Giving USA

Anyone who works with donated money for a charitable organization can benefit from the information presented in the Giving USA reports. Donors also like the information available in Giving USA.

Giving USA is the only reference source for data on who gives what to whom in the United States by both source and recipient.

Subscribers to Giving USA data include heads of nonprofit organizations, chief development officers and staff members at nonprofits around the world, people who advise donors on how to spend their charitable dollars, and libraries, to name a few. Scholars researching philanthropy at both the undergraduate and graduate levels also find Giving USA to be an invaluable tool. Faculty members teaching about the nonprofit sector in the United States assign Giving USA in their classes. International researchers use Giving USA to develop comparative data.

Giving USA is published by Giving USA Foundation™ in Glenview, Illinois. The report has been published annually since 1956 by either the Foundation or its founding organization, the former American Association of Fundraising Counsel (now Giving Institute: Leading Consultants to Non-Profits).

Since 2001, the report has been researched and written by the Center on Philanthropy at Indiana University.

For decades, Giving USA has benefited from the counsel of an Advisory Council composed of leading scholars about charitable giving in the United States. There are 18 members in 2010 who represent donor-focused organizations such as the Foundation Center, Boston College’s Center on Wealth and Philanthropy, and the Committee Encouraging Corporate Philanthropy as well as recipient-focused organizations like Americans for the Arts, United Way Worldwide, and the Council for Advancement and Support of Education.

Giving USA examines giving by individuals, corporations, foundations and estates, which includes charitable bequests and some types of trusts.

Giving USA has never looked at government donations to nonprofits. However, government giving is a huge component of the total revenues that support nonprofit, charitable work. Much of the government support is in the form of payments for services such as medical care; contracts for specific services, such as to human services organizations; and research funding to universities working in medicine, science, and the humanities.

• Religion
• Education
• Environment/animals
• Arts, Culture & Humanities
• Private, community, and operating foundations
• Public-Society Benefit
• Health
• Human Services
• International Affairs

There is always a pie slice labeled “unallocated” to capture giving that cannot be tracked through any of our methods. The size of this pie slice varies annually, but is seldom larger than 10 percent of the total.

No. Donations to the Salvation Army, for example, can be found in Human Services. Donations are categorized by purpose or main activity of the organization. Thus, Lutheran Family Services is coded as Human Services; St. Elizabeth’s Hospital is in Health; and Jewish Theological Seminary is in Education.

United Nations and all of its related programs, UNICEF, UN Development Programme,  and others,  are coded in International Affairs, as all of its work is focused on international aid, understanding, or relations.

Some organizations, such as freestanding donor-advised funds (Fidelity Charitable Gift Fund is one example; National Christian Foundation is another) collect donations and then redistribute them to another charity. These types of organizations are in the public-society benefit subsector, unless they distribute to organizations in other countries (Give2Asia is one example). In that case, the organization is coded as International Affairs.

Yes. A few years ago, Giving USA researchers gained access to the IRS Forms 990 filled out by charities, which gave us much more information than our surveys ever could. While the survey method was state-of-the-art for decades, when data on the Forms 990 became available, we made the switch.

In some years, we will also do an in-depth look at a category/subsector through a survey; in 2009, for example, we examined Human Services giving and in 2008, we looked at Public-Society Benefit organizations and their charitable receipts.

No, we only look at aggregate giving data. However, the Center on Philanthropy can provide that level of data through its Center on Philanthropy Panel Study, or COPPS. Please contact the Center for more information.

Giving USA provides an annual national snapshot of giving. Groups in various cities around the country have produced their own versions of Giving USA. Recent examples include Atlanta, Memphis and Kansas City. These reports are not done annually, however.

Almost every year, Giving USA’s Spotlight e-newsletter examines differences in giving by region of the country.

Giving USA provides much more than statistics on giving. Interpretations of each category of giving are provided, along with recommendations for action provided by experts in the field, particularly members of Giving Institute: Leading Consultants to Non-Profits. The report also provides 40 years’ worth of data annually so that trend lines and patterns can be seen.

Here are just a few of the myriad ways you can use our reports:

If you are with a nonprofit organization:
• Train board members
• Respond to media inquiries
• Track reports about similar types of charities

If you are a donor (individual, corporation or foundation):
• Assist board of directors/family members in setting strategy
• Help in identifying funding gaps
• Learn about events and trends nationally, all in one place

If you are a scholar, government agency or a member of the media:
• Evaluate charitable giving’s importance to the social fabric of our country
• Cite a trusted source: Data and trend analysis are used to prepare reports, speeches and news articles

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