← Nonprofit Nation with Julia Campbell
Nonprofit Nation with Julia Campbell
Giving Is Back: Insights from the 2025 Giving USA Report with Wendy McGrady
00:36:52
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Planning a nonprofit fundraising event can feel overwhelming, but it doesn't have to. Download Bloomerang's free event planning checklist that walks you through every critical step before, during and after your event. Save time, reduce stress, we don't need more stress. And give your supporters an event they'll remember. What you're going to find in the checklist A step by step pre event guide. A post event checklist to help you close the loops. Built in reminders to boost visibility like prepping social media posts and how to collect on site donations and help turn a good event into a great one. So just get your copy by going to www.jcsocialmarketing.com backslash checklist jcsocialmarketing.com checklist now on to the episode.
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Hello and welcome to Nonprofit Nation. I'm your host, Julia Campbell and I'm going to sit down industry experts, fundraisers, marketers, and everyone in between to get real and discuss what it takes to build that movement that you've been dreaming of. I created the Nonprofit Nation podcast to share practical wisdom and strategies to help you confidently find your voice, definitively grow your audience and effectively build your movement. If you're a nonprofit newbie or an experienced professional who's looking to get more visibility, reach more people and create even more impact, then you're in the right place. Let's get started.
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Hi everyone, this is Julia Campbell. And welcome or welcome back to Nonprofit Nation. Today we're going to talk about insights from the 2025 Giving USA report. Now, the numbers don't lie. 2024 was a record breaking year for charitable giving. But are you actually feeling it this year? And what does it mean for 2026 and how can we put all this data into action? So today my guest is Wendy McGrady, president and COO of the Curtis Group and chair of the Giving USA Foundation. And we're going to break down the insights from the newly released Giving USA 2025 Annual Report. Now, with giving up 6.3% and outpacing inflation for the first time in three years, I think that fundraisers have a reason to be optimistic, but also strategic. So, Wende, welcome to the podcast.
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C
Thank you. Thanks for having me, Julia.
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A
Yay. And I kind of just blew the headline there for you. But that is the headline. Charitable giving hit an all time high in 2024. Now, it was up 6.3% and outpaced inflation, which I think is the real key here. What do you see as the biggest kind of story behind those numbers?
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C
Yeah, I guess starting with last year, because that's what Giving USA measured last year's numbers, the story was great. Giving was up. It was really strong 6.3% increase over the year before. Even if you adjust that for inflation, it's a 3.3% increase. And people say, why? You know, what really makes a good year in giving? And what we find is that people give big when they're feeling economically and financially secure. So in 2024, they felt that way. And the economic metrics, if you will, bore that out, I mean, everything from inflation moderating down to 3%, you know, still not as low as it was, had been for years and years and years, but way down from where it had been. GDP up over 5%. Personal disposable income up over 5%. The S&P up 23.3% year over year. Many major donors give from assets, so when the market does well, they feel confident in their giving. So the S and P and GDP are really the two that I would say, if you had to boil it all down, keep an eye on those for the future. But all those indicators, I mean, consumer spending was up over 5%. So last year, all the factors pointed in the same direction, and donors felt good and confident and they gave. And we saw it in the numbers.
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A
That's so exciting. So I did have that question. What role did the stock market and GDP growth play? Should we be cautious, though, about, like, over relying on these macroeconomic trends?
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Interestingly, we have 70 years now of giving USA data.
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Wow. I didn't even know that.
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C
I don't think it's 70th edition. This.
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Wow. Okay, so you got some good idea of the trends.
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C
So unlike some other data sources, we've got a long track record of history to look at. And what we see is that generally people keep giving in our country that is somehow ingrained in our culture. I'm not saying every household gives. And in fact, the number of households has decreased over the last years. And I think we'll. I hope we'll have time to talk about that today, because that's really important. But it is a part of our culture to support others. So there are different things that drive that. Whether it's your personal faith, beliefs, your family taught you, your cultural beliefs. Some cultures believe we have a responsibility to take care of our brothers and sisters. So anyway, it's part of our culture. And each year we start from zero. You know, this is not a metric that starts there and moves up. It starts from zero every year. And what we see is that Number keeps going up.
