Via the Chronicle's Give and Take blog, here's a comment from Charity Navigator's Trent Stamp:

Trent Stamp. president of Charity Navigator, uses the philanthropic efforts surrounding Hurricane Katrina to point out just how much money Americans throw at major nonprofit institutions — and how little they give to support causes like the Katrina rebuilding effort.

“Harvard’s endowment is now $35-billion. It grew by $6-billion last year alone,” Mr. Stamp writes on Trent Stamp’s Take. “Coincidentally, $6-billion is how much was given by all the charities in the world to Hurricane Katrina relief. This amount, equivalent to what Harvard’s endowment grew in one year, was the largest one-time philanthropic outlay in the history of the world.”