In Search of … America’s Missing Donors

In its special report “The Disappearing Donor,” the Chronicle examines why a smaller share of Americans give to charity today than at the start of the 21st century. This trend is true across all demographics, with new data showing declines among even the religious faithful and middle-age donors, who are typically nonprofit stalwarts.

Indiana University’s Lilly Family School of Philanthropy has documented this shrinking of America’s donor base in its Philanthropy Panel Study, a part of the University of Michigan’s Panel Study of Income Dynamics, a gold-standard analysis based on a longitudinal survey taken every two years since 1968. (Questions about charitable giving and volunteering were added in 2000; data from the 2016 survey is not yet available.)

This chart illustrates the decline in the share of households that give by age, education, income, marital status, and religious affiliation. Using the Indiana data, we have also created this giving-trends quiz.

Some findings:

• From 2000 to 2014, the share of Americans donating to charity dropped almost 11 percentage points, from 66.2 percent to more than 55.5 percent.
• Only 58 percent of 51- to 60-year-olds – typically prime years for charitable giving – made a donation in 2014. That’s a 20 percentage-point decline from 2000, the largest drop among any age group
• A significantly smaller share of those affiliated with a religion made charitable gifts of any kind. That figure dropped from 69 percent in 2000 to 58 percent in 2014.
• More than 87 percent of the biggest earners in America – those making $150,000 or more annually – gave to charity in 2014. Yet fewer than four in 10 Americans making $50,000 or less made contributions.