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What do we think the data is telling us about how Americans are thinking about generosity and giving, especially in today's sort of fraught political climate.
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C
Yes. So there are about five different ways we could go with this conversation, Julia.
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We can go any way you want.
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Yeah. This could take us the whole rest of the time. But back to your earlier question. Are we over reliant on those economic measures? From that 70 years of data, we can see that S and P and GDP become the two primary indicators of what's going to happen with philanthropy and giving. So don't be reliant on it. Certainly your results are not going to happen because of economic measures at all. But if you want to be informed about your strategy, those are a couple of things to keep your eye on. Now, your question about how people are feeling, what was your word or your sentence there?
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What are they thinking about? Generosity and giving.
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Yes. So there's a lot of conversation around generosity. Giving USA is just one measure, one indicator, one metric. Financial gifts to registered charities are tracked through Giving usa. There's so many other ways people share their generosity, whether that's volunteering, whether that's pennies in a jar somewhere that don't actually count, toward a nonprofit, whether that's crowdfunding, where someone contributes to my family's need for funeral funding or for healthcare, that I don't have access to those kinds of things. And we see it all the time. People are moved to help, to support, to be there. And there's a lot of different ways to show that. So I would say different generations think of generosity slightly differently. So you've got the boomers who are at the height of their ability to give, who still give financially, who've served on the boards, they've done the volunteering and they're now they just want to whatever, play golf, go to whatever. So I don't blame them. They've paid their dues, they've moved on, but they're still giving. Thank God, they're still contributing financially. Then you come down to some of the other generations. People in the middle there, still building their wealth, may give and certainly do give, but also serve on boards, take leadership positions, do volunteer, want to give, not just time and energy and money, but, you know, experience and knowledge and want to be engaged in changing things. And then there's another generation who is much more apt to respond to a nonprofit's text messages or respond electronically to appeals and to want to gather their network and their relationships to make change possible. So I would say People are responding to generosity in different ways, but as a culture, as a country, we are still very generous in many ways.
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I think so, too. And I see that as well. My husband is, you know, volunteering as head den master of the Cub Scouts, and he barely has any time to do anything. I volunteer on the school board, and of course, I do a lot with the schools and the friends, friends of groups at the schools. But even my mother, you know, baby boomer, she's volunteering with Meals on Wheels because she really wants to give back. And she feels this calling to, you know, people that have helped her and services that she's received, like she wants to give back. I see generosity around me all the time, and maybe it's just the culture of how I was brought up or where I live. But you say, I know in the report the number of households giving is down. Can you tell me more maybe about that statistic and kind of what it. What are the implications of it?
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C
So we were talking about this concept of generosity beyond financial philanthropy. There was a report that came out last year. It was actually about a year ago, this time from the Generosity Commission. That was a group that spun off Giving USA a number of years ago, and its intent was to look broadly at generosity in its many forms. And that commission intentionally didn't come out with an answer to it. They came out with a lot of questions for people and nine recommendations ranging from all kinds of things we as a citizenry could do to encourage philanthropy. So everything from the role of community foundations, corporations encouraging people to volunteer, encouraging people to give by matching those dollars or by giving them the time, once a year, twice a year, to go spend time volunteering youth and the role they play as volunteers and future philanthropists, increasing the availability of the tax deduction, which maybe we'll get around to talking about tax policy changes and what an impact that might have on philanthropy today since that was a recent change, and then funding things like the IRS exemption organization's division so that they can properly do their job and their role in philanthropy, increasing the amount of research on this. So anyway, there are a lot of organizations that heard that call and are picking up that mantle and saying, okay, what can we do? Not in our silos, but what could we do together to potentially get some new research on generosity? So Giving USA foundation is one of many organizations that are planning how they'll work together. They've already started to pull this information together. So the Generosity Commission report and those recommendations is something that your listeners may want to take a look At. Because we all have a role to play at various times in our life, just like you and your mom and your husband. Right now you're concerned about organizations that impact your children or that impacted your family or that impacted your health. Your mom's concerned about an older population. You know, maybe she can view herself in that role at some point. So we all have those things at different times in our life that we can invest our expertise and knowledge in to make a difference. I got off track. I don't think it covered your question, Julia.
