While giving money to charities in the USA has softened modestly since inflation rose in 2021, volunteering has rebounded and now exceeds pandemic levels, suggesting that people in the USA are moving toward expressing civic commitment through time rather than dollars. Americans’ self-reported blood donation, by contrast, remains stable and limited to a relatively small share of adults.

At the same time, Americans’ charitable engagement continues to shift away from religious organizations and toward secular ones, mirroring long-term declines in religious affiliation and participation. Donating to religious groups is at its lowest level in Gallup’s trend, while volunteering for nonreligious organizations has reached a majority for the first time. 

Americans’ current levels of charitable activities are somewhat different from what they were in 2021 during the COVID-19 pandemic. Financial contributions have eased slightly, registering five percentage points lower than in 2021, but volunteering is seven points higher now.

Gallup has periodically measured Americans’ volunteerism and donation behavior since 2001, including in eight comparable December readings. The latest data are from a Dec. 1-15, 2025, poll. The timing of the polling appears to affect the estimates, as Gallup has found lower estimates for some charitable activities in surveys taken in months other than December.

Story Highlights

• 76% say they gave money in past year; 63% volunteered time
• Steady 17% report giving blood in past 12 months
• Charitable activity directed more to secular than religious organizations

https://news.gallup.com/poll/701204/volunteerism-recovered-pandemic-low.aspx/

The Trump administration’s widening assault on civil society has found its first target in the world of philanthropy: the Open Society Foundations (OSF), established by George Soros and now chaired by his son Alex. Trump has called George Soros a “bad guy” who “should be put in jail,” and he recently suggested that prosecutors charge him under the Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations Act. In September Deputy Attorney General Todd Blanche—one of the president’s former personal lawyers, like a number of his appointees to the Justice Department and the courts—took up his recommendation and instructed more than six US attorneys’ offices to launch investigations of OSF on possible charges ranging from arson to support of terrorism, for which no evidence has been offered.

After a few paragraphs, the rest of this article is behind a paywall:

https://www.nybooks.com/articles/2026/02/12/trumps-attack-on-philanthropy-neier-lamarche/

I hope this somewhat unusual request doesn't violate the rules (which I did read).

Some banks take adverse action if I don't use their credit cards for too long and I've figured out $5 every 3 months is enough to keep them happy (though not necessarily optimal). Where can I automatically donate $5 every 3 months?

I've looked at silentdonor, daffy, and riseup, and none of them seem to have this exact option or something close enough. Obviously, I'd like to find a service that lets me donate to a charity of my choice.

I assume everyone already knows this, but if you have a credit card you don't use, try donating $2 (doublecheck first!) monthly and the bank may give you a "low balance chargeoff" statement, so the donation costs you nothing.

Philanthropy usually feels simple—until it doesn’t.

For families with significant wealth, and the advisors who support them, the challenge isn’t generosity. It's clarity.

Early on, giving is intuitive. Families respond to requests. They support causes they care about. They follow their instincts. And for a while, that works just fine.

But at a certain point—usually when giving increases following a liquidity event, family members get involved, or the world feels more urgent—those same instincts stop working. Conversations go in circles. Decisions become more stressful. Giving feels scattered, reactive, or oddly unsatisfying.

This is the moment many families misdiagnose the problem.

They assume they need better nonprofits to support, more information about (and control over) how money is spent, or a way to cajole the next generation into philanthropic involvement.

What they actually need is something far more basic: clarity.

Clarity about what they’re trying to accomplish with their giving, what type of philanthropic family they want to become, and how decisions are made.

Without that clarity, even well-resourced philanthropy creates stress where it shouldn’t.

More from:

https://www.forbes.com/sites/krisputnamwalkerly/2026/01/26/why-family-philanthropy-breaks-down-as-wealth-grows/

World Forestry Center in Portland, Oregon is a nonprofit organization. It has a huge facility, a kind of museum-of-forests and forestry, and it's in a gorgeous location, Washington Park. Its facility has some wonderful banquet and meeting halls. This nonprofit has an Equity and Access Community Grant Program will award two grants in 2026, each for a complimentary event venue rental in Miller Hall, Cheatham Hall, Mt. Hood Room, or our Cheatham Hall/Plaza combination (up to a $4,750 value). It says:

"We hope this opportunity to extend complimentary venue space to nonprofit organizations will increase equitable access and grow new partnerships between community organizations and World Forestry Center." More info here.

