are religious or not,
10:07it's hard to beat the golden rule as a guide to behavior.
10:10And all God's people said, amen.
10:13Back in Michigan, Pastor Snyder agrees.
10:16Love your neighbor as yourself.
10:18It's like just being a brother, just being there for someone,
10:23regardless of whether or not they've been there for you.
10:27You're okay to just jump in and help.
10:30You're okay being there for other people.
10:31What makes America unique in this world is the way private Americans give so generously.
10:39You don't see that anywhere else in the whole world.
10:42And our government doesn't support a lot of these charities the way they do.
10:47Think of the museum world, the British Museum, the Louvre.
10:50They live off government support.
10:52The Metropolitan Museum is 100% supported by private philanthropy and private giving of art.
10:58Nothing from the government.
11:00If we shrink that private philanthropy, I think we'll see it a lot of places in the community.
11:06And I think it would be a terrible thing.
11:07So I think that's a really important pillar of American society and unique.
11:15And we should be grateful for it, not threatening.
11:18Whether it's New York City, Belding, or Bentonville,
11:23there are many different ways of looking at giving and of doing it.
11:27Michigan and Arkansas are exceptional, though hardly unique.
11:30But in both cases, the lessons are clear.
11:34Community matters.
11:36Generosity is contagious.
11:38And giving back can yield unexpected results.
11:41Through your long history of charitable giving, what have you learned?
11:45What about it has changed in your mind from what you thought originally?
11:49The most satisfaction I've had in my life has not been the business success,
11:55the year-over-year growth, or selling for more than I purchased a company for.
12:01It's walking around the hallways and the sidewalks of New Beginnings,
12:09talking to somebody who a year ago was unsheltered in the woods,
12:15didn't know where their next meal was going to come from,
12:17and now they're in a safe environment and they have a plan for permanent housing.
12:22The satisfaction level that comes from giving and investing
12:27when you have the ability to do so for people that don't
12:32is 10 or 100x any other experience of my life.
12:38A remarkable return on investment, not in dollars, but in fulfillment.
12:43Thank you so much.
12:45Generosity pays dividends all its own.
12:47Thank you so much, that friend.
12:49We yours are focusing on,
12:51Même speaking.
12:52I appreciate the answers.
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