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Are we actually in the middle of a generosity crisis?

A pile of American dollar bills inside a donation box.GHI/Education Images/Universal Images Group via Getty Images" data-has-syndication-rights="1" src="https://platform.vox.com/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2024/07/gettyimages-1265277021.jpg?quality=90&strip=all&crop=0,0,100,100" />

Did you donate to charity in the past, but no longer do so? 

If the answer is yes, you’re not alone. For the second year in a row, the philanthropy research foundation Giving USA reported that fewer Americans are donating to nonprofits than they used to, and the total amount of giving is declining once inflation is taken into account.

Some in the philanthropy world are calling it a “generosity crisis” — fewer than half of American households now give cash to charity. Twenty million fewer households donated in 2016 than in 2000. And the money that is being given is increasingly coming from a small number of super-wealthy people.

The only surprising thing about these findings, to me, though, is that anyone would be surprised.

Why aren’t people donating to nonprofits?

One big, and rather intuitive, reason why fewer people are donating money to registered nonprofits these days is the general state of the economy. The number of donors started sharply declining right around the tail end of the Great Recession in 2010. Of households that stopped donating money to nonprofits between 2000 and 2016, most earned less than $50,000 per year.

Young people are also less likely to donate to registered charities than older people. The relationship between age and willingness to give away money makes sense — the younger you are, the fewer years you’ve had to earn money. 

The Vox guide to giving

The holiday season is giving season. This year, Vox is exploring every element of charitable giving — from making the case for donating 10 percent of your income, to recommending specific charities for specific causes, to explaining what you can do to make a difference beyond donations. You can find all of our giving guide stories here.

But the age gap has grown over the past few years. In part, this can be explained by high costs of living, student loan debt, and inflation. “Younger donors simply don’t have money right now,” said Rasheeda Childress, a senior editor at The Chronicle of Philanthropy.

But we can’t blame the economy for everything. The decline in organized religion might be the biggest factor in the decline in charitable giving. 

Religious institutions are major hubs of philanthropy — highly religious adults volunteer nearly twice as much as other adults in the US, and roughly half of them volunteer through a religious organization. A report by the Do Good Institute, which conducts philanthropy research at the University of Maryland, found that people who belong to community groups, religious or otherwise, are more likely than others to volunteer and donate money. 

It’s not that religion necessarily makes people more charitable. Community does — specifically, community where charitable giving is centered and expected. But as participation in organized religion declines, so does giving.

Beyond religion, people seem to be losing faith in institutions — the government, the media, and nongovernmental organizations like nonprofits

Nonprofits are one of the most trusted institutions in the US, but only about half of Americans have faith in them. Political polarization may be partially to blame — organizations that are colored by partisan values, like religious organizations and civil rights groups, are less trusted than nonprofits focused on more bipartisan issues like wildlife conservation. 

For Nonprofit Quarterly, Ruth McCambridge speculated that, as the gap between rich and poor gets wider, people are more likely to view nonprofits as “compliant handmaidens to an unjust system.” It’s not that people are less generous, it’s because they don’t trust organizations that cater to the rich donors they depend on, McCambridge added.

At the same time, a survey of over 2,100 adults in the US found that, of those who stopped giving to charity over the past five years, 47 percent said that they chose to stop donating because they believed wealthier households should be pulling more weight.

Historically, reaching out to small-dollar donors has not been an effective use of time for nonprofits, even though many nonprofits — particularly those in less affluent communities — depend on recurring small donations to stay afloat. Why pour energy into persuading 10,000 people to donate $10 each, when you could get all $100,000 from one wealthy donor?

“It’s almost becoming a self-fulfilling prophecy,” Childress said. By catering to the wealthy, nonprofits are “going after where the money is right now, but they’re not growing where the money is going to be.”

The charitable tax deduction system was literally designed to benefit the rich. If you don’t earn a lot of money, claiming charitable donations doesn’t make much sense, especially after former President Trump’s tax cuts in 2017 reduced the need to itemize deductions.

