Charitable Giving 1992-2021

The Dorothy A. Johnson Center at Grand Valley State released an informative 30 year retrospective on charitable giving.  Philanthropy 1992-2022:  Giving Changed — How Much, Where To, and Who From discusses and links to a good bit of data to help inform charitable giving policy.  Here is a sample:

This essay not only reminds us what things looked like in 1992, but reveals how the practices of giving, the makeup and number of institutions, and the intensity and breadth of research and teaching about philanthropy have all expanded considerably and changed in sometimes dramatic ways.  Megadonors have become much more mega, the lines between the sectors have blurred more than anyone expected, and many more academic programs have opened their doors. Still, many aspects of the field and its institutions have endured — not always for the better. Nonprofit ethics scandals remain in the news as they were 30 years ago, and we still struggle with how to address persistent social and racial inequities. However, the overriding theme here is the incredible expansion and change in these past thirty years.

Giving increased in tandem with the economy, but the mix of giving sources shifted.

According to our best annual estimate of charitable giving, in the publication Giving USA, total giving from all sources in 1992 was $124.31 billion. In 2021 (the latest year calculated), that total rose to $484.85, an increase of $360 billion over 30 years.  However, this increase is not as astonishing as it might seem because the total giving figure has continued to track closely with the size of the overall U.S. economy. Giving now is roughly 2% of the national GDP, just as it was 2% back in 1992. As the economy grew, so did giving.  What has changed is the mix of charitable sources, as shown in Table 1. The most dramatic change is in the relative amount of total giving coming from individuals versus foundations. While individuals are still the largest source, they account now for only about two-thirds of total giving — whereas they were 82% of the total 30 years ago. This relative decline is less a result of individual giving declining, and more because the share of giving coming from foundations has risen so significantly, from less than 7% in 1992 to nearly 19% of all giving today.

dkj