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A
The number of households are down. I think when. So when people see, like, record giving year. Yes, I know. Alarm bells go off for a lot of, like, small nonprofits because they think, oh, that means, like, the Harvard University, the universities, the big endowments, the big foundations, the big healthcare institutions, they are thinking, like, oh, major gifts are up, but our $5 a month donors are down. Is that something you're seeing across the.
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Board, across the country? It is hitting this trend of, we call it dollars up, donors down. Okay, so the dollar number is going up, but the number of people who are making those gifts is going down.
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That's alarming.
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So some people are giving more in order for those dollars to go up. The FEP Fundraising Effectiveness Project, which is afp.
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Tim San Antonio is my friend, the chair.
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Great. Love him. So Tim and his group come out quarterly, as you know, with metrics on what's happening this year over last year and the most recent quarter. That's the only data we have for this year on what's happening so far. And the trend continues. Increase in dollars. Their last quarter was 3.6%, but decrease in the number of donors, down another percentage and a half almost. And where are we feeling that the most? You said it, Julia. Those small donors that give $10 a month or they give $25 a month, they're the ones the last few years. Think of it. There was the pandemic, then there was inflation. They had to choose from their $25 a month gift or gas or prescriptions or, you know, we were talking about groceries for a year.
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Oh, yes.
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So those are the people that have to make those tough choices. And we're seeing those donors drop out. And the reason I was talking about the generosity Commission. Thank you for helping me connect these dots, was they identified that as a huge issue and concern to our democracy. Because in the US we view participation in a system as good. And participation in a system, if you will, philanthropy that is all about social good. We want participation in that and not Just by the wealthy. We want everyone to feel like they're invested and that they can make a difference. I mean, $25 a month adds up. And those people don't just do it for a year, they do it for a long time. That's how some of those small organizations, well, even big organizations, but that's how they identify their loyal donors is those people that give those amounts of money year after year after year. So, yes, the trend is alarming. The saving grace on the flip side of that is that people are stepping up and that more money is being given and that nonprofits are being supported in their work. Because think of it, the need is greater than ever.
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The need is greater than ever.
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Where we were coming off the pandemic and then people in inflation and not having the money to do the things they need to do to keep themselves healthy, their kids healthy, educated, whatever the need is. So there is a trend that's alarming right now. Those bigger donors are making up for it. Oh, it's going to say something about fep. The Fundraising Effectiveness Project has said the small donor group, the 0 to 100, 0 to $100 donors, make up 57% of all the donors that they're measuring. That's not horrible. But the amount of money is getting smaller and smaller. So this is a big group of people who are being impacted in big ways. Or we could say not inspired, or we could say distracted. You know, maybe they've gone away for a period of time. But that brings us back to the whole. How do you apply this data? Yes, you've certainly spent time talking about storytelling. I've spent time talking about storytelling and how important consistent communication with your donors is. Is the story different this year than what we're talking about last year? Huh? That's.
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I didn't mean to interrupt you. Yes, the story is different this year than the story was last year. I really think nonprofits struggle to make their mission about the moment that we're in because they don't want to be polarizing. I mean, every single thing you say in this world is polarizing. If I say I like orange juice, you're going to say, well, why don't you like apple juice? And you hate cranberry juice and what's wrong with you? So no matter what you say, it's going to be polarizing. So we have to just kind of get over that. If you say, all kids need to be fed, there will be a congressman out there saying, why can't kids get a job at fifth grade? And buy their own lunch. And that has actually happened. But I think what I struggle with in talking to nonprofits about messaging and storytelling is their hesitancy to claim this moment and really talk about like, services are up. Okay. Nonprofits are under attack. Our funding has been cut or whatever is relevant and timely and really the truth for you at this moment. And I think that's what's going to resonate most with donors, like how I.
