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By now, every firm in our business has already sent you some version of the good news: giving is up. Americans gave $617.20 billion to charity in 2025, the first time giving has crossed $600 billion. That’s a 5.7% jump over the year before, per Giving USA 2026: The Annual Report on Philanthropy for the Year 2025, the report developed by Giving USA Foundation and the Indiana University Lilly Family School of Philanthropy. This deserves a moment of optimism: in a year of real uncertainty, Americans gave more than ever.
But that’s the wrong place to stop reading. The more useful question for advancement leaders is not how much but who – a question that raises concerning realities that must shape the work ahead. Because most of the growth was committed years ago, new contributions did not keep up with the market, and the pipeline continues to show weakness.
Most of the Growth Came From People Who Already Decided
Bequests rose 19.7% in 2025, to $62.19 billion, the largest jump of any source. That roughly $10 billion increase accounted for about a third of the total growth in giving, even though bequests make up only about 10% of the pie (NonProfit PRO, June 2026). Three of the last four years have seen bequest growth above 20%, which may signal the early edge of the long-predicted wealth transfer.
It’s also money that was committed years ago. A bequest realized in 2025 reflects a relationship an institution earned a decade or more back, a testament to fundraising and stewardship that worked. That’s worth celebrating. It’s just not a read on whether your donor base is healthy today.
Living Donors Grew Far More Slowly Than the Markets Did
Individuals gave $394.20 billion, up 4.1%, but only 1.4% once you adjust for inflation. In a year when financial markets finished strong, you’d expect more. Giving USA’s own researchers point to historically low consumer sentiment as a likely drag: households felt uncertain about their own finances even as the indexes climbed (Indiana University Lilly Family School of Philanthropy, June 2026).
The Number of Donors Continues to Narrow
The Fundraising Effectiveness Project found that 2025’s gains were concentrated in larger gifts, while the number of donors giving under $1,000 stagnated or declined. The sector saw continued drops in total donor counts and had stubborn trouble retaining first-time givers. Concentration at the top is even starker. Megagifts totaled $19.2 billion, and a single donor, MacKenzie Scott, accounted for roughly a third of all mega-giving (Chronicle of Philanthropy, June 2026).
Put those together and the record looks less like a rising tide and more like a narrowing one. Fewer donors are carrying more of the weight.
Which Is Exactly How Good Communications Earns Its Keep
When a smaller number of relationships account for a larger share of revenue, every one of those relationships matters more, and so does the clarity of the reason you give people to invest. This is not a problem you can solve with greater volume. More emails, more events, and more asks aimed at a shrinking base will not rebuild it. What rebuilds it is a case for support so clear and so genuinely felt that a donor can repeat it to a friend without the brochure in hand.
The subsector data points the same direction. Education, public-society benefit, and environment/animals each grew more than 10% in current dollars and posted the strongest five-year growth rates of any category (Giving USA 2026). Donors are concentrating their generosity where the impact is visible, where they can see, specifically, what their gift makes possible. That’s not a story about fundraising mechanics. It’s a story about institutions that have learned to say why their work matters, and to whom.
If that sounds like it puts a lot of weight on the people who craft the message, it is. And that’s the encouraging part. The teams doing this work, the writers, the gift officers, the communicators who turn a mission into something a donor can feel, are not a support function in this environment. They are the engine of it.
What This Means for the Year Ahead
A few things worth carrying into your planning conversations:
Read your own numbers the way Giving USA reads the sector. If your recent results lean on a handful of large or planned gifts, celebrate that, then ask how many new donors entered the relationship this year, not just how many dollars came in.
Treat the case for support as infrastructure, not decoration. In a concentrated environment, the clarity of your argument is a financial variable. The reason a donor can repeat back to a friend is the reason that compounds.
And hold your forecasting a little looser than the headline invites. The same researchers who delivered the record also note that giving is increasingly tied to the markets, which means market volatility is starting to bleed into the predictability of giving (Indiana University Lilly Family School of Philanthropy, June 2026). A strong year built on a strong market isn’t the same as a durable base.
The $617 billion is real, and so is the generosity behind it. So is the narrowing underneath. The institutions that do best in the next few years will be the ones who looked past the record, saw clearly who was giving and who wasn’t, and kept doing the patient, skilled work of developing a strong case and fluent fundraisers. That work has never mattered more, and the people who do it well have never been more valuable.
Sources
– Giving USA 2026: The Annual Report on Philanthropy for the Year 2025, a publication of Giving USA Foundation, researched and written by the Indiana University Lilly Family School of Philanthropy. Available at givingusa.org.
– Indiana University Lilly Family School of Philanthropy, news release, June 23, 2026.
“Giving USA 2026: Bequests Do the Heavy Lifting as Total Giving Tops $600B,“ NonProfit PRO, June 2026.
– Rasheeda Childress, Chronicle of Philanthropy (via AP wire), June 23, 2026.