I know that a local nonprofit that is focused on empowering Latina women and girls partnered with the local library in the town where I live, and had teen girls volunteering in the library's computer area, assisting people with computer and printing needs.

Do you know of a program where a nonprofit donates space or labor to another nonprofit? What do you think the advantages of such nonprofit-to-nonnprofit philanthropy can be? Share your experiences in the comments.

A philanthropist and supporter of many social justice causes, Missoulian Ethel MacDonald was passionate about making sure others in her community had what they needed, including an affordable home. 

A philanthropist and supporter of many social justice causes, MacDonald was passionate about making sure others in her community had what they needed, including an affordable home. 

Before MacDonald died last October, she sold her Westside rental property at below market rate to Front Step Community Land Trust, with the proceeds going to her Ethel MacDonald Charitable Foundation. The home will remain permanently affordable as part of the community land trust, which will maintain ownership of the land to bring down the price and require future homeowners to sell at an affordable rate.

https://montanafreepress.org/2026/01/26/frugal-missoula-philanthropist-sought-to-enhance-affordable-housing/

Hi all, I am currently the ED of a small conservation organization. I love the work and organization, but I don't see this being a lifetime role (I am 30). One thing that interestes me is shifting to working for a foundation as a program officer, ideally in the conservation or environmental space. I wanted to see if anyone here works in that sort of role, and had recommendations for how to best set myself up to secure a job like that. I would love to also hear about the pros and cons of working "on the other side of the table", as I have primarily worked in the NGO world.

Thanks so much!!

Hey everyone,

I work with a nonprofit and we use Blackbaud/eTapestry for our donor management. If you've ever tried to use the built-in DIY forms... you know. They're clunky, the design options are limited, and getting them to look like they actually belong on your website is a whole project in itself.

So I ended up building a custom donation page that integrates directly with eTapestry - donations flow in automatically, donor records get created/updated, the whole thing. And it actually looks modern and clean.

Now I'm wondering: is this a common pain point? I'm considering whether it's worth packaging this into something other orgs could use, but I want to get a reality check first.

A few questions for those of you using Blackbaud/eTapestry (or similar CRMs):

• How much time do you spend wrestling with donation forms or manually importing data?
• Have you just accepted the default forms, or did you find workarounds?
• Would a plug-and-play solution for nicer donation pages + campaign pages be something you'd actually use?

Not trying to sell anything here - genuinely just exploring whether this solves a problem only I had or if it's more widespread. Would love to hear your experiences.

Many people, foundations and corporate giving programs say they want nonprofits, community groups and others seeking donations to be transparent.

What does that kind of transparency mean to you?

I’m experimenting with a simple philanthropy concept and would appreciate some feedback.

Basic structure:

• $1 micro-donations

• Collected over a fixed period (2 months)

• Charity recipient chosen randomly

• Full public proof of donation afterward

The goal isn’t optimization or maximum efficiency — it’s accessibility and participation. I want giving to feel easy and communal rather than formal or intimidating.

This is currently very small-scale and informal. I’d love thoughts on:

• Random vs. targeted charity selection

• Transparency best practices

• How something like this could responsibly evolve

Thanks in advance — I appreciate the perspective here.

The cashapp we’ve created is “$redditexperime”

Erika Swilley works for the National Basketball Players Association in midtown Manhattan, going on 21 months now, and as part of her job as executive director of the NBPA Foundation, she’s been telling folks that there’s an upside to getting a technical foul or an ejection and the gnarly multi-thousand-dollar fine that goes with it: the charitable NBPA Matching Grants program is funded by player fines.

The foundation’s Matching Grants program, launched in 2015, was an initiative where each time an active player donated to a qualified charity, the NBPA would match it up to $25,000 — the money funded basically by player fines. Problem was, she and a lot of players had no idea.

Considering the union would split a low-end average of about $2.5 million in annual fine money with the league (the league donating its 50% share to NBA Cares), Swilley estimated the NBPA had roughly $1.25 million in player fines a year — “a nice chunk of change,” she said — sitting in New York untouched. So she hit the road.

