There’s no question that GivingTuesday, the annual fundraising event started in 2012 by the 92nd Street YMCA in New York City and the UN Foundation, has grown into a force of its own. It is now coordinated by a nonprofit of the same name, and is a nontrivial factor in many nonprofit organizations’ annual fundraising.

With this year’s GivingTuesday behind us, we’re taking a look at not just the numbers, but also the stories about our sector that those numbers tell.

GivingTuesday 2025: The Giving Hasn’t Stopped

This year’s GivingTuesday broke previous records, with 38.1 million people participating in the event worldwide and donating $4 billion in the United States.

Here’s the breakdown of the 2025 US numbers compared to 2024 from GivingTuesday.org:

  • Total dollars donated: $4.0 billion, an increase of 13 percent
  • Total participants: 38.1 million, an increase of 6 percent
  • Participants who made financial contributions: 19.1 million, an increase of 3 percent
  • Participants who gave goods: 13.5 million, an increase of 4 percent
  • Participants who volunteered: 11.1 million, an increase of 20 percent
  • Participants who spoke out about causes: 20.9 million, an increase of 26 percent

The participation breakdown reveals that GivingTuesday is expanding beyond financial contributions. The increases in volunteerism, as well as advocacy, suggest people are finding diverse ways to engage with the causes they care about and support the organizations that uphold their values.

“Year after year, millions of people across the globe make GivingTuesday a priority, not because it’s a trend or because it’s new, but because generosity is woven into how we care for each other,” said GivingTuesday CEO Asha Curran in a statement about GivingTuesday 2025. “The fact that people show up so strongly not just on GivingTuesday, but every single day, in the spirit of generosity, speaks volumes about our ability to unite around a shared vision for a better world, especially during a year as challenging as this one‚ one full of upheaval, uncertainty, and loss in communities and across sectors.”

A Continued Trend: Dollars Up, Donors Down

While the number of donors and the total amount donated both increased for GivingTuesday 2025, the latter figure increased by about double the rate that individual donations did. It’s a trend, often dubbed “dollars up, donors down,” that has been persistent in recent years.

Read the full article about GivingTuesday 2025 by Isaiah Thompson at Nonprofit Quarterly.