It's complicated & kind of orthogonal. I am not trying to paint all religious people with the Pat Robertson-style example that I pointed out as egregious. This isn't an anti-religion post; it's just about the downside of thinking something was destined/planned/ordained just because it happened.

I wasn't accusing you of being anti-religion, just honestly curious :)

Have you considered that charity and donation campaigns are perhaps more necessary in the US due to lack of social safety nets and governmental disaster relief?

Sure, but if it's the widespread belief in a Just World that prevents those safety nets and governmental disaster relief programs, wouldn't it also lead people to not donate?

How to measure the "religiosity" of people?

While I haven't looked at the statistics, I can easily imagine that's the result of religious communities/institutions having better infrastructure/peer structure in place to motivate donations, at least vs "unorganized unreligious" people which rarely organize on a similar scale.

Pretty much all religious institutions are dependent on regular donations coming in, they are organizations build to motivate people to donate and keep those donations coming.

In that regard, it shouldn't really be that surprising that they end up being overrepresented when they use these "powers" to collect donations for a non-religious cause. Could just as well be interpreted as the temporary redirection of a revenue stream that'd otherwise just go to said religious institutions, in the form of the regular donations of their members.

Depending on the methodology of the statistics this could actually be checked for: Do "more religious" people actually donate "more" during times of non-religious crisis? Or do they merely have a bigger overall "donation budget", which they can use for these times, due to their religious donation obligation?

I would say that Basic Income the way Finland is just testing, is much better than random 'it makes me feel good' donations.

To clarify, it's better in the sense of creating better infrastructure/peer structure/social network.

It's also a difference not unlike between tips in America and a fair salary for waitresses in Europe.

Sympathy for a disaster and belief about its causes are different things.

If you think a natural disaster is the result of God's plan (and not e.g. climate change), it is perfectly congruent to both contribute to healing in the form of charity, while also being disinterested in climate change regulation.