Sheryl Sandberg, VP at Google and board member of Google.org, wrote The Charity Gap for today’s Wall Street Journal. She cites several studies on charitable giving in the US, the first commissioned by Google.org and done by the Center on Philanthropy at Indiana University:
[…] 8% of donations provide food, shelter or other basic necessities. At most, an additional 23% is directed to the poor […]
The rest went to education, health-care, arts, religion, etc. She also cites a Bank of America study:
[…] people who earn more than [US] $1 million per year give only 4% of their donations for basic needs and an additional 19% to other programs geared toward the poor.
I don’t know of either study, if you do, please comment with a link or reference.
Bank of America’s Study
I did find a 2006 study, by the Center on Philanthropy and the Bank of America, Study of High Net-Worth Philanthropy, that covered households with incomes over USD 200,000 or assets over 1,000,000. They reported 5.2% (6.5 billion) donated to basic needs.
These donors gave 27.8 billion to religion, i.e. 22%; the rest of the population gave 60% to religious organizations. But, they reverse roles on basic needs, the wealthy gave 5.2% v. 11% for everyone else.
Elsewhere
Todd Cohen covers this in Google finds disturbing charity gap on Inside Philanthropy, with interesting data on overall personal and foundation giving in the US.