Among the thousands of words about poverty, wars, and natural disasters you’ll read today, it’s good to find this extraordinarily positive news. According to the just-released Giving USA 2015 annual report, Americans donated an estimated $358.4 billion to charity in 2014, the highest total in the report’s sixty-year history. That’s 5.4 percent increase over 2013.
In fact, giving reached 2.1 percent of GDP of last year — up from 2.0 percent in 2013. That’s the highest it’s been since 2003.
We want to share a few of the report’s most important highlights with you:
72% of all giving was made by individuals. Individual contributions totaled $258.5-billion last year, but that is still less than they gave in 2007 when they set a record for giving.
Just about 8% of giving came from bequests.
Foundations contributed 15% of total giving.
5% of all giving came from corporations.
Corporate giving increased by 12%, although that included in-kind as well as cash support.
Religious giving dropped from 40 to 50% of giving to 32% of total giving.
Donations to international affairs sank 3.6%, the only category of giving that decreased.
Arts philanthropy enjoyed the largest increase, up 7.4%.
The share of income Americans gave stayed at about 2% of disposable income, even though individual giving did increase about 4%.
There were many mega-gifts largely given by younger tech entrepreneurs, which ranged from $200 million to nearly $2 billion.
So what does this mean for you?
Stay focused on individual giving, which will continue to be the most important part of your funding stream.
Cultivate your major donors actively since people are not giving any greater percentage of their income to charity.
Expect corporate donations to consist of both in-kind and cash contributions.
With the uptick of giving, it might be a good time to embark on the capital campaign you’ve been putting off.
You can order the Giving USA 2015 report at this link.
