Data Reveals 2024 Charitable Giving Neared All-Time High
The Blackbaud Institute, a research lab at Blackbaud, a provider of software for powering social impact, released new insights in its 2024 Trends in Giving Spotlight. This report draws from Blackbaud's robust philanthropic dataset to provide social impact professionals with insights into industry trends, benchmarks for success, and strategies to elevate fundraising efforts.
The Blackbaud Institute gives social impact professionals data to understand broader industry trends, benchmark success and take fundraising to new levels. The current spotlight provides a round-up of the charitable giving trends that defined 2024, and a look at how the 2024 numbers compare to previous years.
"2024 was a remarkable year for the fundraising sector, showcasing the resilience and adaptability of fundraisers," said Carrie Cobb, chief data and AI officer, Blackbaud. "Despite uncertainty with the election year driving significant political giving, nonprofits not only maintained but grew charitable giving, bringing totals back to near pandemic-era highs with a new record for mean gift amounts for individual gifts. This year's trends highlight the innovative strategies and unwavering commitment of fundraisers to engage donors and drive impactful change for the causes that matter most to our society."
Key Findings:
- Total Overall Giving Levels Returned Near Pandemic-Era Highs.
- While 2023 was a year of the sector regaining stability, with giving remaining relatively flat, 2024 saw a 1.9% year-over-year increase in overall giving that brought the sector's total accumulated growth over the last six years close to the record peak set during the COVID-19 pandemic.
- Online Giving Topped Its Pandemic-Era Peak.
- Similarly, online giving growth was accelerated during the pandemic, followed by relative decreases in 2022 and stability in 2023, but 2024's year-over-year growth of 2.2 % brought the accumulated growth to a new record level.
- Healthcare Organizations Led the Way.
- The majority of subsectors saw growth in 2024, in both overall and online giving. When looking at top overall performers by subsector, Healthcare led the way with an 11.3% increase in overall giving year-over-year, followed by Animal Welfare with a 7.1% increase, and Environmental with a 5.6% increase.
- The U.S. Presidential Election Did Not Deter End of Year Giving to Nonprofits.
- 34% of all giving in 2024 occurred in the last three months of the year, keeping with the trends of the past decade and the past two election cycles. The Animal Welfare, K–12 Education, and Healthcare subsectors received the largest percentage of their giving in the last three months of the year.
- Individual Givers Set a Record.
- The mean individual gift across the sector set a new record of $937. In addition, the mean online gift was $197, remaining within a stable range that exceeds pre-pandemic giving.
More insights can be accessed in the full Blackbaud Institute Spotlight on 2024 Trends in Giving. The Blackbaud Philanthropic Dataset estimates the experience of an average nonprofit organization by using giving data from a subset of Blackbaud customers (8,500+ nonprofit organizations, totaling over $55 billion in fundraising revenue). Nonprofit data available from the IRS and Giving USA are used to weight and normalize this subset of data. The findings of this report reflect the average nonprofit experience—not specific to Blackbaud customers—in order to give a representative snapshot of the sector.
The preceding press release was provided by a company unaffiliated with NonProfit PRO. The views expressed within do not directly reflect the thoughts or opinions of the staff of NonProfit PRO.
