Trends in Charitable Giving

Understanding the Big Picture of Charitable Giving

According to the Giving USA 2024 report, charitable giving in the United States reached an impressive $557.16 billion in 2023, reflecting a 1.9 % increase from the previous year. However, this growth did not keep pace with inflation, resulting in a 2.1% decline when adjusted for inflation. Despite this, total giving remains above pre-pandemic levels, even when adjusted for inflation, signaling resilience and continued generosity across sectors.

Individual giving, while still the primary source of philanthropic dollars, is shrinking as a share of total contributions. Organizations are diversifying their donor base to counter the decline in individual giving while maintaining strong engagement with individuals. Foundations and corporations experienced positive two-year growth even when adjusting for inflation. Giving by foundations has increased from 6% of total giving to 19% in the past 40 years. Giving by corporations is the fastest-growing source over time and continues to shift as companies adopt a range of giving vehicles and strategies.

Sector-Specific Trends in Charitable Giving

The education sector experienced substantial growth, with giving increasing by 11.1% in current dollars and 6.7% after adjusting for inflation. This sector’s success is driven by targeted campaigns, significant gifts tied to multidisciplinary or transformational opportunities, and a focus on long-term impact and broad-based engagement. Key trends seen among Marts&Lundy clients include:

An increase in large gifts from alumni, friends, and foundations.
Higher education institutions benefiting from gifts of $1 million or more contributing an average 37% of total revenue, compared to an average of 19% for independent schools.
Independent schools rely heavily on current use unrestricted gifts, averaging 50% of total revenue, while higher education averages 8%.
An average of 4% of total revenue in higher education coming from non-alumni parents, though parent giving is still inconsistently tracked across higher education. Independent schools see an average closer to 44% of total revenue from non-alumni parents.

Similarly, the arts, culture, and humanities sector saw an 11% increase in giving, translating to a 6.6% rise when adjusted for inflation. This represents the highest inflation-adjusted level of giving to the sector on record. Notable trends include:

This growth aligns with the significant increase we are seeing in larger gifts across multiple sectors. About a quarter of total gifts to arts, culture, and humanities come from gifts of a million dollars or more.
The rising importance of foundation and corporate giving are significant trends that warrant the sector’s focused attention.
Corporations give to accomplish a business purpose, and in the arts, culture and humanities sector, this purpose is often visibility. This provides the sector an opportunity to diversify funding sources by working creatively with corporations to achieve mutual goals.

In healthcare, charitable giving increased by 8.7%, though they decreased by 4.4% when adjusted for inflation. This is the sector’s highest level of giving in inflation-adjusted dollars, with its second highest level set in 2021. Key insights include:

Geographical differences play a role in giving patterns. For example, healthcare institutions in regions with higher economic growth tend to receive larger donations.
Many of our health system clients have hospitals in small communities, where these institutions serve the community both as an economic engine as well as a destination for medical care. This creates strong engagement, which was further strengthened by the COVID response. This has resulted in a particularly strong grateful patient and family bond, which has created a strong pipeline of sustained giving for these institutions.
Overall, the healthcare institutions that have paid attention to those donors who gave during COVID, and effectively shared the impact of their charitable gifts — most often on nursing and allied health professionals — are in strong philanthropic positions.

Campaign Strategies in a Changing Landscape

Campaign goals are increasingly ambitious, with timelines extending longer, especially as campaigns continue to increase in size and economic disruptions become more common. This mirrors Giving USA trends, where larger campaigns are prevalent in sectors like education and healthcare.

Marts&Lundy data shows that quiet or leadership phases are getting longer, with a median length of three to four years compared to approximately two years prior to the year 2000. Additionally, total campaign length increases as the size of the goal increases. Campaigns with goals ranging from $100 million to $500 million average 7.4 years in length, compared to campaigns of $1 billion or greater averaging 8.8 years.

Institutions are also raising a higher percentage of their goals before going public. Within higher education specifically, campaigns that launched more than 20 years ago were raising an average of 52% prior to public launch whereas that number has consistently remained around 60% over the last 20 years.

These trends reflect the importance of strategic campaign planning and the acknowledgement that demonstrating robust constituent engagement is key to a successful campaign. Furthermore, these changing timelines point to the curated activity that is critical to engaging transformational and major gift top prospects early and often in the campaign phases to establish momentum and confidence — signaling to the rest of the constituency that this is a major event in the life of the institution.

This blog is follow-up commentary to our webinar, A Panoramic View of Charitable Giving Trends, which followed the release of the 2024 Giving USA Annual Report on Charitable Giving. You can watch a recording of the webinar here.