Have you donated to charity in the past, but don’t now?
If the answer is yes, you are not alone. for Second year in a rowPhilanthropy Research Foundation Provided by the USA Fewer Americans are giving to nonprofits than they used to, and the total amount of giving is declining when adjusted for inflation.
Some in the philanthropic world call it “Generosity crisis” — Fewer than half of American households now give cash to charity. Twenty million fewer families donated In 2016 compared to 2000.
The only surprising thing about these findings, to me, though, would surprise anyone.
Why aren’t people donating to nonprofits?
A big, and rather intuitive, reason why fewer people are donating to registered nonprofits these days is the general state of the economy. The number of donors began to decline sharply Right at the tail end of the Great Recession In 2010. Among households that stopped donating to nonprofits between 2000 and 2016, most earned less than $50,000 per year.
Young people are also less likely to donate In registered charities compared to older people. The relationship between age and willingness to pay is understandable – the younger you are, the fewer years you have to earn money.
But the age gap has widened in the last few years. In part, this can be explained by the high cost of living, student loan debt and inflation. “Young donors don’t have the money right now,” he said Son of Rashedais a senior editor at The Chronicle of Philanthropy.
But we cannot blame the economy for everything. The Decline in organized religion Charitable giving may be the biggest reason for the decline.
Religious institutions are the main centers of philanthropy – highly religious adults Almost twice as many volunteers as other adults in the United States, and about half of them volunteer through a religious organization. A report by Do Good Institutewhich conducts philanthropy research at the University of Maryland, found that community groups belonging to, religious or otherwise, are more likely to volunteer and donate money than others.
It is not that religion makes people more charitable. Community does — In particular, communities where charitable giving is concentrated and expected. but Participation in organized religion declinesSo provides.
People seem to be beyond religion Losing trust in institutions – Government, media, and Private organizations like non-profits.
The nonprofit is one of, but only, the most trusted organizations in the United States About half of Americans have their beliefs. Political polarization may be partly to blame — organizations colored by partisan values, such as religious organizations and civil rights groups, is less reliable than non-profits focusing on more bipartisan issues like wildlife conservation.
for Unprofitable Quarterly, Ruth McCambridge hypothesized that, as the gap between rich and poor widens, people are more likely to view nonprofits as “loyal handmaidens of an unjust system.” It’s not that people are less generous, it’s because they don’t trust the organizations that cater to the wealthy donors they depend on, McCambridge added.
At the same time, a survey of more than 2,100 adults in the United States found that among those who had stopped giving to charity in the past five years, 47 percent said that They decided to stop donating Because they believed that rich families should pull more weight.
Historically, reaching out to small-dollar donors has not been an efficient use of time for nonprofits, although many nonprofits — especially those in less affluent communities — Dependent on recurring small grants to stay afloat. Why pour energy into persuading 10,000 people to donate $10, when you can get all $100,000 from one wealthy donor?
“It’s almost becoming a self-fulfilling prophecy,” Childress said. By feeding the rich, nonprofits are “going where the money is now, but not growing where the money will be.”
The charitable tax deduction was literally there Designed to benefit the wealthy. If you don’t make a lot of money, claiming a charitable donation doesn’t make much sense, especially in retrospect President Trump’s tax cuts in 2017 The need to itemize deductions is reduced.
A perfectly reasonable response might be, “Who cares? Rich people have money. Let them pay for everything!”
But if we let rich people dominate philanthropy, we give them the power to shape how nonprofits operate. “You don’t want to be watched by anybody,” he said Phil BuchananPresident and author of the Center for Effective Philanthropy The right thing to do. If an organization that should be built on generosity and community is visibly supported by a handful of billionaires and corporations, it’s not a great look.
If donors are not immersed in the community an organization is trying to serve, they are less likely to understand what that community really needs. And concentrating the rich certainly won’t convince already skeptical young middle-class adults to get involved.
How can we measure generosity if the IRS doesn’t know about it?
Generosity CommissionA nonpartisan group, led by The Giving Institute and the Giving USA Foundation, spent the year trying to understand Where all the non-wealthy donors have gone. “There’s definitely a financial crunch,” Childress said. But “if you look at the data, people are being generous” — just not in the ways we’re familiar with.
In other words, the apparent “crisis of generosity” may not be a crisis of generosity at all.