A totally reasonable reaction might be, “Who cares? Rich people have money to spare. Let them pay for everything!”

But if we let rich people dominate philanthropy, we give them the power to shape how nonprofits operate. “You don’t want to be beholden to anyone,” said Phil Buchanan, president of the Center for Effective Philanthropy and author of Giving Done Right. If an organization that ought to be grounded in generosity and community is visibly propped up by a handful of billionaires and corporations, it’s not a great look. 

If donors are not immersed in the community an organization is trying to serve, they’re less likely to understand what that community really needs. And centering the wealthy certainly doesn’t convince already-suspicious young middle-class adults to get involved.

How can we measure generosity if the IRS doesn’t know about it?

The Generosity Commission, a nonpartisan team led by The Giving Institute and Giving USA Foundation, has spent years trying to figure out where all the non-wealthy donors have gone. “There’s certainly a monetary giving crisis,” Childress said. But “if you look at the data, people are being generous” — just not in ways that we’re familiar with.

In other words, the apparent “generosity crisis” may not be a crisis of generosity at all. 

Measuring generosity is a bit like measuring “happiness” or “loneliness” — weird. Trying to nail down a feeling with statistics requires quantifying something that can’t really be quantified. Inevitably, the final score will be an imperfect reflection of the feeling, heavily skewed by what’s possible to measure.

Today, measuring cash donations to registered charities is relatively simple. These gifts are reported to the IRS, leaving behind a paper trail that can be tracked by organizations like Giving USA. A 2020 study conducted by the Stanford Center on Philanthropy and Civil Society found that people in the US give in ways that extend far beyond tax-exempt donations to nonprofits.

These forms of giving are harder to trace, though. When I gift a guitar to my neighbor who wants to teach his kid to play, for example, there’s no official record of that transaction — just a couple Facebook comments and a face-to-face conversation. The IRS can’t trace it, so in the eyes of Giving USA, it never happened.

Mutual aid — or the reciprocal exchange of resources within a community — has existed worldwide for thousands of years. But it entered the spotlight in the US during the pandemic through community fridges, child care collectives, and healthcare funds. 

For a population that increasingly distrusts political institutions and craves human connection, mutual aid can feel more impactful than donating to a nonprofit — whether it really is or not. A survey conducted by GivingTuesday, the organization behind the post-Thanksgiving global day of giving, found that 76 percent of respondents between 18 and 34 prefer to give directly to individuals in need, and not nonprofits — only 46 percent of those over 50 agreed.

Donations raised through crowdfunding also grew 33.7 percent in 2022, with 6,455,080 crowdfunding campaigns launched across the world that year. The crowdfunding market is projected to grow to as much as $300 billion by 2030. But while a GoFundMe donation counts as “generous” in my book, Giving USA can’t track it — so, we have a “generosity crisis.”

But we know that humans, for the most part, are generous. In 2022, the Charities Aid Foundation found that 4.2 billion people — 72 percent of the world’s adult population — gave money, time, or service to someone they didn’t know that year.

Over the past several years, the Generosity Commission has been working to “tell the full story” of generosity, so nonprofits can better understand how people want to make their communities better. In a report published in September, the Generosity Commission identified several possible explanations for declines in volunteering and donations, including the Great Recession, declining religiosity, and delays in traditional adult milestones like marriage, home ownership, and parenthood — but they note that further research is necessary.

So, what should we do? 

To be clear: nonprofits do a lot of good, both in the US and abroad. Especially in smaller, less affluent communities, they absolutely depend on normal, not-super-rich donors like me — and we’re not pulling our weight.

One could argue that, because I am, temporarily, a member of the richest 1 percent of the world’s population, I am morally obligated to donate a portion of my income to charity. At least in theory, if I schedule recurring donations to highly effective charities, I could save a number of lives in nations where my money will stretch much farther than it can in the US. 

