It might not be “transformational,” but unfashionable giving has the biggest impact.
Giving USA, the definitive annual report that tracks Americans’ charitable donations, has, to limited attention, released its latest full-year (2025) assessment of American charitable giving. Superficially, the findings should cheer those who rejoice in the fact that the U.S. is the world’s most charitable nation, as measured by percent of GDP. Giving USA, a product of the research arm of Indiana University’s Lilly Family School of Philanthropy, reports combined charity—individual, foundation, and corporate—rose 5.7 percent in 2025 to $617.2 billion, a new high in current dollars.
“U.S. charitable giving exceeded $600 billion in 2025, a milestone that reflects the resilience of American generosity,” lauded Wendy McGrady, Chair of Giving USA Foundation. “Amid a volatile economy and ongoing financial pressures for many households, it’s heartening to see generosity at this scale.”
But beyond the headline, there are worrisome signs in the trends in how those charitable gifts are being directed. As it has historically, religion is the leading sector in overall gifts, but gifts to religious institutions increased by the smallest percentage, just 2.4 percent, and actually declined by 0.2 percent when adjusted for inflation. In contrast, gifts for “public society benefit” —the label for gifts to advocacy organizations promoting social and political causes—increased by 10 percent. This category of giving has led the charitable increase consistently for the past five years.
Giving to benefit public society—especially when that means environmental causes—is often lauded as demonstrating the “transformational” power of philanthropy. This is code for outsized gifts with robust goals, to be sure, but that aim for that vague but apparently magnetic goal called “social change” rather than to help those who fall through the cracks in an otherwise laudable American system. They miss opportunities to improve American life through the traditional, if unsexy, means that actually work.
Particularly noteworthy in this regard is the massive charitable giving by Mackenzie Scott, the ex-wife of Amazon founder Jeff Bezos, who has become a billionaire donor via divorce and now is one of the nation’s major philanthropists. To date, through her Yield Foundation, she has distributed a staggering $26 billion. In contrast to the concrete local giving of the nation’s first major philanthropist, Andrew Carnegie—who paid to build hundreds of physical libraries in cities and small towns across the country—Scott tends far more intangible, supporting nonprofit advocacy organizations working toward “economic security,” “ocean resilience,” “equity and social justice,” and “youth empowerment.”
Causes and problems du jour seem to attract Scott, such as the nation’s epidemic of loneliness and youth mental health problems. She’s donated $20 million to Active Minds, which says it combats “systemic loneliness” and helps the troubled young through such initiatives as its “Youth Power Resource Hub” for “young leaders passionate about creating social change, including self-care, digital well-being and videos from other advocates like you.”
This high-minded, abstract language is where the less-fashionable causes in the Giving USA report come to mind. The relative decline in religious giving strains the churches, synagogues, and mosques which bring congregants of all ages together, a forum in which young people’s needs can be indirectly but effectively mitigated. They are places where “social capital” is nurtured, where ceremonies ranging from confirmation to bar mitzvah provide the rites of passage for the young that supply the elusive “self-esteem” and sense of accomplishment that are the foundation of youth mental health.
I am not a Catholic but I can’t help but think of the difference Scott could have made by providing some of her millions to Catholic archdioceses to support the reopening of the more than 1400 inner-city parishes and schools, closed since 1971, collateral damage of the financial costs related to clergy sex abuse scandal and maintaining aging buildings. These have historically and effectively addressed the social ills which concern Scott.
I think, too, of a “program” that has proven popular and effective in both providing a healthy outlet for kids and encouraging community: youth sports. One cannot imagine Scott, or, for that matter, a major health-oriented foundation such as Robert Wood Johnson, supporting Little League USA. But the core organization supporting the generational transfer of our national pastime for an estimated two million baseball and softball players relies on more than a million volunteers. It is an instrument of American soft power, as well, with chapters in eighty countries. All that on an annual budget that would be spare change for Scott, just $42 million. Parents and communities provide their own funds, as well, making it a true community endeavor. In my own town, there’s an annual parade of all the teams, where bleachers are filled with parents who talk about plenty of things, including town affairs, besides the game. The same is true for youth soccer, Pop Warner football, and youth hockey, the latter requiring committed car pools for those seeking out “ice time” in the wee hours before daylight.
Little League USA is talking its own book when it asserts baseball makes for “life skills and character building,” but it’s certainty right. Sports provides an outlet for the energy of youth which can be so easily misdirected (as we parents of boys learn), as well as lessons about taking losing with good grace. (See: Trump, Donald, who played ball but did not apparently learn.)
As popular as youth sports can be, it is no easy task to provide and maintain the infrastructure that’s required: diamonds, rinks, even smooth asphalt for inner-city basketball courts. These place financial demands on local communities, including non-affluent ones. This glaring need helps explain proposed bipartisan legislation, sponsored by Democratic Senator Jon Osoff of Georgia and Republican Todd Young of Indiana but stalled in the Congress, called the Youth Sports Facilities Act.
A House Republican co-sponsor, Rep. Bill Huizenga of Michigan, couches his support in what sounds like progressive language but is correct: “For too long, an area code has determined whether students could have access to facilities or resources necessary to participate and compete.”
But not everything should require federal grants. As per Mackenzie Scott, major foundations are flush with cash in the wake of the stock market run up. The top thirteen U.S. foundations, led by the Gates Foundation and Lilly Endowment, now boast more than $333.5 billion in assets. Youth sports may not seem rival to the mitigation of economic inequity—lately the overriding cause of the Ford Foundation—but its virtues are undeniable and self-evident. One wonders whether the giving of MacKenzie Scott will ultimately have anything to which to point as an actual accomplishment.
Howard Husock, a Senior Fellow at the American Enterprise Institute, is the author of the forthcoming book, Foundations Under Fire: A Century of Populist Challenge (Encounter, forthcoming, spring, 2027).
