In brief
According to a new poll, about half of U.S. adults have already made their charitable contributions for 2025, while only a small fraction plans to donate before the year ends. Factors such as inflation, federal funding cuts, and competing financial priorities are leading to a decline in donations during the crucial end-of-year giving period. Charitable giving hit a notable low on GivingTuesday, with many Americans prioritizing holiday shopping instead.
NEW YORK (AP) — Most Americans aren’t making end-of-year charitable giving plans, according to the results of a new AP-NORC poll, despite the many fundraising appeals made by nonprofits that rely on donation surges in the calendar’s final month to reach budget targets.The survey, which was conducted in early December by The Associated Press-NORC Center for Public Affairs Research, found that about half U.S. adults say they’ve already made their charitable contributions for 2025. Just 18% say they’ve donated and will donate again before the year is over. Only 6% report they haven’t given yet but will do so by December’s end. The rest, 30%, haven’t donated and don’t plan to.Everyday donors faced competing priorities this year. President Donald Trump’s social services grant cuts, severe foreign aid rollbacks, and November SNAP benefits freeze — plus natural disasters like Los Angeles’ historically destructive wildfires — left no shortage of urgent causes in need of heightened support. Trump’s tax and spending legislation offered an extra incentive to give, too; most tax filers will see a new charitable deduction of up to $1,000 for individuals and $2,000 for married couples.But weaker income gains and steep price inflation meant that lower-income households had less money to redistribute. Other surveys have also found a yearslong decline in the number of individuals who give.December still serves as a “very important deadline” for donors, according to Dianne Chipps Bailey, managing director of Bank of America’s Philanthropic Solutions division. She cited estimates from the National Philanthropic Trust that nearly one-third of annual giving happens in the final month.Perhaps no day is more consequential for fundraisers than GivingTuesday. Americans donated an estimated $4 billion to nonprofits this most recent GivingTuesday, but many were much more likely to make a Black Friday purchase instead. Just under half say they bought something for Black Friday, compared to only about 1 in 10 who donated to a charity for GivingTuesday.Another avenue for nudging Americans to give is more widely used, even if individual donations are small. The AP-NORC poll found that about 4 in 10 U.S. adults say they donated to a charity when checking out at a store this year.About one-quarter of Americans plan to donate in the last weeks of the year, and Chuck Dietrick is one of them. He and his wife give monthly to Valley Hope, a nonprofit addiction services provider where their son did inpatient rehab. Dietrick estimates their household donated somewhere between $501 and $2,500.Most 2025 donors say the amount they gave wasn’t affected much by this year’s federal funding cuts or the government shutdown, according to the AP-NORC poll, although about 3 in 10 say those situations did impact the charities they chose to support. The AP-NORC poll of 1,146 adults was conducted Dec. 4-8 using a sample drawn from NORC’s probability-based AmeriSpeak Panel, which is designed to be representative of the U.S. population.
