Charitable giving grows again!

The new GivingUSA report is out. The estimates of last year’s giving, the most recent on record, appear to be the best in the 60 years of tracking.

As a sector, we are still impressed by low-growth. But 5% growth is better than no growth!

According to GivingUSA’s press release:

Overall charitable giving in the USA last year was $358.38 billion
Individual Giving increased 5.7% in current dollars to $258.51 billion
Bequest Giving increased 15.5% to $28.13 billion
Foundation Giving went up to $53.97 billion, up 8.2% from last year
Corporate Giving did go up as well to $17.77 billion an increase of 13.7% over the previous year

Focus your efforts

For me, the biggest take away from this report is what hasn’t changed: individuals still gave the vast majority of all charitable donations!

These statistics are:

Individuals 72%
Bequests 8%
Foundations 15%
Corporations 5%

GivingUSA reports charitable giving grows to highest levels last year. Image (c) GivingUSA

This is the sort of information that should be in your nonprofit’s board orientation.

In the new online course Fundraising 101, I challenge board members and new fundraisers to organize their time this way. If 80% of giving comes from individuals, why not spend 80% of your effort and resources learning to effectively engage individuals? I actually show years and years of GivingUSA data to back up this claim. (If your board doesn’t want you to constantly focus on more grants and corporate gifts, you’re fine. And blessed.)

The best part of learning to effectively work with individuals? Who runs foundations and corporations? Individuals, of course! So focusing on individuals will help your nonprofit’s fundraising be far more effective!