Americans gave $4B on GivingTuesday 2025 as donations and volunteering gain big over last year
Americans gave $4 billion to nonprofits on GivingTuesday in 2025, an increase from the $3.6 billion they gave in 2024, according to estimates from the nonprofit GivingTuesday.
This year, more people also donated their time on the Tuesday after Thanksgiving, which fell on Dec. 2 and has become an important fundraising day for nonprofits. This year, 11.1 million people in the United States volunteered, compared to 9.2 million last year.
GivingTuesday began in 2012 as a hashtag and project of the 92nd St Y in New York and has since grown into an independent nonprofit organization. The organization estimates donation amounts and the number of people volunteering using data from a wide variety of sources, including donation platforms, payment processors and software applications used by nonprofits.
Woodrow Rosenbaum, chief data officer at GivingTuesday, said the number of people giving and overall donation amounts may have increased this year as people seek a sense of belonging and connection.
“Generosity is a very powerful way to do that,” Rosenbaum said in an interview with The Associated Press. “But I think it’s mostly because when people see a need, they want to do something and GivingTuesday is an opportunity to do that in a moment of celebration rather than crisis.”
Overall donations increased 8.1% from last year, when adjusted for inflation. GivingTuesday has also seen the average donation size increase over time and Rosenbaum said people may also be looking for other ways to give.
“Volunteering is a way to increase your impact without costing you money,” he said.
Not everyone who volunteers their time does so through a nonprofit. They can volunteer with mutual aid groups or by helping family members or neighbors, he said.
GivingTuesday does not include corporate or foundation donations in its estimate, Rosenbaum said, because they focus on the everyday generosity of individuals. That means they didn’t include billionaires Michael and Susan Dell’s $6.25 billion donation to encourage families to apply for new investment accounts created by the Trump administration.
President Donald Trump welcomed the Dells to the White House on Tuesday, calling their commitment “one of the most generous acts in our country’s history.” The Dells will offer between $250 million and $25 million to children 10 and younger to invest in accounts that the U.S. Treasury Department will create next year. The “Trump accounts” were part of the tax and budget legislation passed by the administration over the summer.
A significant portion of charitable giving to nonprofits occurs at the end of the calendar year, and GivingTuesday is the informal kickoff to what nonprofits consider the giving season. A combination of economic and political uncertainties makes it difficult to predict how generous donors will be this year. Rosenbaum said the generosity demonstrated during GivingTuesday is an extremely encouraging indicator of how the rest of the giving season will go.
“What we really hope is that nonprofits and community groups see this as an opportunity because we are in a time of abundance and people are ready and willing to help,” Rosenbaum said.
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