Episode 187 - The Giving USA Report for 2023 - Highlights and Important Take Aways

At long last, Giving USA released its philanthropic giving data for 2023. Today, we eagerly dive into the numbers and more importantly, what they mean for non-profits and those who work in support of their missions. Philanthropic giving in the United States reached approximately $557 billion- an increase in pure dollars, but how does that stack up when adjusted for inflation? Uncover what the numbers really mean in this special episode of Around with Randall.

Welcome to another edition of Around with Randall, your weekly podcast for making your

nonprofit more effective for your community.

And here is your host, the CEO and founder of Hallett Philanthropy, Randall Hallett.

It's truly a pleasure to have you joining me, Randall, on this edition of Around with Randall.

As we get to the halfway point of 2024, this is the timeframe when we normally see from

the Giving Institute, giving USA, certainly the great work that the Lilly School of Philanthropy

does, the numbers from 2023, philanthropy numbers, data, what happened in our philanthropy

world.

Hallett Philanthropy is proud to be a part of the Giving Institute, working in partnership

with a lot of amazing leaders to support the initiative of figuring out what's going on

in philanthropy.

So I get an inside look, maybe a little sooner than the average bear.

And I want to share a little bit of the highlights with you.

So 20 minutes and I give you some of the big highlights of what we should learn, know

about philanthropy in 2023.

So let's start with the big things and we'll kind of position down to some of the minutia,

which is actually kind of interesting.

And then some suggestions and realizations, tactical suggestions of what you should be

thinking about.

Number one is is that we saw Philanthropy giving it about $557 billion in the United States.

That is actually up when you think about it from pure dollars from 2022.

The problem is is that when you add in an inflation, which we have to do, it actually was a decrease.

So the ability for people to give and choosing to give decreased based on some inflationary

pressures.

So the increase was about $11 or $10.5 billion.

But when you add in inflation, it actually has a dollar effect of losing $12 billion.

So we're now in year two of seeing a reduction in philanthropy as we compare it to inflation.

And that levels out the numbers so that there's actually a realistic understanding of people's

ability to and desire to and then actually doing they're giving.

Interestingly, when we look at how people gave and who gave, we saw a pretty dramatic increase

when it came to individuals giving.

Previous years was about 63%.

Now it's back up to 67%.

But I think that is and have said purposely, and there's no, I'm a member of the group,

but I think it's a misleading number because I'll give you a few other numbers.

So 67% came from individuals, 19% from foundations, 7% in terms of requests and, excuse me, 8% and

be quests, 7% in corporations.

Here's the thing, be quests come from individuals.

So there is a legitimate argument to make that you have to add that 19% to the 67% and

more at 85.

And probably the biggest growth when it comes to foundations in their giving is donor advised

funds and not all, but a good percentage of those come from individual decisions.

People have parked money in a community foundation or maybe a fidelity or somewhere else so they

can allocate those resources.

They take the tax action when they give it, but they can allocate it in a later dates.

Interestingly enough, a lot of those are individual decisions.

I would posit we are north of 85 and close to 90% of decisions being made by individuals.

And that doesn't even take into account corporations, how it philanthropy is one example, my giving

choices and my wives come through the company for tax reasons.

And that would be classified technically as a corporate gift, but it's an individual decision.

We're going to circle back to this here in a minute.

All the number of individual donors or not donors, but the dollars coming from individuals

increased.

I think it's also important to realize that there are a sub areas that are critical data

about what people are doing in terms of plans, giving and foundations, but are also a subset

of the individual decision making process.

We remained right at or just below 2% of GDP when it came to philanthropy.

We dropped to just right at that 2%.

Its remain consistent over the past 40 or 50 years, around 2%.

It was closer to 1718 in the 1970s and 80s, jumped in 2021 to its highest point, 2.3 to 2.4,

and we've seen a little bit of a drop over the last year or two closer to the 2% level.

Who's getting this money?

This always seems to be a question.

So when we talk about who's getting at the largest percentage, 24% of all dollars going

to charity goes to religion, which is not surprising.

However, 24% is a over the past 5 to 10 years of tremendous drop.

Human services and education come in at 14% both of them.

And then we get into grant making foundations and public society benefit and then finally

health at 9%.

So when we look at those as to whether or not they're increasing or decreasing, what we're

finding is is that religion saw an increase in 2023 and 4 or 223, but over the time has

come down.

And so a double digit increase and health saw a almost 10% increase.

So we're seeing more and more conversation more and more pressure, more and more investment

into these larger organizations, healthcare, higher ed, things like the United Way.

We're trying to figure out how they can leverage philanthropy in meaningful ways to meet

their mission because their revenues in other areas, tuition and higher ed, certainly the

reimbursement schedules and rates when it comes to healthcare are diminishing.

And so there's an incredible increased pressure on philanthropy to deliver greater results.

The one stat that I think I find most interesting is that the percentage of someone's giving

as a part of their disposable income.

The reason I think that this is actually a fascinating is twofold, both on the numerator

and denominator.

