It's never truer than when I visit the US, as I did last week. George Bernard Shaw said that Britain and the US were "two nations divided by a common language" and it's just as true of the language of fundraising. Where we say "charity", they say "non-profit". Where we encourage "giving", they are all about "philanthropy". They give "tax-effectively", but it's the donor who gets the tax break, not like here where it is the charity.

In the States, giving is a sport for the wealthy and a badge of success. Here, generally, giving is something that we all do a bit of. For example I and the majority of the few thousand people at the Falkirk Stadium every home game I go to chuck loose change into the bucket of whatever charity is collecting. By contrast, I was at a baseball game in Memphis where raffle tickets priced $500 were being sold outside the hospitality boxes. Admittedly the top prize was a house and a car, but it did suggest to me that of the 50,000 people or so inside the stadium, the charity was only interested in the top few hundred of them.

I think they are missing a trick. True, the US always ranks highly on those annual lists of the "most generous countries", but if you take away wealthy philanthropists, their giving per head is going to drop significantly. In fact if you took away the Gates Foundation, that in itself would drop them a couple of ranks. Compared to European countries, even compared to Canada, the average everyday American doesn't really give to charity. It's not his fault he isn't really asked. I think there is much that American fundraisers can learn from us about how to ask a lot of people, for a regular small amount.

I lived in the States for the best part of 2 years and in that time I was never asked to give. No-one called me, knocked my door, stopped me in the street, asked me to an event or wrote to me with an appeal. They excel at getting major gifts from wealthy individuals, but when it comes to anyone else, it's as if they don't know even the basic principles of donor development. Which is strange because if there is anywhere that a giving culture should exist, it is the USA. Statistics on world giving show that where there is a large level of state involvement in the economy (e.g. Scandinavia or China) charitable giving is lower. These countries believe that social welfare is the responsibility of the state. The average American, good old laissez-faire capitalists that they are, wouldn't pass responsibility for anything to their government. Add in the aforementioned tax breaks, high levels of disposable income and a welfare system that creates real levels of need all the ingredients are there to create a powerful giving culture throughout their society. Perhaps we need to send them some Scottish fundraisers to show them how it's done! Anyone for a field trip to Miami?