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And it's got to be consistent. So last year was one thing. We came into 2025 feeling good. There were great headwinds pushing us forward.
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Yeah.
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Market was up. Well, the market is still up. Thank goodness. If we're going to look at that as an indicator, thank goodness the market is still performing. So those assets are still worth valued at what they were at the end of last year. Actually more. We're still near that all time high that happened. What was that, July?
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Well, the wealthy are getting wealthier. Yeah, the wealthier.
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Getting wealthier. It appears they're giving more.
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That's good.
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Not necessarily a bigger percentage of their wealth because their wealth continues to grow, but they are becoming a bigger percentage of the donor pool. But back to storytelling for a minute. Julia, I love your point. And I think maybe that fear of offending someone may have caused a timidity.
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Yes.
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In communicating or a concern that they might offend someone. But the reason I say it needs to be consistent is if we came into 2025 feeling great and you were telling us about how you had expanded your programs and people were. And all this great news. And then if you happen to be one of a third of nonprofits who receive federal grant funding. I'm not even talking about the number that receive contracts or fee for service revenues. I'm just saying there's a third of nonprofits out there who get federal funding through grants. Yes. And over 45% of that third half of their revenue is dependent on federal funding. So we're talking about a large number of nonprofits that have taken huge hits over the last nine months. Eight. Nine months. So if your reality is that different and you're not consistently communicating to me as a donor how it's changing, then I don't feel the urgency that you feel every day when you sit down at your desk and try to figure out how you're going to close the gap today, what I mean by consistent communication is not just put out another email blast, although put out email blasts. You've got to talk to especially your major donors because they all want different information You've got to figure out what their idea of return on investment means, what they want to know. Some people want to see financial statements. I want you to tell me stories and tell me what's going on with your funding sources and how they're impacted and what you've been able to do about it and what's next. What are you expecting? So I guess what I'm saying is, if I don't have a sense, a really good sense as a donor for what's happening at the organization, what's going to call me to step up and increase my giving this year.
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Exactly. Exactly. I think we really need to be honest with our communities and our audience and our donors, and we need to talk about what's happening. And I said this during COVID that there were nonprofits sending me emails and posting on social media like there was not a worldwide pandemic and things weren't shut down and everyone wasn't freaking out. Like I said, you know, if you want to maybe go go quiet for a little while, figure out what you're going to say, but don't just keep pretending nothing's wrong and everything's hunky dory.
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And we had those conversations, too. People sort of put their heads in the ground and weren't asking for money because they didn't want to. You know, everybody's struggling, and we don't want to hurt any feelings. I.
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Only nonprofits would think that. I still got emails from Target every day.
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Right. How do you operate? And. And then there are donors out there who we see these surveys of what motivates donors all the time. And everyone starts with, I want to make a difference. So here's an opportunity every day, the last six months, nine months, for you to make a difference. But nonprofits are hesitant.
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Yes.
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To communicate that. And people always love something they can fix. Right. Not everything you need to raise money for is easy to pin on, like, one project or one program. But if you've got one program that just took a hit in federal funding and your Head Start program is about to close, for example, wouldn't that be something good to try and raise dollars for? Because the donors can get their arms around that. I know what Head Start is. I know how many kids and families you're impacting. I want to help you keep it open.
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We had that happen. I lived in Virginia and worked at a domestic violence shelter, and we had the state cut money for children's services, foster care services, and that was really affecting our ability to provide services with our partners. And a variety of things that we did. So we were, you know, I was the director of development, and I said, you know, we really need to tell people what's going on. And it's not. I mean, to me, it was political, and it is political, but I said, we don't have to make it political. It's reality. We had a $500,000 grant that we relied on every year, and it was cut. And now 30 kids are not going to get services, and that's just reality. So we need to tell people about this, and we need to tell people how they can help. And my listeners know I get very fired up about all of this. I. I believe in what you said. I love this quote. One of your quotes, giving is a unifying act of hope. Giving is a unifying act of hope, and I firmly believe that it is.
