Giving USA 2013: Giving Coming Back Slowly and Different After Recession

...it appears that some categories of recipients have seen legitimate gains over the last year, recovering from the cratering caused by the recession. Giving to the arts, for instance, looks like it may be recovering, although for some organizations, deficits caused by unfortunately timed investments made in programming or facilities have caused problems that now need to be remedied. The growth of giving in this area from last year to this is even more striking when you consider that last year, the giving in that category was inflated by one $800 million gift to one museum.

The largest category of giving—to religion—is trending downward, and according to Patrick Rooney, that’s a long-term trend. Most of the giving in this category is from individuals. He says that each generation is giving less than the last, and that giving to religious organizations is now a third of total giving, where a few decades ago, it was more than half. Still, it constitutes two-thirds of household giving.

In human services, if we take out the money spent on Sandy, it is very likely that there has been no growth, and even a small negative trend.

Giving to health is up, which is somewhat confounding because historically, when the government makes a major and well-lauded investment in an area, private giving lessens. This has not been the case with Obamacare and private giving. NPQ suspects that the increase in corporate giving is from Pharmaceutical companies and is likely gifts in kind. According to a survey done in 2011, 19% of what was given by corporations were gifts in kind.