Why fewer Americans are giving than before
The decline of philanthropy is not just about Donald Trump
At the end of every year, somewhere between buying presents and overeating, Americans usually turn charitable. But it seems fewer of them will give money away in 2025 than in years gone by. For this, it may be tempting to lay the blame squarely on President Donald Trump and his assault on do-goodery. Reality, though, is less convenient.
According to the Fundraising Effectiveness Project (fep), a data provider, the number of donors in America fell by around 3% in the first nine months of 2025, compared with the same period in 2024, setting charities on course for a fifth consecutive year of shrinking donor rolls (see chart 1). Even among the rich, the habit is fading fast. A survey by Bank of America suggests that the share of households worth more than $1m who gave fell from 91% in 2015 to 81% in 2024.
This is worsening the squeeze on non-profit groups. Total giving in America—including gifts from individuals, corporations, foundations and bequests—ticked up by a paltry 3.3% in real terms in 2024, according to Giving usa, an annual report based on research at Indiana University, to just over $590bn. And that followed a period of decline in total giving after the covid-19 pandemic. Government funding is also drying up. Although Mr Trump’s decision to shut America’s official aid agency grabbed headlines, other rich countries are slashing aid more quietly. Official development assistance from the world’s biggest donors fell for the first time in six years in 2024, says the oecd, a club of mostly rich countries.
What is behind the decline in charitable giving? Mr Trump has played a part. Since returning to office in January, he has denounced certain charities as wasteful and politicised, and branded causes such as climate change, higher education and diversity as anti-maga. After the murder in September of Charlie Kirk, a conservative activist, the White House ordered law-enforcement agencies to “disband and uproot" networks accused of supporting domestic terrorism, including charities and foundations. In September the justice department singled out the Open Society Foundations—funded by George Soros, a Hungarian-American investor, and long a bogeyman for maga—for investigation. Thad Calabrese of New York University notes that contributing to certain projects in America feels to some like “putting a bullseye on your back".
Yet Mr Trump is far from the whole story. The share of Americans who give to charity has been shrinking for at least a decade, according to the fep, including periods when Mr Trump was not in office. One explanation might be anxiety about affordability. Although wages have been rising in real terms over the past decade, surveys show that Americans are worried about the cost of living. Almost half of respondents to a survey by McKinsey, a consultancy, in November said that they were worried about rising prices; nearly a quarter fretted about making ends meet. The most common reason Americans gave for not donating to charity in 2024 was that they couldn’t afford it (see chart 2). Walter Kerr of Unlock Aid, which campaigns for aid reform, says such concerns mean that America’s middle class no longer feels comfortable giving.
The decline of faith doesn’t help. Many religions teach followers to be generous, whether they call it tithes, zakat or ma’aser. And America’s religiosity has long made it one of the most generous in the rich world. But a recent survey by Gallup found that faith is currently declining faster in America than in any other country the pollster has ever tracked. Donations to religious groups, which accounted for the majority of giving as recently as the late 1980s, fell to less than a quarter of the total in 2024.
All told, the non-profit sector is relying on fewer donors to be more generous. Amir Pasic, dean of the Indiana University Lilly Family School of Philanthropy, is hoping for a “dollars up, donors down" outcome. This will not be easy. The new super-rich are generally young tech founders, still focused on building fortunes, not giving them away. And Silicon Valley’s most conspicuous givers—the “effective altruist" (ea) movement—have retrenched since their chief backer, Sam Bankman-Fried, went to prison for fraud. Total ea grant-making will come to $863m in 2025, according to an official ea blog, down from over $1bn in 2022.
A small group of super-generous donors are, however, becoming more important to do-goodery than ever. The fep estimates “supersize" givers, who handed out $50,000 or more, made up 0.4% of all donors but contributed over 50% of total donations in America in the first nine months of 2025. Some prominent givers have responded to Mr Trump’s clampdown on non-profits by doling out more. The Gates Foundation announced it would spend $200bn in the next 20 years (and then close its doors). Mackenzie Scott, the ex-wife of Jeff Bezos, the founder of Amazon, announced a bumper $7bn of gifts this year. Alas, those big-bucks donors look unlikely to inspire the less well-heeled.
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