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And as I said, people really want to make a difference, but they're not in your seat.
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No, they don't know. They can't read minds.
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Right. They can't read mine. So we've got to tell them.
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Okay, so let's go into maybe how to make this actionable, because we can talk about the data all day. I'm hoping that people are going to download and get the report, look at the data. But let's talk about maybe two, three ways we could. We could make this actionable at our organizations.
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Yes. First of all, I would say, and maybe this is two or three things all rolled into one, Julia. So just forgive me, but we talked about consistent communication. Part of that is to maintain relationships with donors. We already have.
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Yes.
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Donor retention always wants to talk about. We get constant calls, and the first thing people say is, now we. We need to have more donors, so we need new donors.
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And where are those new donors at?
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It's like, what, There's a stash of them last.
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They're just a stash of them.
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But, yes, we all need new donors, and we are having to develop them over time. But it appears again, going back to that FEP data, and you've seen it from Tim, every time it comes out, donor retention goes down more, which means if donor retention is around 45% right now, that means we're flipping 55% of our donor base each year.
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Crazy.
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That means I'm having to go out and get 55% to replace last year's donors. And I get it. You know, you've got a race. You have a lot of people that come in one year and don't come in the next. Whatever. There's differences in the way we calculate donor retention. I get that. But stewardship? I know this always falls to the bottom of everybody's list, but it ends up being one of the more important things to your donor. Because if I stepped up and I made a thousand dollars gift to your nonprofit and you didn't make me feel like that was a big deal to you, maybe didn't recognize that I had never made a thousand dollar gift before and made me feel good about that, yeah, I might not be inclined to try and keep that up next year. Now, not everybody thinks like I do. Maybe they just that's going to be their number from here on out. But what I'm saying is find out what your donors want to hear to understand. Do they like it in writing? Do they want you to take them to lunch? Do they want a phone call every quarter? Find out what they want and focus on your current donors first so that we're not flipping donors every year and losing them and having to go find them and start all over. And part of the way we do that is that consistent communication and storytelling that you and I talked about. One of the things underlying all this is data and using data. And it may be stating the obvious, but I'll just say it because I have plenty of clients that are not doing it. If you're not sitting down quarterly and tracking a few metrics that are meaningful to you or your organization, not what Julia or Wendy tells you to track, what you need to track right now is what you want to happen. Measure what you want to happen. And if you're not sitting down quarterly and looking at those metrics, you don't know how you're doing. And you can't measure it just by how much money you raised at the end of the year. So if stewardship's falling to the bottom of your list, have a goal this year about stewardship and retaining more donors than you did last year. I digress. It's a bit of a pet peeve for me. But replacing donors and all the work that goes into that, I just watch nonprofits sometimes work so hard at spinning their wheels that I just want to highlight how understanding that data, especially on donor retention, can really help you. The other thing that I would say is I alluded to the pandemic when nonprofits stopped asking their donors to support them. I would say now is not the time to take that kind of posture.
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Totally agree.
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1 Foundation assets are higher than they've ever been. This is the third year that they've hit $100 billion in giving. Foundations now, yes, you could say foundations. Only 20% of the whole. And it is. We've talked about individuals, we've talked about where their assets and where their money and how that's impacted foundations. 20% of all sources of giving are sitting on a lot of assets. And thus far, I don't know what you've seen, Julia, but what I see is a lot of watching and waiting from the foundation community. Some of them have stepped up. Some of them have come up with, as they did during the pandemic, some kind of emergency ways to meet current needs. And they have pushed off some other grantees that might not have as urgent needs, if you would, in order to do that. And I appreciate that. But I'm seeing a lot of watching and waiting to see what's temporary, what's long term. And in the meantime, I'm seeing nonprofits closing. I'm seeing lots of staff released, I'm seeing programs being cut. And I'm not trying to be critical of foundations. What I am saying is they're sitting on a greater amount of assets than they've ever been sitting on before. So my hope is that we are going to see if we were talking in another month or another three months or another six months, a bold response to this crisis by foundations. Now, I do want to say one thing in defense of foundations. We cannot close this gap that's been created by the loss of federal funding of nonprofits through grants. Foundations would have to give 282% more in order to close that gap. So let me be clear. I'm not looking at foundations going, oh, you should do that. I'm saying they've got the assets they can give and they want to do it smartly. So they're working on what those wise responses will be.