But such effective philanthropy has always been the exception — in fact, giving to international causes actually declined by 1.6 percent after inflation in 2023. The vast majority of charitable giving in the US is domestic. Most donors aren’t paying for malaria-preventing bed nets overseas — they’re mainly donating to Ivy League schools and religious organizations. Just this week, Michael Bloomberg donated $1 billion dollars to Johns Hopkins University to pay for med students’ tuition. 

If I were in med school, I’d be thrilled — student debt sucks. But med students, especially from prestigious schools like the No. 2 ranked Hopkins, generally go on to make loads of money. Helping them out is less effective than, say, sending $1 billion dollars to directly help flood survivors in Kenya

Personally, I don’t currently donate a portion of my income to registered nonprofits, highly effective or otherwise. I’m still earning back the savings I drained as a freelance journalist (after spending six years on a grad student stipend). Michael Bloomberg didn’t pay for my Ivy League education, and with tens of thousands of dollars in undergraduate student loan debt hanging over my head, I laugh every time I receive, and promptly delete, a fundraising text from my alma mater.

But I do give. I regularly support Kickstarter campaigns, gift household items to my neighbors, and donate to a mutual aid fund supporting sex workers in my community. That makes me like other “zillennials” in my cohort, who tend to direct their money toward more informal charities than traditional nonprofits. That may not necessarily count in the IRS’s statistics, but I don’t think it’s fair to call us ungenerous.

Given the current state of democracy writ large, it makes perfect sense to me that so many of us value direct, tangible impact over indirect measurements of “effectiveness.” Informal community-centered giving can feel more impactful, even if it doesn’t score as high on a utilitarian scale. And what giving within your community can do — whether in the form of cash, time, or stuff — is build connection at a moment when we need it more than ever.

Middle-class people aren’t unwilling to give. They just seem to be giving differently, and philanthropic organizations are still figuring out how to measure charitable giving beyond tax-deductible donations to 501(c)(3) nonprofits.

Whether channeled through money or not, people perform acts of kindness all the time. Hopefully, the philanthropy sector will start to see them.

A version of this story originally appeared in the Future Perfect newsletter. Sign up here!

Update, November 20: This story was originally published on July 10 and has been updated to include details about the Generosity Commission’s September 2024 report.


