Unfortunately, this problem persists. It’s made worse by inexperienced editors (when there are editors) who tell a reporter that they must be wrong because everyone else is saying something different. The problem is frequently that everyone else is simply quoting each other.

Reporters are under tremdous pressure to produce a lot of work in a very short time for remarkably little money. It’s no wonder that they cut corners. What’s worse is that so many of them don’t know any better.

Wayne Rash
Editor-in-Chief
FierceMobileIT
wrash@fiercemarkets.com

Could you clarify this point – “Georgia’s public mental health system provides services to only 21 percent of adults who live with mental illnesses” – what is included in that? Does it mean that 79 percent of adults have to get services from nonprofits?

It would make a more compelling statistic if you could find out an estimate from NAMI of how many mentally ill people in Georgia get no services at all. But if they don’t have an estimate, simply being able to say clearly how many the state serves would be a good number.

Per capita spending on mental health sounds paltry, although in a vacuum I don’t know how much that number helps. You could say that while almost 5 percent of the state’s population live with serious mental illness, the state spent 1.7 percent of its budget on direct services for them (I should think there must be more current figures on that?).

On this question: “According to 2010 NCCS figures, charitable giving in Athens-Clarke County accounts for $55,971 worth of itemized contributions reported, out of the total $2,134,147 adjusted gross income reported (note: there’s got to be a better way to say this, right?).”

First – those figures are reported in thousands of dollars, so you need to add some zeros in there . Also, just want to check – is 2010 the year that the tax returns were filed?

I looked at some charitable giving NCCS data I’d pulled into a spreadsheet; this was for 2006, as reported by the IRS. The figures are similar to what you looked at.

There were about 45,000 returns filed in Clarke County, and roughly one-third of them itemized their deductions. The total AGI for ALL returns was about $2 billion (avg. roughly $47,000 per return, which sounds about right; national average was about $57K).

The total AGI for those in Clarke County who itemized was $1.47 billion, an average of about $98,000 (which is exactly the average for Georgia).

Of those who itemized, most (83 percent) reported charitable contributions; and of those who reported contributions, they claim to have given $61 million, which is an average of about $4,927. That’s somewhat higher than the state average of $4,621, significantly higher than the national average of $4,109.

So you could say that Clarke County residents donated more than $61 million to charity. Obviously the total would be much higher, since $61 million doesn’t include the contributions of those who do not itemize. (You could make an estimate about how much those people gave, but that’s another post!)

Then the question is, where did that $61 million go? Well, clearly, not to local mental health services. You can’t know how much was given by local people to local organizations; but you can look at how the total revenue pie is divided among types of nonprofits in your area.