Fewer Donors, Bigger Checks. Interpreting The Latest Giving Data. Designing Tomorrow: Creative Strategies For Social Impact podcast

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Fewer Donors, Bigger Checks. Interpreting the Latest Giving Data.

4d ago 51:38

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We break down the 2025 Bank of America Study of Philanthropy with the researchers who created it — exploring what this concentration means for nonprofit sustainability and the future of philanthropy.

There’s a number that keeps showing up in conversations about American philanthropy. And it tells two completely different stories depending on how you read it.

Over the past decade, charitable giving from affluent households increased more than 30%. That’s remarkable. That suggests a sector that’s thriving. Resilient. Responding to need.

But here’s the other story that same data tells.

Donor participation dropped from 91% to 81%. Twenty million American households stopped giving to charity entirely. First-time donor retention? Below 20%.

Fewer people are writing checks. They’re just writing much bigger ones.

So which story matters more? The one about record-breaking totals? Or the one about democratic participation collapsing?

To answer that question, I wanted to talk with the researchers who created the data in the first place.

Amir Pasic is the Dean of Indiana University’s Lilly Family School of Philanthropy. It’s the world’s first and only school devoted entirely to the study of generosity. He oversees Giving USA — the longest-running report on American charitable giving.

Bill Jarvis is the Managing Director at Bank of America Private Bank. He’s spent nearly two decades tracking how wealthy Americans give through the Bank of America Study of Philanthropy. He bridges wealth management and charitable giving in ways few others can.

Together, they’ve surveyed over 15,000 affluent households since 2006. Their 2025 findings reveal a sector at a crossroads.

And that crossroads is exactly what we’re exploring today.

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