Read full article on: vox.com
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When one of my college roommates was passed the plate of Jell-O squares on his first Thanksgiving visit, he watched them quake from side to side and politely declined.— Andrew Aoyama, deputy managing editor***I’m a self-conscious cook, even in private; I prefer to stick with minimal ingredients for my meals instead of experimenting with my seasonings and, inevitably, my sensitive stomach. My palate is pretty limited, probably as a result of my boring diet—so I also have no idea if anything I eat tastes good to the average person.That’s why, when I’m invited to a potluck, I designate myself the Prepacked-Snacks Person. But I make it fun by leveraging my experience as an Oreo connoisseur: My potluck contribution is whatever wacky, seasonally appropriate Oreo flavor is on the market right now. It’s both something you know everyone is somewhat familiar with and more exciting than showing up with the basic snacks you get at the bodega. Plus, I would rather have my friends taste and judge my Pumpkin Spice or Coca-Cola Oreos than watch them pretend to like my homemade chili.— Allegra Frank, senior editor***I’m pretty sure I first made caramel rolls for my mom’s birthday when I was in high school, but I started sharing them at a Friendsgiving potluck in college. They are basically cinnamon rolls, but instead of topping the buns with frosting, you drown them in a caramel sauce, creating a dish that is soft, sticky, and supremely sweet. Although you can use an online recipe for the bread portion, I use my grandmother’s recipe for the caramel, which lives on a bright-blue note card in a wooden box at my parents’ house, along with all of the other cooking instructions we inherited after she passed away. I’ve heard that caramel is notoriously hard to make, but I’ve never had an issue with hers, which includes two whopping tablespoons of white corn syrup. Her side of the family—my mom’s side—comes from North Dakota, so I always feel like I’m sharing a dish that’s a little folksy: simple and delicious. Caramel rolls don’t just work as a hefty addition to potlucks and as a dessert for any occasion; the leftovers can be breakfast too!— Elise Hannum, assistant editor***I am a man of vanity who likes to appear impressive in mixed company; I am also a man of convenience who likes to expend as little energy as possible, if possible. In a potluck scenario, the latter instinct takes over—largely because there’s just less time and attention to spend on any one dish.Hence my love of making pulled pork, which maxes out several factors: cheapness of ingredients, ease of preparation, quantity of yielded food, wow factor with friends. The recipe I use is perhaps not the best recipe; it is, however, one of the first recipes I found when I Googled best pulled-pork recipe a few years ago. You can really blow people’s minds by bringing along the appropriate accoutrement—pickles, barbecue sauce, buns—but even by itself, the meat goes with anything.I first made pulled pork for a Super Bowl party, when I had a sneaking suspicion—informed by my expansive curiosity about flavor combinations, and my history of alcohol consumption—that it would pair well with chips and beer. I will be honest: Despite the ease of “slather in spices and hit the slow-cooker button,” I somehow kind of screwed it up—the cut of meat was too large for the lid to fully cover, and I didn’t let it cook for long enough. But even made poorly, pulled pork is a novel delight—everyone loved it, even as I was mildly ashamed of this inaugural effort. Made well, you’ll be the talk of the party.— Jeremy Gordon, senior editor***This season of life doesn’t seem to afford much time for hobbies, but I do love baking, either solo or with the “help” of my 6-year-old daughter (she is an expert sugar sprinkler). My favorite—and most consistently delicious—thing to bake is challah. I got the recipe, adaptations, and all relevant advice from my sister; it has completely ruined all those dry store-bought versions for any purpose but making French toast.I learned the art of baking challah during the pandemic, when everyone else was busy with their sourdough starters. Back then, my husband, my daughter, and I had no choice but to eat it all ourselves—fortunately, this recipe freezes well. That was by far not the worst part of COVID, but I prefer to share challah; Jewish food is always best enjoyed in the company of others. I never mastered the traditional braiding of the dough, so I mostly shape it into large, fluffy buns—all the better for tearing apart with your hands. Try topping the challah with everything-bagel seasoning, za’atar, or something more creative. Then bring it to a communal Shabbat or a holiday meal, and enjoy watching your loved ones go back for just one more hunk of soft, warm bread, and then another, and another.— Janice Wolly, copy chiefHere are three Sunday reads from The Atlantic: The business-school scandal that just keeps getting bigger Three ways to become a deeper thinker The Atlantic gift guide The Week Ahead Moana 2, an animated sequel about a village chief’s wayfinding daughter who must travel into the dangerous waters of Oceania (in theaters Wednesday) The Agency, a thriller series starring Michael Fassbender as a CIA agent who is ordered to leave his undercover life (premieres Friday on Paramount+ with Showtime) This Is Why We Can't Have Nice Things, a collection of short stories by Naomi Wood about motherhood, femininity, and modern love (out Tuesday) Essay Illustration by The Atlantic. Source: Getty. Your Armpits Are Trying to Tell You SomethingBy Yasmin Tayag The last time I sweated through my shirt, I vowed that it would never happen again. Sweat shame had dogged me for too many years. No longer would armpit puddles dictate the color of my blouse. Never again would I twist underneath a hand dryer to dry my damp underarms. It was time to try clinical-strength antiperspirant. Read the full article.More in Culture The thin line between biopic and propaganda How Jimmy O. Yang became a main character Cher has a history lesson for us all. The most coveted screenshot in the literary world What the men of the internet are trying to prove “Dear James”: I used to have friends. Then they had kids. Catch Up on The Atlantic David Frum: A good country’s bad choice The Trump-Trumpist divide Inside the mind of Pete Hegseth Photo Album In a protest demanding action on climate change, members of Indigenous organizations hold large cutouts of world leaders’ heads above the waters of Botafogo Bay. 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