U.S. charitable giving increased 3.3% to US$593 billion in 2024, lifted by the strength of the economy.
The annual report from the Giving USA Foundation, produced in partnership with the Indiana University Lilly Family School of Philanthropy, found that this was the second-highest level on record after adjusting for inflation.
Giving grew at the fastest pace since 2021, when the COVID-19 pandemic led many Americans to make larger-than-usual donations. It was also the first time since then that growth in giving outpaced inflation.
As two of the report’s lead researchers, we see many signs of healthy growth in charitable giving in 2024. Our data shows that the strong economy, which grew 2.8% in 2024, bolstered individual and corporate giving and allowed foundations to maintain the historically high level of giving seen from them in recent years.
It also helped that stock markets performed well in 2024, consumer sentiment was generally positive, personal income rose and inflation continued to ease.
Donations to nearly every charitable category we track grew.
Individuals and corporations led overall growth
Individual donors continued to provide the bulk of the nation’s charitable gifts. The $392 billion they gave to charity accounted for two-thirds of the year’s total. Giving by individuals grew 5.1% from 2023 − a swifter pace than for all donations.
Corporate giving rose even faster. It was up 6% to a record $44 billion.
This growth reflects the high pretax profits earned by corporations in 2024 and the trend toward corporations donating a higher share of pretax profits in recent years.
For example, corporations generally donated less than 1% of pretax profits from 2004-2018. But our research team started to see corporate giving rise to 1% or more in the 2019 data. This was also the case in 2024, when corporate giving stood at 1.1% of pretax profits.
Corporate philanthropy has grown by more than 50% since 2019, a trend that has coincided with rising in-kind donations of insulin products and other pharmaceuticals. Drugmakers made an estimated $24 billion in these donations in 2024 − up 41% since 2019.
To be sure, corporations’ donations amounted to just 7% of overall giving in 2024.
Meanwhile, grants made by foundations exceeded $100 billion for the third straight year. Almost $1 out of every $5 contributed to charity was from a foundation in each of those years.
Giving by foundations in the five years ending in 2024 was higher than any other period since Giving USA has tracked this data. Foundation giving, however, remained fairly flat from 2023 to 2024, at about $110 billion.
Around 8% of all gifts made in 2024 were from bequests included in people’s wills, the same as in 2023. Bequests totaled $44 billion, down 4.4% when adjusted for inflation. But the total given through bequests varies quite a bit from year to year.
Most kinds of donations increased
Donations to most of the nine charitable categories Giving USA tracks increased. The one exception: Gifts to churches and other religious institutions fell 1%. But religious giving remained by far the top category, followed by human services and education.
Religious causes received 23% of all donations, a total of $147 billion. Giving to human services nonprofits, such as food banks and homeless shelters, increased considerably during the pandemic. It now accounts for about 14% of all donations. In 2024, these gifts totaled $91 billion.
Giving to education, which primarily consists of donations to colleges and universities has tended to grow more slowly than overall giving in recent years.
Giving for education rebounded to a record high in 2024, however, rising nearly 10% from a year earlier. And these gifts have grown at a quick pace over the past decade, increasing by more than 22% from 2015 to 2024. The $88 billion in gifts received for education in 2024 was the third-largest of the nine categories we follow.
Several other categories also reached all-time highs of giving in 2024: health, at $61 billion; arts, culture and humanities, at $25 billion; and environment and animals, at $22 billion.
The increases in giving for most kinds of nonprofits, supported by strong growth in giving by individuals and corporations, indicate that the charitable sector ended 2024 in a relatively solid position.
This article was written by Jon Bergdoll and Christina Daniken from Indiana University, and was originally published on The Conversation.
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