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A
And there's other ways foundations can act other than giving money, which I think is the most important. But certainly they can convene thought leaders, they can do advocacy, they can hold trainings for organizations to do fundraising. There's lots of ways that they can become leaders in this moment. So I love that idea of taking bold steps.
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C
Yes.
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And bold initiatives.
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Yes.
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Okay. We could talk for hours. I've. I know this is so interesting, this conversation so much.
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C
I could just keep going.
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So I have. I have two more questions. One, what excites you most about the future of charitable giving and what worries you?
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C
That's like a two pronged. That's a great question. What excites me is being in this role. I think I'VE thought more about and I've seen more on the possibilities, the opportunities that we have and who would have predicted the changes in funding structure over the last few months. So that just adds to the possibilities and the opportunities. We are a wealthy nation and typically we give about 2% of GDP or 2% of personal disposable income. So if we want to make a difference, this may be the year when those of us who can do it stretch and say, this is my year to do more. And think of the power of that. If a large number of us were to say, clearly it's needed this year, if I can do it any year, I'm going to try and do it this year. It's power in numbers. And I just think if we talked more about the need and the fact that no policy change is going to close this gap.
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A
No policy change is going to close this gap.
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C
Oh, I know.
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Well, I think what can we be hopeful? What can we be hopeful for?
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I think the fact that I said we're a wealthy nation and there are those who are giving more. So I think those that are giving more and the fact that even those who are giving those smaller gifts have this motivation toward generosity is reason for hope.
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Yes.
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It is our intrinsic, it's like in our DNA, it's how we're made that makes us want to help others by giving. And again, the, the research, every time you see why do you give? Usually it's major donors. Why do you give? What motivates you? It's I want to make a difference, I want to give back. And, you know, simple things like it makes me feel good to help others.
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How can we find the Giving USA Report and also connect with you and learn more about your work? Wende yes.
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C
So my work at the Curtis Group, I am a fundraising consultant. We have a team of fundraising consultants and we work with all different sectors of nonprofits on typically three things. We do capacity building for non profits who are at one place and want to be at another place with their fundraising. We do planning for major campaigns and we do, we work with clients on the execution of those campaigns. When I say major campaigns, I mean something bigger than you've ever done before, which is different than the next person. Usually people call us when they want to do something bigger than they've ever raised before.
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Yeah.
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And then the Giving USA report and other resources, because it doesn't Giving USA foundation doesn't just publish Giving usa. It comes out with special reports on certain types of giving things that would inform your strategy as a fundraiser. So I would definitely keep up with givingusa.org and check out both Giving USA. You can subscribe there and you get those special reports throughout the year if you're a Giving USA subscriber. But if not, just check in periodically and see what the latest publications look like. Oh cool.
- [35:33]
A
Well, thank you so much Wende. This is fantastic. I really appreciate you being here, sharing some insights and telling us how to make all of this wonderful data actionable.
- [35:44]
C
I have loved it, really enjoyed it. Anytime you want to use me as a resource, Julia, give me a call. Foreign.
- [35:58]
B
Thank you for tuning into my show and for listening all the way to the end. If you really enjoyed today's conversation, make sure to subscribe to the show in your favorite podcast app and you'll get new episodes downloaded as soon as they come out. I would love if you left me a rating or a review because this this tells other people that my podcast is worth listening to and then me and my guests can reach even more earbuds and create even more impact. So that's pretty much it. I'll be back soon with a brand new episode, but until then you can find me on Instagram juliacampbell77 Keep changing the world, you non profit unicorn.
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SA.