Most Americans aren't making end-of-year charitable giving plans, according to the results of a new AP-NORC poll, despite the many fundraising appeals made by nonprofits that rely on donation surges in the calendar's final month to reach budget targets.
The survey, which was conducted in early December by The Associated Press-NORC Center for Public Affairs Research, found that about half U.S. adults say they’ve already made their charitable contributions for 2025. Just 18% say they've donated and will donate again before the year is over. Only 6% report they haven’t given yet but will do so by December's end. The rest, 30%, haven't donated and don't plan to.
Everyday donors faced competing priorities this year. President Donald Trump's social services grant cuts, severe foreign aid rollbacks and November SNAP benefits freeze — plus natural disasters like Los Angeles' historically destructive wildfires — left no shortage of urgent causes in need of heightened support. Trump’s tax and spending legislation offered an extra incentive to give, too; most tax filers will see a new charitable deduction of up to $1,000 for individuals and $2,000 for married couples.
But weaker income gains and steep price inflation meant that lower-income households had less money to redistribute. Other surveys have also found a yearslong decline in the number of individuals who give.
December still serves as a “very important deadline” for donors, according to Dianne Chipps Bailey, managing director of Bank of America’s Philanthropic Solutions division. She cited estimates from the National Philanthropic Trust that nearly one-third of annual giving happens in the final month.
“December 31 does provide a target to make sure that they’ve given what they intended to give before the year is over,” Bailey said.
Few donate on GivingTuesday
Perhaps no day is more consequential for fundraisers than GivingTuesday. Beginning as a hashtag in 2012, the well-known celebration of generosity now sees many nonprofits leverage the attention to solicit donations on the Tuesday after Thanksgiving. Americans donated an estimated $4 billion to nonprofits this most recent GivingTuesday.
But Americans were much more likely to make a Black Friday purchase than a GivingTuesday gift this year. Just under half say they bought something for Black Friday, according to the poll, compared to about 1 in 10 who say they donated to a charity for GivingTuesday.
“Black Friday gets the lion’s share of things,” said Oakley Graham, a 32-year-old from Missouri. “And then you’ve got GivingTuesday a couple days later. Most people have probably spent all their spending money at that point.”
Graham said his family has “definitely tightened the financial belt” in recent years. He and his wife are dealing with student loan debts now that the Trump administration suspended their repayment plan. Their two young children are always growing out of their clothes. It's good if there's anything left for savings.
He still tries to help out his neighbors — from handiwork to Salvation Army clothing donations.
“Not that I'm not willing to give here and there,” he said. “But it seems like it's pretty tough to find the extra funds.”
Checkout charity proves more popular
Another avenue for nudging Americans to give is more widely used, even if individual donations are small. The AP-NORC poll found that about 4 in 10 U.S. adults say they donated to a charity when checking out at a store this year.
Graham is among those who reported giving at the cash register. As an outdoorsy person who enjoys hunting and fishing when he can, he said he is “always susceptible to giving for conservation.” He said he likely rounded up once or twice at Bass Pro Shops for that reason.
“With the finances, I don’t do a lot of buying these days. But a couple cents here or there is like — I can do that,” he said. “It doesn’t sound like much. But I know if everybody did it would make a difference.”
The poll found that older adults — those over 60 — are more likely than Americans overall to donate at store checkouts.
One Texas architect's unusual process for year-end donations
About one-quarter of Americans plan to donate in the last weeks of the year, and Chuck Dietrick is one of them. The 69-year-old architect applies what he calls a “shotgun approach” as the year comes to a close.
He and his wife give monthly to Valley Hope, a nonprofit addiction services provider where their son did inpatient rehab. And then there are eight or so organizations that they support with end-of-the-year gifts.
“We’re doing our own thing,” he said. “I don’t do Black Friday or Cyber Monday, either … So, I don’t do the GivingTuesday thing.”
Dietrick estimates their household donated somewhere between $501 and $2,500. The Dallas-Fort Worth area couple mostly contributes to organizations that have touched their lives or those of their friends.
There's the Florida hospice that Dietrick said did a “super job” caring for his mother. He has relatives and friends who served in the military, so he also gives to the Disabled American Veterans and the Wounded Warrior Project.
“I would rather give a smaller amount of money to a variety of institutions that I care about rather than giving a big chunk of money to one,” he explained.
Giving plans went unaffected by federal funding cuts or the shutdown
Most 2025 donors say the amount they gave wasn't affected much by this year's federal funding cuts or the government shutdown, according to the AP-NORC poll, although about 3 in 10 say those situations did impact the charities they chose to support.
The survey suggests that, while private donors mobilized millions to fill funding gaps and hunger relief groups saw donation totals spike last month, many Americans did not respond with their pocketbooks to the nonprofit sector's newfound pressures this year.
Jeannine Disviscour, a 63-year-old Baltimore teacher, is among 2025 donors who say the cuts prompted them to give more.
“I did not donate on GivingTuesday,” she said. “But I did donate that week because I was feeling the need to support organizations that I felt might not continue to get the support they needed to get to be successful.”
She estimates her household gave between $501 and $2,500. That included support for National Public Radio. Congress eliminated $1.1 billion allocated to public broadcasting this summer, leaving hundreds of NPR stations with some sort of budget hole. She said she wanted to ensure journalism reached news deserts where residents have few media options.
Living in an area that is home to many refugees, Disviscour also donated her time and money to the Asylee Women Enterprise. She said the local nonprofit helps asylum-seekers and other forced migrants find food, shelter, clothing, transportation and language classes.
“There is a gap in funding and there's more need than ever,” she said. “And I wanted to step up. And it's in my community.”
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Sanders reported from Washington.
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Associated Press coverage of philanthropy and nonprofits receives support through the AP’s collaboration with The Conversation US, with funding from Lilly Endowment Inc. The AP is solely responsible for this content. For all of AP’s philanthropy coverage, visit https://apnews.com/hub/philanthropy.
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The AP-NORC poll of 1,146 adults was conducted Dec. 4-8 using a sample drawn from NORC’s probability-based AmeriSpeak Panel, which is designed to be representative of the U.S. population. The margin of sampling error for adults overall is plus or minus 4 percentage points.
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