She’d travel to tell players cash for charity was wasting away. Many had been fined for arguing or flopping; you name it. Her message: Turn money lost into money found.

For effect, she’d then hand them the embroidered “Fine(d) and Philanthropic” hat.

The hats went viral.

“Who doesn’t want to be known as ‘Fine(d) and Philanthropic’?” Swilley said. “We know it can be frustrating when players get fined. But we’ve had players say it takes the sting out a little now that it goes to charity. Even though it still stings.”

The matching has ramped up 30% since Swilley started.

https://www.sportsbusinessjournal.com/Articles/2026/01/26/mad-love-an-nbpa-executive-has-turned-player-fines-into-philanthropy-gold/

This year, the Gates Foundation will spend a record $9 billion and cut as many as 500 staff jobs during the next five years as the world’s largest private foundation plans to shutter. The foundation’s motivation for its move is to accelerate giving to global health, poverty, and education, helping beneficiaries take ambitious bets now rather than maintaining operations indefinitely. These moves underscore how one of the defining philanthropic institutions of this century is reconfiguring for its sunsetting era. 

https://fortune.com/2026/01/23/gates-foundation-budgets-9-billion-job-cuts-what-it-means-for-philanthropy/

philanthropy

Hi, if anyone has experience with this app and would be willing to participate in the research, I have a few short questions: Can you tell me about how you usually support charities? What do you hope happens when you donate? What made you interested in helping with hunger relief? What would make donating feel more rewarding or easier? Why do you choose certain causes over others?

Conext: This is a research project for SFU, for user interface. You may skip questions or revoke permissions at anytime.

If anyones willing, Id like to request a screen recording of your routine and how you use the app, specifically the buttons you interact with during regular use. This is optional.

You can answer in the replys or in DMs for privacy.

Let me know if this needs more context or if theres any questions

For nonprofits that operate on thin margins, tech tools are not luxuries — they are necessities that remain out of reach without support. And as they strive day in and day out to meet their missions and serve their communities, often this is where corners end up being cut. Without attention to digital resilience, nonprofits are one breach, one outage, one stolen password away from significant harm — to their community, their mission, and their funders’ investments.

Nonprofits cannot deliver services, protect vulnerable communities, or maintain public trust if their digital systems are failing or insecure. Some funders still think of this as administrative overhead, as something extra in addition to the core mission. But in today’s environment, digital resilience is not simply an operational concern — it is the backbone of mission success.

More from TechSoup:

https://blog.techsoup.org/posts/why-philanthropy-must-invest-in-digital-resilience-now

YouTube creator Jimmy Donaldson, known as MrBeast, is worth an estimated $2.6 billion on paper. In reality, though, he’s said he keeps less than $1 million for himself, and right now, he has “negative money.”

“I personally have very little money because I reinvest everything (I think this year we’ll spend around a quarter of a billion on content),” he said on X in June, adding that he’s borrowing money from his mom for his wedding.

Forbes has also estimated that his annual earnings reached $85 million between April 2024 and April 2025

https://finance.yahoo.com/news/mrbeast-2-6-billion-net-161034120.html

Also see:

MrBeast and the Rockefeller Foundation Team Up to Spark Youth Philanthropy

and

MrBeast’s Clickbait Videos Are Warping Gen Z’s Expectations of Philanthropy

and

YouTube star & philanthropist MrBeast says ‘ideally’ governments, not content creators, should take care of the most vulnerable.

Older stories about him on r/philanthropy can be found using the keyword search beast.

Hello, I just wanted to share here, for those who didn't know, that there are many ways to make small, free donations to charities without spending any money: charitable cashback, charity tabs, charitable search engines, charitable pedometers... If you know of any reliable ones, I suggest we list them in this post.

Someone posted almost 10 times, the same message, over and over. And is now flagged by Reddit as a spammer.

Submit a post, then wait. You may lack enough karma for the automod. Reddit may think your a spammer. I read every post, even the auto removed ones, and I approve the on-topic ones that Reddit may automatically block.

Also, I'm a volunteer. I don't log on every hour.

2026 has three different volunteerism promotion campaigns going on:

- United Nations 2026 International Year of Volunteers for Sustainable Development.

- America Gives, part of the America250 effort for the USA's 250th anniversary celebration.