Measuring generosity is a bit like measuring “happiness” or “loneliness” – weird. Trying to pin down a feeling with statistics requires quantifying something that can’t really be measured. Inevitably, the final score will be an imperfect reflection of sentiment, heavily skewed by what can be measured.
Today, cash donations to registered charities are relatively easy to measure. These gifts are reported to the IRS, leaving a paper trail that can be tracked by organizations like Giving USA. A 2020 study managed by Stanford Center on Philanthropy and Civil Society It found that people in the U.S. give in ways that extend beyond tax-exempt donations to nonprofits.
Although these forms of giving are difficult to trace. When I gift a guitar to my neighbor who wants to teach his kid to play, for example, there’s no official record of that transaction — just a few Facebook comments and face-to-face conversations. The IRS can’t detect it, so it never happened in the eyes of Giving USA.
Mutual aid — or the mutual exchange of resources within a community — has existed worldwide for thousands of years. But it entered the spotlight in the US during the pandemic through community freezes, childcare collectives and health care funds.
For a population that is growing Distrust political institutions And Desires human connectioncan help each other Feeling more dominant Than donating to a non-profit – whether it really is or not. A survey conducted by day tuesdayThe organization behind the post-Thanksgiving Global Day of Giving, found that 76 percent of respondents between the ages of 18 and 34 prefer to give directly to people in need, not nonprofits — with only 46 percent of over-50s agreeing.
donation Raised through crowdfunding There was also a 33.7 percent increase in 2022, with 6,455,080 crowdfunding campaigns launched worldwide that year. The crowdfunding market is expected to grow 300 billion dollars by 2030. But while a GoFundMe donation counts as “generous” in my book, USAGiving can’t track it – so, we have a “generosity crisis.”
But we know that people are mostly generous. In 2022, Charity Aid Foundation found That 4.2 billion people — 72 percent of the world’s adult population — gave money, time, or services to someone they didn’t know that year.
Over the past several years, the Generosity Commission has been Working to “tell the full story” of generosity, so nonprofits can better understand how people want to make their communities better. Their full results should be published later this year.
So what should we do?
To be clear: nonprofits do a lot of good, both in the US and abroad. Especially in smaller, less affluent communities, they Totally dependent Normal, on non-super-wealthy donors like me – and we’re not pulling our weight.
One might argue that, since I am, temporarily, a member of the richest 1 percent of the world’s population, I am morally obligated to donate a portion of my income to charity. At least in theory, if I schedule frequent donations to highly effective charities, I can save lives in many countries where my money will stretch far beyond the United States.
But this kind of effective philanthropy has always been the exception – in fact, giving to international causes Actually rejected 1.6 percent increase after inflation in 2023. The vast majority of charitable giving in the United States is domestic. Most donors aren’t paying for malaria-resistant bed nets abroad—they’re mainly donating to Ivy League schools and religious organization. Just this week, Michael Bloomberg Donated $1 billion to Johns Hopkins University To pay for the tuition of med students.
If I were in med school, I’d be thrilled — student loans suck. But med students, especially from reputed schools like No. 2 ranked Hopkins, usually go to load money. Helping them is less effective than sending, say, $1 billion Help the Kenyan flood victims directly.
Personally, I do not currently donate a portion of my income to registered non-profits, highly effective or otherwise. I am still recouping the savings I made as a freelance journalist (after spending six years Graduate Student Scholarship) Michael Bloomberg didn’t pay for my Ivy League education, and with thousands of dollars in graduate student loan debt hanging over my head, I laugh every time I get, and promptly delete, a fundraising text from my alma mater.
But I give. I regularly support Kickstarter campaigns, donate household goods to my neighbors, and donate to mutual aid funds supporting sex workers in my community. It makes me like others.”Millennium“In my group, those who direct their money Towards more informal charities than traditional non-profits. It may not necessarily count in the IRS’s figures, but I don’t think it’s fair to call us generous.
Given the current state of democracy, it makes perfect sense to me that many of us value direct, real impact over indirect measures of “effectiveness.” Can provide informal community-focused to feel More influential, even if it doesn’t score high on a utilitarian scale. And what donations in your community can do – whether in the form of cash, time or goods – is to build connections at a moment when we need it more than ever.
Middle class people are reluctant to pay. They just seem to be giving differently, and philanthropic organizations are still figuring out how to measure charitable giving beyond tax-deductible donations to 501(c)(3) nonprofits.
Whether through money or not, people are always kind. Hopefully, the philanthropic sector will begin to see them.
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