What the 2025 Giving USA Report Means for Your Organization
What the 2025 Giving USA Report Means for Your Organization
Every year, Giving USA and the Lilly Family School of Philanthropy release the most comprehensive look at charitable giving in the United States. The 2026 report, covering 2025 calendar year data, is now out, and it offers some important signals for anyone leading a faith based nonprofit, camp, congregation, or social service agency.
Here are the highlights, along with what they mean for your work.
The Charitable Landscape Keeps Growing
There are now 1.55 million registered 501(c)(3) charities in the United States, up from 1.12 million just ten years ago. That is nearly 40 percent growth in the number of nonprofits, while the U.S. population has grown by only about 7.4 percent in that same window.
It can be tempting to see this as competition. But as GSB partner Evan Moylan puts it, giving happens when opportunity meets passion. Your job is not to out compete other organizations for attention. It is to tell your story with passion, invite people into it, and deepen that relationship once they say yes.
A Record Year, With a Catch
Total giving in the United States reached $617.2 billion in 2025, the first time it has crossed $600 billion. Giving has grown almost every year since 1985, when the total sat around $80 billion.
But the picture is more complicated once you adjust for inflation. In real dollars, giving only grew by about 3 percent over the last two years, even though nominal dollars grew 8.8 percent. For faith based organizations specifically, inflation adjusted giving grew by just 0.4 percent. Growth is happening, but it is thinner than the headline number suggests.
Watch Your 2021 Donors
One of the most actionable insights from this year's report has to do with timing. During 2020 and 2021, giving spiked as people responded to an extraordinary moment. Moylan calls the natural correction that followed the COVID cliff. Many donors who gave generously in that window have not given since.
In the broader nonprofit world, a donor is typically still considered "in retention" for three years before an organization has to treat them as a reacquisition. Faith based organizations often use a five year window, and congregations sometimes longer still. That means many 2021 donors are now sitting right at the edge of that window.
If you have not already, pull your donor list from 2021 and look for names that have not appeared since. This is a clearly defined, time sensitive opportunity to reengage people who already showed they care about your mission.
Individuals Still Drive Everything
Individual giving makes up 64 percent of all charitable dollars, and that number climbs to about 74 percent once you add in bequests, which come exclusively from individuals. Add in the portion of corporate and foundation giving that traces back to family owned businesses and family foundations, and you land at 86 to 87 percent of all giving in the United States coming, in one way or another, from individual people.
Corporations remain the smallest slice of the pie. They can offer a large one time infusion, but they rarely sustain support for more than a couple of years before leadership or priorities shift. Foundations and donor advised funds are growing as vehicles individuals use to give strategically and manage their tax situation, but the person behind the gift is still the relationship that matters most.
The takeaway: if your organization can only focus on one thing, focus on the relationships you already have with the people who care about you.
Ask, Then Thank
The report reinforces something GSB consultants see constantly in the field. The number one reason anyone makes a gift is because they were asked. The number one reason anyone makes a second gift is because they were thanked.
As GSB consultant Margie Fiedler shared, one pastor she worked with attributes steady giving, even amid declining membership, to one simple habit: he personally calls or writes a note to thank every gift. Congregations in particular tend to underinvest in this kind of personal gratitude, even though it is one of the most effective and least expensive retention tools available.
Gratitude has to be more than an annual giving statement. A true culture of gratitude shows donors, in a personal and specific way, the impact their gift is making.
Religion's Share of the Pie Is Shrinking
This is the hardest data point in the report for faith based organizations to hear. Giving to religion made up over 32 percent of total charitable giving seven years ago. Today it sits at 23 percent. Religion is still the single largest category of giving in the country, but its share has been declining steadily.
Importantly, this is not because young people have stopped giving. Generational data actually shows younger generations giving at higher rates and with more frequency than boomers or Gen X. It is about engagement. Younger donors want to see and understand their impact, and organizations that get better at telling that story will be the ones who benefit.
The opportunity here is real. People believe their congregation and their faith community make a deep impact in the world. The work is helping them see it clearly enough to give accordingly.
Three Things to Do This Week
Pull your 2021 donor list and identify who has not given since. Reach out personally.
Audit your gratitude process. Are thank yous personal, timely, and specific, or do they read like a bill?
Look at how you tell your impact story. Are you showing donors what their gift actually did, in a way that invites them deeper into your mission?
As Evan Moylan says, keep your brain on the main thing. The data is clear that the organizations who will thrive are not the ones chasing every new opportunity. They are the ones who stay focused on the people who already care, and who tell their story well enough to invite others to join them.