As Mark Twain famously said, “Reports of my death are greatly exaggerated.”
The same could be said of the decline in giving to nonprofits. Reversing a three-year trend of declines, 2024 was the biggest year ever, according to Giving USA 2025. Total giving grew 6.3% in current dollars, a new high by that measure, to an estimated $592.5 billion. In current dollars, all subsectors saw giving increases.
I feel your time is too valuable to repeat the facts and figures that are all over the news and easily accessible, so let me provide some contrast.
This Time Last Year
Last year (2024 report, 2023 data), this was the situation:
- Giving dropped while the economy flourished.
- Individual giving dropped to a near all-time low of 1.9% of disposable income.
- The number of donors, from big to small, dropped 3.4%
This decline happened when:
- The stock market, which is highly correlated to philanthropic giving, reached all-time highs.
- GDP was up 6.5%.
- Personal income was up 4.2%.
- Unemployment was at historic lows.
- Corporate profits were up 1.5%.
Hmmm, while inflation was often offered as the easy scapegoat, and people did feel like they had less money to spend, it wasn’t the actual reason. Inflation actually came down in 2023, dropping to 4.1% from 8% in 2022. Although giving in nominal dollars was up, it didn’t keep pace with inflation.
Giving USA, the good folks who publish the annual Giving USA report, also offered this observation in one of their versions of the results, to quote:
What if we—the inspirers of philanthropy—had spent more time building authentic relationships with our donors and making the case for their gifts? Simply put, in 2023, we didn’t do enough to convince donors to shift their spending away from consumer goods and services and towards philanthropic giving.
This Time This Year
This year (2025 report, 2024 data), this is the sentiment, as quoted from various press releases from the report publishers:
- A strong stock market and GDP growth helped fuel the increase in total giving, which was led by individual and corporate giving.
- Total giving in 2024 reached record levels in current dollars and grew at a rate consistent with long-term trends—clear evidence of Americans’ enduring generosity and the value they place on nonprofit work.
- Even as many organizations face ongoing uncertainty, this year’s Giving USA data offers a strong baseline for understanding where philanthropy stands today—and how donors continue to show up for the causes they care about. We will keep listening to the field, but one truth remains: generosity is alive and well in America.
- Individual giving, which comprises two-thirds of all giving, was boosted by the rising stock market and personal income.
- Strong GDP and corporate pre-tax profits extended the recent gains in corporate giving. Corporate giving reached its highest level on record in both current and inflation-adjusted dollars.
- The strong stock market contributed to increased foundation asset values, with foundation grantmaking surpassing the $100 billion mark for the third straight year.
One takeaway is clear to me: giving goes up when people (and corporations, and foundations) feel more financially secure. Feel better about your 401(k)—you are more likely to give. Feel profits are stabilized and now growing—you are more likely to give. Feel that your foundational investments are now behaving better—you are more likely to give more away. It’s not complicated; it’s human nature.
This is so similar to what we call the Investment-Driven Model™, or IDM, of fundraising. When you get a return on your investment, you are likely to invest again. When you get the results you hope for, you feel good about your investing prowess and might even invest more next time around. The same goes for investments in nonprofits. When you see the results of why you gave money, you not only feel good about it, but are more likely to give more the next time you are asked. Investment-driven models focus on the outcomes you deliver, which are much more appealing to today’s nonprofit investors, especially those that can make transformative, rather than transactional, investments.
We see this over and over in repeat clients that are now in their fourth or fifth campaign. When money is given based on the expected outcomes to be delivered, the next round becomes even better positioned for success, and more money is raised.
As I said in last year’s commentary on the Giving USA results:
At the end of the day, people give because of the outcomes they value, and the outcomes delivered by the nonprofits that ask for their money.
Still true. Still works.
