Americans are keeping their wallets shut when it comes to making end-of-year charitable donations as economic woes continue.
Nonprofits relying on donation surges in the last few days of 2025 will likely be disappointed due to the high cost of living, inflation and rising unemployment, according to a new AP-NORC poll.
About half of Americans say they’ve already cut their charity checks for 2025, the survey found — and those donors don’t plan on giving more.
Just 18% say they’ve already donated and will do so again in before year’s end, while a slim 6% say they’re waiting until the last minute. The rest, 30%, say they haven’t given a dime and don’t intend to.
That means just 24% of survey respondents plan to make a donation before year’s end during a crucial time for charities.
December still serves as a “very important deadline” for donors, Dianne Chipps Bailey, managing director of Bank of America’s philanthropy division, told the AP. She cited estimates from the National Philanthropic Trust that nearly one third of annual giving happens in the final month of the year.
“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.
Despite a wide range of causes to donate to — from natural disasters like Los Angeles’ historically destructive wildfires to social services that have had their federal funding cut — weaker income gains and steep price inflation meant that lower-income households had less money to donate.
Oakley Graham, a 32-year-old from Missouri, said that 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 and their two young children seem always to be growing out of their clothes.
“Not that I’m not willing to give here and there,” Graham said. “But it seems like it’s pretty tough to find the extra funds.”
While the US economy grew at an unexpectedly strong pace of 4.3% in the third quarter — the highest rate in two years — much of the spending came from upper-income households whose spending is closely tied to financial markets, which have seen record gains this year.
Meanwhile, the jobs market has struggled, with unemployment rising in November to 4.6% — the highest level in more than four years.
Overall retail sales have also slowed, causing big businesses including Home Depot to report weaker-than-expected earnings and outlooks.
Inflation is still hovering above the Federal Reserve’s 2% target, and years of price hikes continue to put the hurt on consumers’ wallets.
Cuts to the federal workforce reportedly impacted giving this year, too.
An annual charity drive by federal employees brought in 40% fewer donations this year — after the Trump administration slashed thousands of jobs — according to The Independent.
The drive got a late start after organizers considering scrapping the annual event.
Fundraising data revealed that federal workers had donated $23 million as of last weekend — a steep decline from the more than $40 million each of the last three years’ campaigns brought in by the same point.
The annual campaign for government workers reels in revenue for thousands of charities, including many in the Washington, DC, area and Mid-Atlantic region. The Combined Federal Campaign has raised over $9 billion for charities from federal workers since the 1960s.
Experts say that while Trump and his policies have had an influence on charitable giving — he has slammed certain charities as wasteful and branded causes such as climate change, higher education and diversity as anti-MAGA — there’s more to the recent survey results.
LONG-TERM TREND
The number of Americans who give to charity has been shrinking for at least a decade, according to the Fundraising Effectiveness Project, which showed that donors fell around 3% in the first nine months of 2025, compared with the same year-ago period — the fifth consecutive year of shrinking donor rolls.
One big reason may be money jitters. Even as wages have inched up over the past decade, Americans are still sweating the cost of living.
Nearly half of respondents in a November McKinsey survey said rising prices have them worried, while almost a quarter said they’re struggling just to make ends meet.
It’s no surprise, then, that the top reason Americans gave for skipping charitable donations in 2024 was simple: they couldn’t afford it.
As a result, the non-profit sector is relying on fewer donors to be more generous.
Amir Pasic, dean of the Indiana University Lilly Family School of Philanthropy, told The Economist that he is hoping for a “dollars up, donors down” outcome.
A tiny slice of mega-donors is carrying the charity load. “Supersize” givers — those cutting checks of $50,000 or more — made up just 0.4% of donors but bankrolled more than half of all US donations in the first nine months of 2025, according to the Fundraising Effectiveness Project.
Some deep-pocketed philanthropists have even ramped up giving in response to Trump’s approach to nonprofits.
The Gates Foundation pledged to spend $200 billion over the next 20 years before shutting down, while Mackenzie Scott unloaded a whopping $7 billion in gifts this year.
