Although a majority of individuals reported donating time, money, or other valuables in 2022, the United States experienced a decrease in both donors and dollars, a report from the GivingTuesday Data Commons finds.

Based on aggregated data of giving behavior worldwide, including the United States, India, Brazil, Kenya, and the United Kingdom, the report, Rethinking Resilience: Insights from the Giving Ecosystem (60 pages, PDF), found that globally, 84 percent of people donated time, money, items, or their voice in 2022, with 56 percent giving in at least three of those ways, and a majority (57 percent) giving to formal charities, informal groups, and individuals, the three recipient types tracked in the report. In the U.S., however, there was a decline in both the number of monetary donors and the amount of dollars donated, a trend not seen since 2010.

The report also found that the long-term trend of waning donor participation, which started in 2012, worsened sharply in 2022, with donors declining 10 percent year-over-year. While the leading cause of overall donor decline was an 18 percent drop in the number of new donors, the number of new-retained donors (those who donated in the previous year to an organization, but never before) decreased 26.4 percent, and repeat-retained donors showed a decline of 3.5 percent, bringing the total overall donor retention rate for 2022 to 42.6 percent, the lowest on record. Almost all of the decrease in donors (nearly 90 percent) is attributable to losses of donors who donated $500 and below (which represents 83 percent of all donors), and while the number of major ($5,000 to $50,000) and supersize donors (more than $50,000) decreased the least, they accounted for a much larger proportion of the decrease in dollars, (26 percent and 48 percent, respectively). In addition, the report found a reduction in large donor results in the fourth quarter of the year, which is typically the height of giving season.

According to the report, younger generations globally were more generous than older generations—giving more often and in more ways—and volunteering increased everywhere overall in 2022. However, in the U.S., Canada, and especially the UK, there was a significant minority of donors who only gave to registered charities, and older generations were less likely to donate money or items through informal organizations or directly to individuals. In addition, the report found that older groups were more likely than younger groups to trust charities.

“Here at the GivingTuesday Data Commons, we aim to bring the same sorts of data-driven tools to the social sector that the business sector has had for decades,” said chief data officer Woodrow Rosenbaum. “We’re working to enable the development and implementation of far more effective evidence-based campaigns and creating opportunities to move beyond outdated transactional models and explore more diverse, distributed, responsive, and enduring relational strategies.”

(Photo credit: Getty Images/Donald Gruener)