Starting tomorrow and continuing through Christmas, Americans will kick into charity mode. Typical manifestations include feeding the hungry at homeless shelters, buying winter coats for underprivileged children and writing a big fat check to a recognized charity.

We Americans are good at writing checks and donating online. Individuals donated $199 billion, or 76 percent of the $260 billion contributed to charities in 2005, according to a report from the Center on Philanthropy at Indiana University issued by the Giving USA Foundation.

My math tells me that breaks down to roughly $660 per every living American. Generous for sure -- but not everybody is giving and volunteering at the same rate. There's a good chance the man you see throwing a few bucks into a Salvation Army kettle or the woman passing out presents at a children's Christmas party will be a person of faith.

That's the conclusion of the author of what promises to be a highly controversial book, "Who Really Cares: The Surprising Truth About Compassionate Conservatism."

Arthur C. Brooks, a professor and director of nonprofit studies at Syracuse University's Maxwell School of Citizenship and Public Affairs, concludes that when it comes to giving, religious people are generous, and secular folks are, to be blunt, cheap.

His thesis is based on the examination of 15 sets of data. Brooks reports that in 2000, religious types gave approximately $2,210 per person, compared to $642 per secularist. Even when giving to faith-based institutions is excluded from the total, secularists still lose by $88 a year.

Religious generosity isn't limited to money. Brooks writes that religious people are more likely to volunteer for secular events, to give blood and to return money given them by mistake.

Brooks, an economist, told Ben Gose in this week's edition of The Chronicle of Philanthropy: "There is not one measurably significant way I have ever found in which religious people are not more charitable than nonreligious people."

A Roman Catholic and political independent, Brooks is prepared for a tsunami of criticism expected to come his way from the secular left. The only bias he admitted to Gose was an initial assumption that those who favor big government would be the ones writing the big charity checks.

His assumption was wrong, but I'm not surprised by his findings. I've noticed that among religious people, charity isn't merely a tax deduction. It's part of their everyday lives. Lending a helping hand is just as much a part of their culture as it is an expression of faith. (Significantly, they also teach its virtue to their children. These families don't need those lessons taught via public school-mandated service projects.)

Religion aside, Giving USA Foundation data also suggest we're getting smarter with our charitable gifts. Past scandals at big-name nonprofits such as the United Way and criticism of the American Red Cross' handling -- some would call hoarding -- of money given in response to particular natural disasters have many donors shifting their cash to smaller, local charities that are much closer to the people they serve.

Smart idea.

Giving clubs are also becoming more popular. Generally, a giving club is a loosely affiliated group of people who pool their resources to make one significant contribution to a local charity or nonprofit -- even smarter.

Also emerging is a new breed of philanthropist. Cyberbillionaires such as America Online founder Stephen M. Case, and eBay founders Pierre Omidyar and Jeffrey S. Skoll, think philanthropy can be profitable for the giver. These "philanthropreneurs" have turned their backs on funding old-school foundations in the style of Bill and Melinda Gates.

Instead they have come up with a mix of philanthropic venture capital funds, private business investments, and for-profit startups designed to do good works similar to those of old-line charities, but much more efficiently. To these guys, profit isn't a cuss-word; it's a measure of sustainability.

On this Thanksgiving eve, these exciting philanthropic trends are worth paying attention to. Despite what the popular media would have us believe, the world and the individuals who inhabit it have never been richer. As a result, we're not far from the day when private generosity will overtake public-mandated programs in uplifting our fellow man.

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