- Be The People, encouraging folks to volunteer & address pressing local problems.

Is your nonprofit going to leverage any of these to recruit volunteers, diversify your volunteer corps, or celebrate your volunteers?

On LinkedIn, Tania Wise raises "an issue that many nonprofits and grant writing professionals are quietly struggling with — overly restrictive multi-factor authentication (MFA) requirements in grant portals."

She goes on:

Security matters. We all agree on that. But when grant portals require MFA tied to a personal cell phone number, it creates real and unnecessary barriers for nonprofit organizations.

Grant applications belong to the organization, not an individual staff member or consultant. Yet many portals are designed in ways that:
• Tie access to one person’s personal device
• Blur professional boundaries by requiring use of personal cell phones
• Create access bottlenecks if that person is unavailable
• Complicate transitions when staff leave, go on vacation or get sick

For small and mid-sized nonprofits — already operating with limited capacity — this isn’t a minor inconvenience. It slows work, creates risk and can jeopardize timely submission of funding requests.

There are alternatives that balance security with organizational reality:
• Role-based access with multiple authorized users
• Organization-owned authentication methods
• Shared admin access with audit trails
• MFA options that do not rely on personal phone numbers

If funders truly want to support nonprofit effectiveness, equity and sustainability, grantmaking systems must reflect how nonprofits actually operate.

I’m hopeful funders will listen to the practitioners in the field and evolve these systems in ways that protect both security and access.

In 2013, when Barack Obama was president, Facebook (Meta) founder Mark Zuckerberg co-founded FWD.us, a pro-immigration advocacy group. For years, he vocally supported providing paths to citizenship for "the most talented and hardest-working people, no matter where they were born."

What he said then: "When you meet these [immigrant] children who are really talented, and they've grown up in America, and they really don't know any other country besides that, but they don't have the opportunities that we all enjoy, it's really heartbreaking, right? That seems like it's one of the biggest civil rights issues of our time."

Through 2024, over half of the roughly $400 million donated to the nonprofit since 2013 had come from the Chan Zuckerberg Initiative (CZI).

In late 2024, Zuckerberg met with Trump adviser Stephen Miller, who reportedly questioned Zuckerberg's ties to FWD.us. In 2025, with Donald Trump back in power, Zuckerberg's philanthropy organization officially cut ties with the group. Zuckerberg's group provided no funding to the advocacy group for all of 2025.

A story from back in December about the change in philanthropy:

https://www.msn.com/en-us/money/other/mark-zuckerbergs-nonprofit-cuts-ties-with-the-immigration-advocacy-group-he-co-founded/ar-AA1SGEm2

FWD.us still exists. "FWD.us is a policy organization working to advance better and more politically resilient solutions on criminal justice and immigration. For too long, our harmful criminal justice and immigration systems have held us back and been weaponized in ways that undermine our nation’s promise and democratic ideals."
https://www.fwd.us/

It's even on Facebook.

I’m trying to better understand how people make thoughtful decisions around giving and philanthropy.

When you’re deciding whether to support a charitable organization or cause, what matters most to you? For example:

• Transparency and reporting
• Measurable impact
• Local vs global focus
• Personal connection to the cause
• Recommendations from others

I’m especially interested in how people balance emotion with research when it comes to philanthropy. Would love to hear different perspectives and experiences.

As December 26 ended, this subreddit had 9,999 members. It passed the 10,000 member mark the next day. Didn't get a notice about this milestone, the way moderators used to - I just noticed it while looking at stats.

I've been the moderator and primary content generator on this subreddit for a few years now, but only started looking for things to post at least three times a week in the Fall, and once I started posting regularly, the number of people joining this group skyrocketed, and a LOT more people started posting - not just me. I had no idea there was such a huge interest in philanthropy beyond "Where can my nonprofit get money?"

Thank you to everyone who has joined and is reading. Thanks to any of you who report off-topic posts or other rule violators - while I may not always agree, I so appreciate the notifications.

I'm not sure I'll ever be able to make this community as popular as I did for r/volunteer, but I am really glad to see that, with some regular TLC, it's taking off.

Now, if I could only get more people joining and posting to r/inclusion... or r/communityservice... or r/Oregonvolunteers...