Maui County Residents Among Most Generous Givers in Hawaiʻi, Study Shows

Maui County residents ranked among the most generous counties in the state, just behind Honolulu County residents in their charitable donations for 2021, according to a study by Smart Asset.

The study pulled IRS data from federal, state and local tax returns and accounted for deductible entries, including mortgage interest, mortgage points and mortgage insurance payments.

It concluded that Honolulu County had a charitable county index of 32.41, while Maui County registered at 31.64, Kauaʻi County at 24.83 and Hawaiʻi County at 21.68.

More residents in Honolulu County had charitable donations on their tax returns than any other county in the state (11.12%) including Maui county (10.01%); however, Maui residents who gave, gave more relative to their income (1.38%) than any other county.

Statewide in 2021, 9.13% of Hawaiʻi residents showed charitable donations on their returns. The study also reported that Hawaiʻi residents gave 1.05% of their total income to charities.

Compared to counties nationwide, the state’s biggest givers ranked at #289 (Honolulu County) and #308 (Maui County).

To calculate the Most Charitable Places Index, Smart Asset divided each county’s total charitable donations by its total net income to see the amount of money residents in each county have donated relative to their income.

Next, it measured the total number of individual tax returns that show charitable contributions and divided that by the total number of individual tax returns in each county. This showed the proportion of people in each county who make charitable donations.

Finally, Smart Asset indexed and equally weighted the two factors to yield its Most Charitable Places Index.