Is American Giving Back on Track after the Recession?

Indiana University’s Lilly Family School of Philanthropy recently released its Giving USA 2015 report, its 60th annual report of charitable giving trends in the United States.

The report says the United States gave an an estimated $358.38 billion to charity in 2014 and saw a 7.1 percent growth in charitable giving. This total slightly exceeded the benchmark year of 2007, when giving hit an estimated inflation-adjusted total of $355.17 billion.

In addition, 2014 marked the fifth year in a row where giving went up, with the average annual increase was 5.5 percent in current dollars (3.4 percent when inflation-adjusted), according to the report.

All four sources that comprise total giving — individuals (72 percent of the total); corporations (5 percent); foundations (15 percent); and bequests (8 percent) — upped their 2014 donations to America’s charities.

Charitable Giving by Source in 2014:

• Individual giving, $258.51 billion, increased 5.7 percent in current dollars (and 4.0 percent when inflation-adjusted) over 2013.
• Foundation giving, $53.97 billion, was 8.2 percent higher than 2013 (the increase was 6.5 percent when inflation-adjusted).
• Bequest giving, $28.13 billion, increased 15.5 percent (13.6 percent when inflation-adjusted) over 2013.
• Corporate giving, $17.77 billion, increased 13.7 percent (11.9 percent when inflation-adjusted) over 2013 giving.

The Center for High Impact for Philanthropy, based at the University of Philadelphia, also made several observations about the report and giving, including that individuals still contribute the largest percentage in absolute dollars to overall charitable giving, but their growth grew slower than giving by foundations and corporations; small changes in giving (less than 1% of GDP) can make a big difference, but there’s room to do more; and not all forms of giving are represented by the report, such as crowdfunding, mobile giving, and more.

Read more in Center for High Impact Philanthropy’s blog post.

Images via Giving USA