Report: Key Trends, Geographic Disparities in U.S. Charitable Giving From 2015-2022
Candid, GivingTuesday, and Network for Good released Dollars and Change, a collaborative and comprehensive study of charitable giving trends in the U.S. from 2015 to 2022. This project stemmed from a desire to explore the benefits and challenges of merging data from diverse sources. The outcome is a report that offers a comprehensive view of capital movement within the nonprofit sector alongside recommendations for stronger data collaboration across the sector. Key findings include:
- Giving by individual and institutional donors has increased. Between 2015 and 2022, donations from individuals and institutions have grown significantly. Individual donations increased by 58%, with average gifts rising from $442 to $611. Institutional grants saw a 74% boost, with the average grant size growing from about $53,000 to nearly $98,000.
- Large donors and major grantmakers contribute a significant share of charitable giving. On average, just 0.3% of individual donors contributed more than $50,000 annually, yet their gifts accounted for 45% of total donations. Similarly, the top 0.1% of institutional grantmakers, who award more than $100 million yearly, represent over a third (35%) of all grantmaking dollars.
- Declining focus on education funding. Despite education remaining a priority for institutional grantmakers, the proportion of grantmaking for educational organizations has decreased significantly—from 32% of total grant dollars in 2015 to just 24% in 2022.
- Economic influence on giving. Economic conditions significantly influence the giving patterns of both individual donors and institutional grantmakers. Additionally, institutional grantmakers demonstrate a strong correlation between previous years' economic conditions and their current-year contributions, with their giving patterns closely aligning with inflation trends.
- States with more poverty tended to receive less charitable giving. States with higher poverty rates tend to receive less charitable giving per capita. However, exceptions like New York, Tennessee, Arizona, and North Carolina suggest that local donor preferences and state-level economic diversity may influence these trends.
“This project has been invaluable, teaching us so much about the complexities of combining different types of social sector data,” said Ann Mei Chang, CEO of Candid. “In our sector, we collect a vast amount of data, but it often remains siloed. This effort was a true collaboration, where we brought together those pieces to see the bigger picture of funding in the sector. By being transparent about our methodology and the lessons we've learned in this report, we hope to help future researchers and analysts interested in doing similar work.”
"Collaborative research that deepens our understanding of the vast and complex giving ecosystem—from nonprofits to institutional grantmakers to individual givers—is critical for building a responsive and resilient social sector," said Asha Curran, CEO of GivingTuesday. "Joint efforts like Dollars and Change are promising not only because they allow us to analyze larger datasets, but also because they help us identify gaps and opportunities in data analysis that can lead to new approaches."
The report also offers calls to action to the sector to increase the ability to collaborate. “Network For Good was thrilled to support and participate in this project to explore the extent organizations can collaboratively explore big questions about what impacts the flow of funds to nonprofits and our ability to predict future patterns in giving,” said Abby Ross, CEO of Network for Good. “We gleaned interesting insights but also learned that our sector is not yet tooled to fully answer these big questions together. We are eager to utilize this report as a call to action for our sector to lean in to build the systems and structures necessary to utilize our collective data.”
Access the "Dollars and Change" report here.
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.
