O NCE each year in hundreds of American communities citizenry participate in Community Chest campaigns. Analysis of these campaigns can serve both operational and scientific purposes. Any diagnosis of factors affecting outcome of drives should be welcomed by overworked Chest executives as well as by lay leaders. Something may be added also to our meager knowledge of integration by comparing performance of different communities in these campaigns.' procedure of this exploratory investigation is simple, for only scattered data bearing upon problem are available.2 Criteria of community achievement in Red Feather campaign were set up, and a few factors presumably determinant of varying levels of performance from city to city were related to these criteria. In all, 181 cities were studied.3 first criterion of success utilized was amount of money raised per household. Since cities vary in population, total Fund4 had to be reduced to some comparatively uniform population basis. To offset differences in age composition and in proportions of persons dwelling in families, it was decided to use Census total of families plus unrelated individuals reporting as denominator.5 This incomereporting unit is hereafter called households. total amount collected for Chest per household varied among 181 cities from about $3 to over $30, with median sum just under $10 (Table 1). Since cities differ in average family income and hence in economic ability to contribute, a second index of performance was selected: ratio of sum raised per household to average family income for given city. Initially Censusreported 1949 median incomes were used in this computation, and typical ratio for 181 cities was about 34, per $100 of median income (or one-third of a cent per dollar of average household's income) with a range among cities from about 12, to something over a dollar. While 1950 Census enumeration of 1949 incomes may be fairly dependable so far as intercity contrasts in levels of incomes are concerned, it appreciably underestimated those levels. Incomes have also increased greatly since 1949. Hence these data were supplemented by average Effective Buying Income of families, 1 Extensive exploration of differences in quality of life has been conducted by Robert C. Angell, The Moral Integration of American Cities, American Journal of Sociology, 57 (July 1951), Part 2; and E. L. Thorndike, Your City (New York: Harcourt, Brace and Co., 1939), and 144 Smaller Cities (New York: Harcourt, Brace and Co., 1940). present study is modeled on an earlier analysis: C. Arnold Anderson and Bryce Ryan, Differential Achievement among Iowa Counties in Civilian War Programs, Rural Sociology, 8 (June 1943), pp. 130-138. 2 availability of a list of cities with sums of money raised in 1952 campaigns was brought to writer's attention by Professor Harold Wetzel, Department of Social Work, University of Kentucky; these data appear in Community, 28 (February 1953), pp. 115-119. 3 It is becoming practice in some cities to include national drives, such as cancer fund, in local Chest campaign; none of cities used in this study included these newer agencies. Cities with less than 10,000 population (essentially cities raising less than $50,000) and cities raising over $1 million were excluded to obtain some homogeneity of city type. 4 It has been impossible to obtain sums raised in cities with separate Jewish and/or Catholic campaigns. It is doubtful that this omission seriously affects results in view of erratic scatter of cities in relation to factors used in this analysis. 6 Reported in State Tables 37 in U. S. Bureau of Census, U. S. Census of Population: 1950. Vol. II, Characteristics of Popilation, Parts 2-50 (Washington: U. S. Government Printing Office, 1952). Solicitation of funds does not stop at city limits. It was decided to use the when this was given by Census. An area corresponds to densely settled area that embraces a legal city; it is also core of a metropolitan area. If Census did not report for an urbanized but did for a standard metropolitan area, latter was chosen. In a few cases where neither unit was designated for a given city, number of households in urban place was denominator.