Giving USA dropped its 2025 numbers this week: $617.2 billion, a 5.7% jump that beat inflation. If you’re a fundraiser, you earned a breath. Raising money has never been harder. Uncertain federal dollars, donor fatigue, a sector asked to do more with less, and still show up smiling at the gala. Take the win.
Let’s look closer, because the headline is hiding the real story.
MacKenzie Scott and Phil Knight didn’t just give generously. Together, they accounted for billions of dollars in growth that drove education’s gains this year. Meanwhile, the Fundraising Effectiveness Project (FEP) shows donor counts have declined every single year since 2021. Five years running. We are raising more money from fewer people and calling it health.
That’s not generosity. That’s a concentration risk wearing a party hat.
And the federal funding gap? It isn’t closing. McGrady at the Giving USA Foundation put it plainly: Roughly a third of nonprofits had federal funding, and most of those felt the disruption in some way. Delays, uncertainty, not always outright loss, but enough to destabilize budgets that were already thin. No amount of bequest growth or foundation dollars is rescuing that hole on its own.
Here’s the opportunity hiding inside the numbers.
The great wealth transfer is real, and it is just getting started. If your organization doesn’t have a planned giving conversation underway, you are leaving money on the table that’s about to get bigger. And if your donor file is thinning even as your revenue climbs, that’s not a problem for the future. That’s a today problem with a clear, doable fix. Nationally, 64% of nonprofit revenue still comes from individual donors.
You did a heck of a job last year.
Now let’s make sure this year is built on what you do best: showing people their opportunity to be part of your story.