Charitable Giving Statistics

NPT curates statistics from recent studies and reports on charitable giving in the U.S. Please refer to the footnotes for original sources.

General Philanthropy

  • Americans gave $499.33 billion in 2022. This reflects a 3.4% decline from 2021.¹
  • Corporate giving in 2022 increased to $21.08 billion—a 3.4% increase from 2021.¹
  • Foundation giving in 2022 increased to $105.21 billion—a 2.5% increase from 2021.¹
  • Giving by bequest in 2022 was $45.60 billion—a 2.3% increase from 2021.¹
  • In 2022, the largest source of charitable giving came from individuals, who gave $319.04 billion, representing 64% of total giving.¹
  • In 2022, the majority of charitable dollars went to religion (27%), human services (14%), education (13%), grantmaking foundations (11%) and health (10%).¹
  • Giving in 2022 increased in many sectors, with double-digit growth in gifts for foundations (10.1%) and international affairs (10.1%). Giving declined most precipitously to public-society benefit organizations (-8.4%), with more modest declines in giving to education (-3.6%), environment/animals (-1.6%) and human services (-0.6%).¹

Individual and Family Philanthropy

  • 86 percent of affluent households maintained or increased their giving despite uncertainty about further spread of COVID-193
  • Adults are more likely to give to charity if their parents gave to charity.4

Charitable Organizations

  • According to the most recent data available, there are more than 1.54 million charitable organizations in the United States.5
  • Sources of revenue for tax-exempt organizations in 2012 were program service revenues, including government contracts and fees (73%), contributions, gifts, & government grants (21%) and lastly, dues, special event income, rental income and net sales from goods (6%).5

Volunteering

  • An estimated 30% of US adults, 77.9 million Americans, volunteered in 2019, contributing an estimated 5.8 billion hours, valued at approximately $147 billion (Source: AmeriCorps, Office of Research and Evaluation)
  • The top four national volunteer activities are fundraising or selling items to raise money (36%); food collection or distribution (34.2%); collecting, making or distributing clothing, crafts or other goods (26.5%); and mentoring youth (26.2%).6
  • The top four types of organizations by volunteering are: religious (32%); sport, hobby, cultural or arts (25.7%); educational or youth service (19.2%); and civic, political, professional or international (6.2%).6

Donor-Advised Funds

  • There were 1,285,801 donor-advised fund accounts in 2021.8
  • Donor-advised funds held $234.06 billion in assets in 2021.8
  • Annual contributions into donor-advised funds were $72.67 billion in 2021.8
  • Donors recommended grants from donor-advised funds totaled more than $45.74 billion to charities in 2021.8
  • Average donor-advised fund account size was $182,842 in 2021.8

Sources

1 Giving USA 2021 Annual Report

2 Candid 2020 Annual Report

3 Affluent Americans Expand Generosity During the Pandemic

4 Indiana University Lilly School of Philanthropy Women’s Philanthropy Institute | Women Give 18: Transmitting Generosity to Daughters and Sons

5 The Urban Institute | National Center for Charitable Statistics 2019

6 The Corporation for National and Community Service

7 Independent Sector

8 National Philanthropic Trust – Donor Advised Fund Report 2022