The State of
Generosity

The Fundraising Effectiveness Project tracks the same organizations quarter after quarter — 15,700 of them, 3.2 million givers, $3.5 billion in gifts in its most recent sample. Its two headline lines have moved in opposite directions since 2021.

The Charities Aid Foundation surveyed people in 101 countries. Sixty percent gave money in 2025, averaging about 1% of income — 1.6% across Africa, 0.6% across Europe. The composition is where it gets interesting.

The counter-example: the United Kingdom

Not every market is holding. UK public donations fell from £15.4B in 2024 to an estimated £14B in 2025 — down roughly 9–10%. Participation held at 55% for the year but has slid from 69% in 2016. The average monthly gift dropped from £72 to £65; the median from £28 to £26. Support for overseas aid and disaster relief fell from 19% of givers in 2016 to 11% in 2025. CAF describes the UK giving culture as becoming "fragile." Notably, 78% of those who do give say they are motivated by emotional connection to the cause, and 53% by wanting to be part of something bigger.

Platform data tells a healthier story than the sector aggregates, because platforms capture the direct, person-to-person giving that never touches an organization's donor file — and that sector totals therefore never count.

The fastest-growing categories on GoFundMe in 2025 were Charity, then Monthly Bills and Faith. Fundraising for school supplies rose over 50%; for essential household expenses, 20%. That is a portrait of economic strain and faith-motivated generosity finding a direct channel at the same moment. By donors per capita, Ireland led for the seventh consecutive year, followed by the United States, United Kingdom, Australia and Canada.

On the industry side, the global crowdfunding platform services market is projected at $2.11B in 2026, up from $1.83B in 2025 and growing at a 13.7% compound rate through 2034. Read that as revenue platforms earn, not volume they move — the volume is an order of magnitude larger and is not comprehensively measured anywhere.

Religion still receives more American charitable dollars than any other cause — $151.58B in 2025 — and it is still the slowest-growing one. Up 2.4% nominal, it fell roughly 0.2% after inflation, following a 1.0% real decline in 2024. The structural trend is sharper than the annual one.

By dollars: grown, genuinely. U.S. giving rose 3.0% in real terms in 2025 after 3.3% in 2024 — two consecutive years of real growth following three years of losing to inflation. Online revenue grew 15%. GivingTuesday grew 13%.

By people: reduced, persistently. The U.S. giver base has shrunk every year since 2021. UK participation is down 14 points from 2016. The person giving $25 is the one disappearing — and that is precisely the population a movement is built from.

By generosity in the broader sense: grown, and fast. On GivingTuesday 2025, financial participation grew 3% while volunteering grew 20% and advocacy grew 26%. Globally, direct person-to-person giving now surpasses institutional charity in both participation and value.

People are not less generous. They are less willing to route generosity through institutions whose results they cannot see. The thing standing between a good-hearted person and a gift is almost never a shortage of compassion. It is a question mark: is this real, will it reach a person, will I ever know? Left standing, that question mark turns a generous person into a scroller.

The money is available. The trust is not automatic. And the advantage has moved to whoever can make giving feel direct, visible and shared.

Ranked by the gap between what the data says and what most organizations actually do — not by ease. Each one carries a note on how well evidenced it is, because anyone handing you ten tactics with equal confidence is selling something.

High confidence. Giving USA (Indiana University Lilly Family School of Philanthropy), the Fundraising Effectiveness Project, M+R Benchmarks, the CAF World Giving Report and CAF UK Giving. These are large, methodologically documented panels. Note that Giving USA revises prior-year estimates, that the FEP changed methodology in 2025, and that retention figures differ between sources because the FEP's 43.3% is an annual rate while quarterly and vendor figures measure something narrower.

Directional only. Platform self-reports such as GoFundMe's year-in-review, market-sizing forecasts, and the aggregated campaign benchmarks in plays 05 and 04. These are useful for setting expectations and useless as proof. Where a claim here rests on them, it is labeled.

Not covered. Giving in China, India and the Gulf, which is large and poorly captured by Western survey panels; in-kind corporate giving; and informal religious giving outside congregational accounting.

Terminology. Where this page reports external data it uses the sector's own word, donor. Everywhere else it says giver, which is what we call the people who do this.