Giving USA Report on 2024 Philanthropy

Another annual celebration in the fundraising world in addition to the “New Year” of the turning of the calendar to a new fiscal year, which I wrote about yesterday, is the release of the Giving USA Annual Report on Philanthropy. There are many consulting firms that put out webinars and think pieces interpreting the results (like BWF and CCS) plus of course coverage by the Chronicle of Philanthropy reporter Rasheeda Childress. Here are a few highlights that jumped out to me, then I’ll discuss some bigger picture points and THE question for the 2025 report:

• Growth in giving outpaced inflation for the first time in three years. That’s good news.
• Contributions to Donor Advised Funds (DAFs) are included in the Public-Society Benefit category if they are going to a commercial DAF like Fidelity Charitable and the Foundations category if the donation is to a community foundation. I point it out because Giving USA doesn’t state this outright in the information that’s publicly available; I got that information from a webinar I attended where multiple attendees asked.
• Related, Public-Society Benefit giving grew 16.1% (adjusted for inflation), the biggest increase of any category.
• Giving to arts, culture, and humanities (the main area I watch) grew faster than inflation at 6.4% (adjusted for inflation).

Bigger picture of American Generosity

It is important to remember that this study, while excellent and reliable, doesn’t capture the full generosity of people living in the United States. To my understanding, it doesn’t capture several common ways of being philanthropic that don’t flow through nonprofits or tax returns:

• Mutual-aid and giving circles, where people give money to each other
• Crowdfunding direct donations like GoFundMe
• Remittances of families sending money to their home country

Taking these into account, the amount of money people living here give to be philanthropic is just enormous.

(I don’t point out this lack of tracking these sources as a shortcoming of the Giving USA report; it exists as an information source for the nonprofit sector so it focuses on the funds that are flowing into that sector, which these aren’t.)

THE Question for 2025

To what extent will individuals, foundations, and corporate make up for the drastic, rapid loss of government funding in science, international aid, health care, social services, arts, humanities, and more?

Next year’s Giving USA report could show some wild swings in amounts and proportions between different funding sources like we’ve never seen before.

It will be a bumpy year, especially given the “Big Beautiful Bill” that just passed Congress that included massive cuts to Medicaid. I’d normally say “we’ll all be watching”, but I think it would be more accurate to say “we’ll all be living it”.