There's obviously with inflation tremendous increase on pressure when you talk about having

disposable income.

We don't have the numbers from this particular study, at least that I can find, that talks

about the number of households making a gift.

This is where we talk about the generosity crisis and the work that Nathan Chappelle is doing

to better explore why so many people are choosing not to give it all, to any nonprofit.

But it's easily understood in kind of the macro sense because if inflation is eating into

people's money and they have less money for purchasing power and they're going to prioritize

house payment, food, kid activity, certainly maybe a lesser vacation, but doing something,

philanthropy is going to fall further down the priority list or maybe even off.

The first is kind of that how much do they have in disposable income?

The second is then how much do they allocate towards philanthropy?

In 2022 and 3, we were at the higher, excuse me, 2021, we were at the higher points of

this.

All time high is 2005, with 2.4% in 2005 of one's disposable or family's disposable income

going to philanthropy or nonprofits, we're down to 1.9%.

You might think, well, that's only half a percent.

In the billions of dollars, that's billions of dollars that are being lost for purchasing

power.

A large part of that in the last several years has been inflation.

When you add into the fact that we have, and this is something that's been added in the

last several years, giving Institute and IUPI and other giving USA report, a lot of credit,

they're beginning to track mega gifts and they classify them over as over a half a billion

dollars or more.

Those are growing.

Just a few people made nearly 10 billion dollars in known gifts as a part of their 2023

family.

When we talk about disposable income, that is an interesting, possibly not bell curve,

that there are extremes on the end.

It's very low when we talk about people who have no resources and it's incredibly high

in terms of people who have immense resources, depending on how much they choose to give.

I think this is another indicator that we'll get to here in a minute about understanding

and engaging with the right people.

If you're not talking with the right people, you're going to have problems.

The takeaways, big picture, giving was up in terms of dollars, but down because of inflation.

We also know that it remains pretty consistent when it comes to GDP that disposable income

numbers are showing pressure that individuals are still driving the bus, so to speak, that

when you add in the idea of mega gifts and the idea of the percentage when you bring in

requests done by individuals, a lot of foundation donor advice funds done by individuals.

That you are in a position that you can talk about it from a knowledge of that individuals

are still driving most of the philanthropy.

That interestingly, and I mean, I'd mention this, there was a major decrease in what I would

call or what is considered foundation giving, meaning somebody makes a gift who would

don't advise fund through community foundation or their own private foundation.

That becomes important because are they choosing to give directly or are there less dollars

to give?

I don't know the answer to that.

I don't think anybody does.

I think there's also something to be mentioned in this that there's immense political pressure

on organizations, community foundations and others to advocate.

They can't force people to liquidate or give their donor advice funds to the nonprofits.

That we have seen over the last five years, and this is more of my own analysis, not it's

not in the report, that there are governmental entities, leaders saying we cannot have this

much money on the sidelines sitting in these charitable funds when it's needed on the streets.

And so there's been and there's lots of stories.

We've done a couple of podcasts on it, a lot of conversation, even some proposals, not

legislation to allocate, make those funds allocated into the community limit time on how

long they can stay in certain places, increasing the percentage that one must give for a foundation,

a lot of different discussions.

So that's another piece of this puzzle that we saw a lot of foundation drop in the amount

of money going in, nearly a six percent, eight percent.

And so that's pretty staggering.

Questions why?

We know that inflation is still hurting us.

There are a lot of families that are trying to figure out inflation.

I've said on my podcast right here on other editions that we see a record number of breakthroughs

into, it's called into 401k programs, had lunch with a friend of mine, my actually, my banker,

who was talking about the number of HELOCs that are being done because people are trying

to leverage their outs assets with the increase of their property value, but not for additions,

but for living.

The number of mortgage defaults, card defaults, and then you throw in the record credit card

balances, inflation is hurting people.

And that I think shows up in some of the numbers when we talk about more people doing less,

or more people doing less people doing more in terms of their philanthropy.

I would be remiss at this point if I didn't mention, which is nowhere in this report, but

I think it's going to have an effect is the 2024 elections.

And I'm not going to get into the politics of yay, I mean, nay, I mean, when there is indecision

and concern, people pull back.

It's not going to have an effect on the election, but it's not going to be an effect on the election.

And so, I think that we're going to have a lot of the changes in the election, and I think,

we're going to have a lot of the changes in the election, but I think that the election is,

I mean, the election has caused this some, but I do think that the election in what may

be that we think of traditionally, their social service, their health care, their education.

I'm not talking about political action committees or campaigns.

There may be a real push over the next six months, five months to really increase giving

to those political opportunities rather than to charitable opportunities.

And we'll see how that affects everything.

So my last three minutes here, the tactical, what should you do?

What are my recommendations based on all this data?

Number one is that you really need to review your portfolios and your prioritization of your

best opportunities with the prospects and donors.

If fewer people are making a bigger difference, your choices as to who you spend your time

with, your most valuable resource is really critical.

