PIERCE COUNTY

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One of the many reasons Pierce County is such a great place to live is its’ generosity. From Spring Valley to Diamond Bluff, from Beldenville to Plum City, all across the county kindness and a strong sense of community are easy to find. Local county residents ranked sixth in the state, according to a study published by the website SmartAdvisorMatch. com. Neighbor St. Croix County also appeared on the list, ranking third in Wisconsin. Here is an excerpt where they explain their data gathering process: To find the most generous places, we looked at two factors: how much people donate as a percentage of their net income, and the proportion of people in a given county who made charitable donations.

To determine the amount of money that people donate as a percentage of their income, we first calculated the net income of all people in each county. To do this, we looked at tax return data and accounted for federal, state and local taxes paid. We also accounted for deductible entries, including mortgage interest, mortgage points and mortgage insurance payments. We then divided each county's total charitable donations by its total net income to see how much county residents are donating relative to their income.

Next, we took the total number of tax returns with charitable contributions and divided them by the number of total tax returns for each county. This gave us the proportion of people in each county who make charitable donations. We then indexed and equally weighted the two factors to yield our most charitable places index.

The study was conducted by smartadvisormatch.com