Food banks and charities are confident that donations will stay up despite the gloomy economy.

In fact, a national survey released by World Vision indicates that this Christmas could be better than usual for charitable organizations.

The Center on Philanthropy at Indiana University says the reason is that historically, charitable giving is recession-proof. Contributions to American charities have increased during 39 of the past 40 years in today's dollars.

A spokeswoman for the center says between 69 and 72% of people give routinely.

In Seattle, employees at Boeing have tripled their cash donations to Northwest Harvest, which runs Washington state's biggest food bank. A spokeswoman for the group says companies are calling to say they're skipping holiday parties this year to buy food for the hungry instead.