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For over 20 years, I have been an avid reader of the Giving USA Report on Philanthropic Giving, an annual report on fundraising in America produced by the Indiana University Lily Family School of Philanthropy. Each June, I eagerly await its release and subsequently use it to direct my fundraising strategy for the ensuing year.
In all of the recent fundraising trainings I provide, I posit that HBCUs are literally “leaving money on the table” due to the lack of attention paid to cultivating individual donors and, over the course of a two-hour orientation training, I demonstrated how. After reading this year’s report, my position remains unchanged, prompting me to offer a few tidbits of advice to college and university presidents and their advancement teams in preparation for fundraising for the 2023-2024 Academic Year.
According to the most recent report’s findings, philanthropic giving in the United States reached the half-trillion-dollar threshold in 2021 – the sunset year of the global health pandemic. This year reflects an all-time high in giving, and is consistent with previous years in the following categories: Religion – 27%; Human Services – 14%; Education – 13%; Gifts to grantmaking foundations – 11%; Health – 10%; Public Society Benefit – 9%; International Affairs – 6%; Arts, Culture and Humanities – 5%; Environment / Animals – 3%; Individuals – 2%.
When the same trends were juxtaposed with the recently released data, there was a slight decline in giving, but the pandemic years of 2020 and 2021 were two of the best giving years on record with $486.26 billion and $516.65 billion in charitable giving, respectively. In each of these years (2020, 2021 and 2022) the sources of giving remain consistent:
2020
2021