You have to prioritize the people that are the most connected number one, and number two,

can make the biggest difference.

And it's really in that order.

It's not the other way.

People go talk to the richest people, but they're not connected.

Well, that probably means they're not going to give very much.

I want to talk to the most connected people and then figure out maybe who has the most

opportunity to be supported from a financial perspective.

It is critically important.

We live in a 95 world, 95% of our dollars are coming from five percent of the people.

And if you're not identifying and prioritizing spending time with those five percent, you

will have challenges in reaching the goals that are being placed upon you by the organization

who needs this money.

So number one is review and prioritize the right, review portfolios, prioritize the right

people.

Number two, based on the drop in foundations, and I don't think we have this answer.

I think if you know of someone who has a donor advised fund or they have their own foundation,

pushing into the conversation a little bit around, are they wanting to give to that or

would they rather give directly to the charity or would do they want to liquidate funds

out of their donor advised funds to make immediate impact?

I'm not quite sure why there was such a big drop to foundations.

Maybe as simple as it was inflation and people with money said I'm not doing it, I'm going

to keep it in my pocket.

But it's a big enough drop considering the dollar over dollar, even though with inflation

there was a drop decrease.

That's a big enough change.

I'm wondering if people are feeling, as I mentioned, that political pressure, that social

pressure in the community, gosh, I really need to give more of my money for immediate use

because our community needs it more right now.

If you know people who have donor advised funds, if you know people who have private foundations,

I might ask them how they feel about this because you might get some insight into what they're

thinking in either way, it gives you insight as to what you should do.

So number two is push into the conversation regarding those that have donor advised funds

private foundations as to why or what they're looking at in terms of their giving.

The third is, and I've talked about this earlier in other podcasts about inflationary fundraising.

If inflation doesn't change much and there is increased pressure on our nonprofits for more

philanthropic dollars to be a mission, doing two things and keeping them in your back pocket

as part of your arrows and quiver, so to speak, finding solutions.

It was really important.

Number one is you might have to elongate pledges, which can be a financial issue because

your organization may say, no, we promised we're going to build this.

We got to actually pay the construction company.

We can't do longer pledges.

That's a, you want to maximize giving.

You might have to be in a position where you do.

The second is that almost every major gift conversation, whether you classify major gifts

at 5,000 or 25,000, doesn't make any difference.

Every major gift conversation should include some discussion around a blended gift that

if we were able to find a way to allow you to express your passion and use your state as

a mechanism to do that, when you don't need the money, not to take away from anything now,

is that something we could talk about?

Too often we, and our metrics don't help us, really kind of fall into what we got to get

the cash.

We got to get the cash.

I believe that we're going to find ourselves more challenged if we don't add assets into

the conversation, land giving.

There's so many different mechanisms.

Most people don't think about it.

When we bring it up, we say it from the, if you're smart, from the perspective, can I help

you figure out what you want to do?

And in doing so, you're really partnering with them, donors, about their passion and

leveraging dollars for them to meet that passion, create a legacy.

So the three major recommendations start with prioritized right people, take people out,

bless them, release them, that maybe not the top priorities.

Use your valuable asset, your time, your talent, your wisdom for the people who are going

to make the biggest difference.

Number two is ask people who have done advice funds, foundations, what they're thinking

about in terms of their giving.

Are they looking to give more immediately?

Number three is the idea of elongating pledges if need be, which is a challenge of finance,

but adding blended give conversations to maximize giving opportunities when resources

are a little bit more reserved in terms of people's concern for the economy and other things.

I am privileged to be a member of the Giving Institute.

I joined this year after they asked one of those things you're asked and I don't really

get to apply.

I'm humbled.

But these are the kind of things that I want to make sure people know about.

Because the data can help you make great decisions.

A real tip of the hat for giving you a say to giving institute and certainly the Lewis

School of Blantherpe for the work they do in collaboration to give us all these numbers.

Don't forget, check out the blogs at Halifelanthropy.com/2 for a week.

90 Second Reads, just things I see, things I think.

90 Seconds.

You can get RSSV right to you.

And if you'd like, you're welcome to reach out to me at podcast at Halifelanthropy.com.

There are really big questions in our communities and people who are hurting.

Organizations are struggling.

Philanthropy can be part of those answers.

Should be part of those answers.

So the work that you do every day is critical.

Don't forget my all-time favorite saying.

Some people make things happen, some people watch things happen.

Then there are those who wondered what happened.

Philanthropy is all about being someone who makes things happen.

One or anything with others who make things happen.

For those things and those people who are wondering what happened, that's noble.

That's just not a check.

That's impact.

That's making a difference.

And at the end of the day, that's what Philanthropy means.

It doesn't mean money means a love of mankind, love of humankind.

What can we do to make the world a better place?

I hope you understand the world that you live in is impacted by what you do.

And it has great value.

And I'm hoping today's data and a couple of suggestions get you closer to the goals and

the impact that you're looking for.

Thanks again for joining me.

Don't forget to come back for the next edition of Around with Randall

Make it a great day.