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General Philanthropy​​

• Americans gave $592.50 billion in 2024. This reflects a 6.3% increase from 2023.

• Corporate giving in 2024 increased to $44.40 billion—a 9.1% increase from 2023.

• Foundation giving in 2024 increased to $109.81 billion—a 2.4% increase from 2023.

• Giving by bequest in 2024 was $45.84 billion—a 1.6% decline from 2023.

• In 2024, the largest source of charitable giving came from individuals, who gave $392.45 billion, representing 667% of total giving.

• In 2024, the majority of charitable dollars went to religion (23%), human services (14%), education (14%), grantmaking foundations (11%), and public-society benefit (11%).

• Giving in 2024 increased in many sectors, with double-digit growth in gifts for public-society benefit organizations (19.5%), international affairs (17.7%), and education (13.2%). Giving declined precipitously to individuals (-11.9%).

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Individual and Family Philanthropy​​

• The average charitable donor in the U.S. is 64 years old and makes two charitable donations a year.

• The majority of donors (63%) prefer to give online with either a credit or debit card.

• The number of new donors increased by 2.3% in 2023, the first increase in new donors since Q1 of 2021.

• More than half of the families that chose a foundation as their primary vehicle (55%) did so in order to establish a long-term philanthropic legacy.

• Individuals remained the largest donor segment in 2023, representing 67% ($374.4 billion) of all US giving ($557.2 billion), a growth of 1.6% over 2022 in current dollars.

• The average annual household giving by generation is as follows:

  • The Silent Generation (Born 1925-1945) with $1,367

  • Baby Boomers (Born 1946-1964) with $1,212  

  • Generation Z (Born 1997-2012) with $785

  • Generation X (Born 1965-1980) with $732 and  

  • Millennials (Born 1981-1996) with $481

• 80% of younger donors expressed interest in alternative investments like impact investing.

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Charitable Organizations

• According to the most recent data available, there are more than 1.8 million recognized 501(c)(3) organizations in the United States.

• In 2024, 501(c)(3) organizations made up the majority of 501(c) organizations in the U.S., with 1.6 million.

• As of 2022, there were almost 13 million people employed in the U.S. nonprofit sector.

• There are approximately 350K religious, 261K educational, 160K human services, 134K arts & culture, and 66K public-society benefit nonprofit organizations in the U.S. in 2025.

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Volunteering

• An estimated 28% of U.S. adults—75.7 million Americans—volunteered between September 2022 and 2023, contributing an estimated 4.99 billion hours valued at approximately $167.2 billion.

• Generation X had the highest rate of formal volunteering (27%) compared to Gen Z, Millennials, and Baby Boomers.

• Baby Boomers had the highest rate of informal volunteering (59%).

• In 2023, the estimated national value of each volunteer hour was $33.49, a 5.3% increase from 2022.

• More than 54% of Americans—or 137.5 million people—informally helped their neighbors between September 2022 and 2023. This represents an increase of 3 percentage points over previous years. This translates into 12.9 million more informal helpers in 2023 than in 2021.

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Donor-Advised Funds

• There were 1,782,281 donor-advised fund accounts in 2023.

• Donor-advised funds held $251.52 billion in assets in 2023.

• Total contributions into donor-advised funds were $59.43 billion in 2023.

• Donor-recommended grants from donor-advised funds totaled more than $54.77 billion to charities in 2023.

• The average donor-advised fund account size was $141,120 in 2023.

• The average payout rate for DAFs was 23.9% in 2023.

• Compare the DAF payout rate to the mean payout rate of foundations in 2024: 8.7%.