Making Sense of GivingTuesday 2025

There’s no question that GivingTuesday, the annual fundraising event started in 2012 by the 92nd Street YMCA in New York City and the UN Foundation, has grown into a force of its own. It is now coordinated by a nonprofit of the same name, and is a nontrivial factor in many nonprofit organizations’ annual fundraising.

With this year’s GivingTuesday behind us, we’re taking a look at not just the numbers, but also the stories about our sector that those numbers tell.

The Giving Hasn’t Stopped

This year’s GivingTuesday broke previous records, with 38.1 million people participating in the event worldwide and donating $4 billion in the United States.

Here’s the breakdown of the 2025 US numbers compared to 2024 from GivingTuesday.org:

• Total dollars donated: $4.0 billion, an increase of 13 percent
• Total participants: 38.1 million, an increase of 6 percent
• Participants who made financial contributions: 19.1 million, an increase of 3 percent
• Participants who gave goods: 13.5 million, an increase of 4 percent
• Participants who volunteered: 11.1 million, an increase of 20 percent
• Participants who spoke out about causes: 20.9 million, an increase of 26 percent

The participation breakdown reveals that GivingTuesday is expanding beyond financial contributions. The increases in volunteerism, as well as advocacy, suggest people are finding diverse ways to engage with the causes they care about and support the organizations that uphold their values.

“Year after year, millions of people across the globe make GivingTuesday a priority, not because it’s a trend or because it’s new, but because generosity is woven into how we care for each other,” said GivingTuesday CEO Asha Curran in a statement. “The fact that people show up so strongly not just on GivingTuesday, but every single day, in the spirit of generosity, speaks volumes about our ability to unite around a shared vision for a better world, especially during a year as challenging as this one‚ one full of upheaval, uncertainty, and loss in communities and across sectors.”

A Continued Trend: Dollars Up, Donors Down

While the number of donors and the total amount donated both increased, the latter figure increased by about double the rate that individual donations did. It’s a trend, often dubbed “dollars up, donors down,” that has been persistent in recent years.

As we recently reported, there are reasons to be concerned about this pattern. For one, it indicates a growing dependence by nonprofits on fewer, wealthier donors. It also suggests that many nonprofits are struggling to maintain their bases of small donors.

“These figures suggest an urgency around addressing the declining retention of small donors, through efforts that, for example, promote more frequent giving with monthly or regular donation programs,” noted the Fundraising Effectiveness Project, a project of the Association of Fundraising Professionals, in a 2024 report.

Trump-Era Tax Policies Driving Last-Minute Giving

One of the reasons for more overall giving this year, suggested Karen Kardos, head of philanthropic advisory at Citi Wealth, in an interview with NPQ, is the impending shift in tax policies around giving that were included in the “Big Beautiful Bill,” passed by the Trump White House and Congressional Republicans.

“Your campaign didn’t struggle because your mission is weak.”

While the bill did raise the individual “universal” charitable deduction for ordinary tax filers (those who don’t itemize deductions), it also capped deductions of itemizers at 35 percent, which will likely disincentivize donors. It also placed a floor on charitable deductions made by corporations, constituting “artificial limitations,” as the Council on Foundations put it, on corporate charitable giving. (The National Council of Nonprofits offers a more complete breakdown of the 2025 budget reconciliation bill and its impact on the nonprofit sector.)

“I think people are trying to take advantage of charitable deductions to the extent they can before the bill kicks in beginning January 1,” Kardos told NPQ.

Potential Generational Shifts in Giving

Kardos also suggested that some of the increase in overall donations may have to do with generational trends in how individuals approach charitable giving: “In the older generation, it was basically an organization came knocking at your door: ‘Knock, knock, knock, may we have a check?’ and a check was written, and off the organization went.”

Younger donors, by contrast, are shaped by technology and social networks that broaden (though may not necessarily deepen) individuals’ connection to the news and national and global events, while also facilitating group giving in ways that were previously difficult.

“I think that’s why movements”—rather than individual charities—“really resonate with young people because that’s the way that they communicate and that’s the way they see things,” Kardos explained.

The growth of giving circles reflects this shift toward collective action within social networks, Kardos said, allowing groups to pool resources and create greater impact together.

Don’t Let GivingTuesday Rule Your Strategy

Having recently featured GivingTuesday advice from inimitable fundraising maven, podcaster, and NPQ columnist, Rhea Wong, we thought Wong’s words of wisdom from a recent newsletter may help some of those for whom GivingTuesday wasn’t so rosy.

“If you’re anything like me, this week has been loud. Too many emails, too many stories, too many pleas, too many emojis,” Wong wrote. “Some made me tear up. Some made me cringe. Most just made me tired.”

“Your campaign didn’t struggle because your mission is weak. It didn’t struggle because you didn’t work hard enough. It struggled because fundraising is a system‚ and sometimes multiple parts of that system quietly wobble at the same time.”

Wong’s advice: Focus on the fundamentals. As she wrote, “Your donors don’t need perfection. They need clarity, consistency, and a reason to care. Give them that, and they will show up.”