Every year, Giving USA gives the sector a number to work with.
This year it’s $617.2 billion. And within hours, it’s everywhere. Headlines, charts, LinkedIn posts, board presentations. The number moves fast.
But the teams that will actually benefit from this report aren’t the ones quoting the headline. They’re the ones asking a harder question underneath it.
Are we positioned to act when a donor is ready?
That’s the question that surfaced during a special edition of Frontlines of Social Good, part of the Philanthropy Masterminds series sponsored by EverTrue, where Brent Grinna of EverTrue joined Roger Ali, Nicola Lawrence, Bill Stanczykiewicz, and host Jay Frost to unpack what this year’s data is really saying.
And what it’s saying is this: the environment for giving is strong. The challenge is timing.
The number is real. The opportunity is narrower than it looks.
Total charitable giving reached $617.2 billion in 2025. Eight of nine subsectors grew in current dollars. Education, environment, health, and human services all posted gains. Giving to foundations was the only major category that declined.
On the surface, that’s momentum.
But momentum doesn’t automatically reach every team. Because giving isn’t moving in a straight line, and it isn’t moving in isolation from everything happening in donors’ financial lives.
It moves with confidence. With liquidity. With life events that have nothing to do with your calendar year.
And that gap between when giving happens and when fundraising teams are ready to act on it? That’s where this year’s report gets interesting.
Individual giving is growing, but it’s concentrating.
Individuals remain the largest source of charitable dollars, and that’s held steady. But how those dollars are taking shape is changing.
Bequest and planned giving continue to grow. Donor advised funds are becoming a more prominent vehicle. More philanthropy is being shaped by assets, not annual income.
Nicola Lawrence put it directly: dollars are growing, but participation isn’t always growing at the same pace.
More giving is coming from fewer, more significant moments.
That changes what fundraising teams need to be tracking. Not just who gave last year, but who is moving toward a moment (a liquidity event, a business transition, a wealth inflection) that makes now the right time to be in conversation.
Timing is the variable most systems aren’t built to catch.
This is where the conversation got most useful for fundraising teams.
Liquidity events and wealth creation moments, business transitions, private equity, IPOs, are reshaping when and how philanthropy happens. The donor who looks quiet right now may be six months from the most significant gift of their life. It’s a shift Brent Grinna pointed to directly: the data increasingly shows philanthropy tracking wealth events in real time, not fiscal years.
That’s not a new phenomenon. Despite inflation, market volatility, and year-to-year uncertainty, the long-term trend in giving is consistently upward. The sector grows, a pattern Bill Stanczykiewicz noted has held for decades regardless of short-term turbulence. What’s changed is how much faster the moments inside that growth are moving, and how much easier they are to miss.
Markets correlate with giving, but with a delay. A donor’s financial confidence often moves before their philanthropic behavior catches up. The teams that close that gap are the ones with enough signal to act before the moment passes.
Most teams aren’t lacking data. They’re lacking clarity about which signals matter right now, and for whom.
The part the data can’t do on its own.
Here’s the tension that kept surfacing throughout the conversation.
The infrastructure of philanthropy is growing more sophisticated (DAFs, planned giving vehicles, liquidity-driven major gifts, complex multi-year commitments). The data available to fundraising teams has never been richer.
And yet the decision to give still happens in a very human way.
The structure and scale of philanthropy have changed significantly over the decades. The core drivers of giving have not. As Nicola Lawrence put it during the panel: people give when they feel connected to the mission, not just when the timing is right financially.
That’s not an argument against data. It’s an argument for using it differently.
The right intelligence doesn’t replace the relationship. It tells you when the relationship is ready, who’s engaging, who’s signaling, who’s moving toward a moment you’d miss if you were only looking at last year’s gift history.
The fundraiser still makes the call. The intelligence just makes sure they’re making it at the right time.
What this means heading into FY27.
As teams build out FY27 strategies, the environment looks like this: wealth signals are increasing, financial moments are happening more frequently, donor behavior is less linear than ever, and attention is still limited.
That combination doesn’t create a data problem. It creates a clarity problem.
Fundraising hasn’t moved away from relationships, even as the tools around it have evolved, a point Roger Ali returned to throughout the conversation. The relationship is still the work. What’s changed is the volume of signals that surround it, and how much of that volume a team can actually act on.
The teams that will move the needle in FY27 aren’t necessarily the ones with the most data. They’re the ones who know which donors are ready right now, and who can get into conversation before the moment closes.
Generosity doesn’t wait. And neither do the best fundraising teams.
About EverTrue
EverTrue is a philanthropy-first intelligence platform that helps fundraising teams turn data into action and build meaningful donor relationships. Learn more at evertrue.com.
Interested in seeing how EverTrue helps fundraising teams manage outreach, track engagement, and build stronger donor relationships over time? Schedule a demo today.