Americans gave $450 billion to charity last year -- but while Americans may be donating a lot, the money is coming from fewer people. In 2000, 66% of adults donated to charity. In 2016, the most recent year for which data is available, that fell to 53%.
Americans gave a near-record amount of money to charity last year, and that is evidence that the Trump administration’s policies are spreading prosperity, the Treasury Department said recently. But longer-term research on charitable giving paints a different picture — one of growing economic inequality.
“The American people are among the most generous in the world,” said Secretary Steven Mnuchin. “President Trump’s pro-growth economic policies have provided hard-working Americans with robust opportunities, including the opportunity to give back to their communities, organizations and causes that strengthen our country.”
“ ‘A strong economy benefits giving. Whether we can point to any policy or set of policies is not as clear-cut.’ ” ‘Dollars up, but donors down’ What previous research has made clear, however, is that charitable giving in the U.S. is becoming skewed by the country’s growing income inequality. The financial crisis and the Great Recession of 2007-09 had a negative effect on charitable giving, but mostly among households at the lower end of the income ladder. “The percent of overall income given by households in the lowest wealth bracket declined significantly from the pre- to post-Recession era, while the percent of income given by households in higher wealth brackets remained stable despite the Recession,” the report found.
That trend worries many in the nonprofit sector, because it suggests that fewer Americans are engaged in trying to solve societal problems. “We’re seeing participation become less broad-based than it was in the past, and this is a concern for the strength of our civil society,” Osili said.
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