Where do the country’s charitable dollars really flow? A new collaborative report reveals a complex landscape of giving, with patterns shifting dramatically across time, geography, and donor types.
The newly released study by GivingTuesday, Candid, and Network for Good combines multiple datasets to piece together a nuanced — if not yet complete — picture of charitable giving across the United States. The analysis reveals stark contrasts between individual and institutional giving priorities, distinct geographic concentrations of philanthropic dollars, and the significant influence of economic factors on giving patterns.
It comes amid soul-searching in the charitable sector over troubling trends in everyday Americans’ relationship with the country’s 1.9 million nonprofits. Though the new report finds that the dollar volume of individual donations has increased 58 percent from 2015 to 2022, the number of Americans donating each year has fallen consistently over the past decade, with the wealthiest donors accounting for an increasingly skewed share of giving.
“Nonprofits are often so under the gun to meet their mission every day, to bring in enough resources to pay their people, and to constantly be chasing the next grant cycles,” said Asha Curran, CEO of GivingTuesday, who cited barriers to collaboration and outdated fundraising norms as reasons for the declines in everyday giving.
“There can be so little time left over to pursue innovation, business development, new best practices, and experimentation,” she said. “Nonprofits are not incentivized to do those things.”
A mere 0.3 percent accounted for 45 percent of all donations to nonprofits from 2015 to 2022. The majority of Americans who give less than $100 a year, by contrast, account for less than 3 percent of overall philanthropy. This disparity has led to a significant increase in average donation size, from $442 in 2015 to $611 in 2022, while the median donation size stagnated at $50 — representing a decline when adjusted for inflation.
As individual giving tallies increased — thanks to those wealthiest donors — so did giving from the country’s philanthropic institutions, with total grant dollars awarded increasing 74 percent over the eight years. The average grant size increased from $53,000 in 2015 to nearly $98,000 in 2022, while the median grant size increased from $4,200 in 2015 to $10,000 in 2022.
While those foundation dollars went largely to education and health-related causes, individuals of all donation levels prioritized giving to human service organizations, like food banks or homeless shelters. From 2015 to 2022, about a third of individual donations went to human services, which make up only about a quarter of all nonprofits.
Education, long a top priority for institutional grant makers, saw a significant decline in its share of charitable dollars. The proportion of grant dollars going to education dropped from 32 percent in 2015 to 24 percent in 2022, raising concerns about long-term implications for the sector.
Geography of Giving
Geographically, the study found that charitable flows — and nonprofits themselves — are not distributed evenly across the country. States with higher median household incomes tend to receive more charitable dollars per capita, and states with higher poverty rates tend to receive less, potentially exacerbating existing economic disparities among regions.
Though more populous states like California and Texas retain the most nonprofits in absolute terms, Washington, D.C., Vermont, and Montana lead in nonprofits per capita.
In some cases, a single major donor or large foundation may set the tone of giving patterns for an entire state. Nebraska, for instance, shows giving rates significantly higher than expected based on its wealth and nonprofit density, an anomaly attributed in part to Warren Buffett’s longstanding presence in Omaha.
Shifting Economic Tides
The report also delved into the at times complex relationship between economic conditions and charitable giving, revealing patterns that vary by donor type and size.
Over all, a strong economy predicted more giving by both individual donors and institutional grant makers, with microeconomic factors like stock market performance and disposable income showing the strongest immediate impact.
In recent years, inflation has eaten away at nonprofits’ finances, but while foundations have tended to increase their grant sizes in response to rising costs, the same was not true for individual donors.
For both individuals and grant makers, the larger the donor or institution, the more likely they were to align their giving with economic trends. For example, a small donor who gives $250 a year was likely to do so consistently regardless of economic conditions, whereas large donors might change the size of their gift depending on, say, the state of their stock returns.
Other findings from the report:
- The smallest nonprofits received only 1.4 percent of total individual donations and 4.3 percent of total grant dollars, despite making up a significant portion of the nonprofit sector.
- Religious organizations saw the greatest decline in the share of individual donations, from 13 percent in 2015 to 10 percent in 2022.
- Institutional grant makers in Delaware, Nevada, and Washington ,D.C., allocated over 70 percent of their grant dollars across state lines, while most states focused on intrastate giving.
- Human service organizations saw an increase in the share of individual donations, from 31 percent in 2015 to 36 percent in 2022. This may be in part due to the Covid-19 pandemic, with individual donations to human services increasing by 26 percent in 2020, the largest increase among all causes.
