Individual Giving Statistics (2026): Record Dollars, Shrinking Donor Base & What It Means for Nonprofits
Individuals still give 64% of U.S. charitable dollars, but fewer households give and donor retention sits near 43%. Verified 2026 figures for nonprofit leaders.
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Americans gave a record amount to charity in 2025, yet the people doing the giving are a shrinking group. Individuals still supply the majority of every charitable dollar, but the share of households that give has fallen for two decades and most first-time donors never return. This report pulls the latest verified figures on individual giving, from the Giving USA 2026 annual report through the Fundraising Effectiveness Project, and explains what they mean for churches and nonprofits. It is part of our statistics hub for fundraising research.
Key takeaways
Total giving hit a record, and individuals drove it
Total U.S. giving reached an estimated $617.20 billion in 2025, up 5.7% in current dollars and 3.0% after inflation. Individuals contributed $394.2 billion, a 4.1% gain in current dollars and 1.4% after inflation. Consumer sentiment stayed near historic lows, which the report says may have held back some households. The prior-year comparison shows the same direction: total giving reached $592.50 billion in 2024, and individuals gave $392.45 billion that year.
Where the dollars come from
Individuals remain the largest source by a wide margin. Foundations, bequests and corporations supply the rest, and bequests reached $62.19 billion, a 19.7% jump after a sharp 2024 drop. Religion remains the top recipient subsector, receiving about 23% of giving, while human services and education follow.
The long slide in individual giving's share
Individual giving is still the backbone, but its share has been drifting down for decades. Researchers at the Lilly School compare the first five-year span in their dataset with the most recent one: individuals fell from 80% of charitable dollars to 65%, while foundation giving rose from 7% to 18%. Relative to income, giving is steady, not growing: individual giving equaled 1.7% of disposable personal income in 2025, versus a 2.4% high in 2005.
Fewer households are giving at all
Dollar totals can rise while participation falls, and the household data shows exactly that. The Lilly School's survey of more than 9,000 households recorded 66.2% of households giving in 2000, dropping to 49.6% by 2018. The pandemic sped up the decline: the share fell from 50.9% in 2018 to 46.9% in 2020. The same research found about 20 million fewer donor households between 2000 and 2016.
| Year | Share of U.S. households giving | Source |
|---|---|---|
| 2000 | 66.2% | IU Lilly School |
| 2018 | 49.6% | IU Lilly School |
| 2020 | 46.9% | IU News |
Wealth and age matter. Nearly eight in 10 households with more than $200,000 in wealth gave in 2018, while fewer than four in 10 households with less than $50,000 did. Reporting on the same study noted that only about a third of households headed by someone under 40 gave that year, which is a warning sign for future donor pipelines.
Retention: most donors do not come back
Retention is where many programs lose ground. The FEP's latest annual estimate says
