GivingTuesday is December 1, just five weeks away. Your campaign plan is probably taking shape now. Interestingly, the data you should take to heart tells a more hopeful story than the headlines do.

The good news: According to GivingTuesday’s GivingPulse 2025 year in review, 65% of Americans gave in 2025. Despite economic turbulence, this is a slight increase over the year before. Monetary giving, volunteering and item donations all rose. Across the seven countries in GivingTuesday’s State of Generosity 2025 report, the share of people who gave in some way reached 85%.

The catch: Half of Americans can’t remember being asked to give.

That gap between willingness and invitation shaped our October 22, 2026, webinar, a conversation between Asha Curran (pictured above), CEO of GivingTuesday, and David DeParolesa, CEO of Give Lively, hosted by Rachel Charboneau, Give Lively’s head of marketing and business development. Curran was named to TIME’s inaugural TIME100 Philanthropy list in 2025 and The NonProfit Times’ influencer of the year in 2024. She keeps a close eye on the data her organization tracks, including how people give, week by week, across the U.S. and around the world.

Watch the free webinar on demand

The State of Generosity: What Nonprofits Need to Know Before GivingTuesday

Cost: Free

What to expect:

• The latest GivingTuesday research on who gives, how and why
• Three strategies GivingTuesday’s data ties to billions in untapped giving
• How belonging, trust and visibility shape giving behavior
• Ways small nonprofits can use their size as an advantage
• How to run GivingTuesday alongside an existing year-end campaign
• Audience Q&A with Curran

Who it’s for: Executive directors, fundraisers and communications staff planning GivingTuesday and year-end campaigns, especially at small and mid-sized organizations that rely on everyday givers rather than a handful of major donors.

Generosity is abundant; the “ask” is not

GivingPulse is GivingTuesday's weekly survey that asks Americans what generous actions they took in the past seven days. Curran said the results consistently push back on the idea that people have stopped caring about each other: 77% reported a recent random act of kindness. In fact, most people say they’re willing to help across political and social differences.

“People want to give, and one of the problems is that too often they’re just not asked. That means there’s unlimited potential.” - Asha Curran, CEO of GivingTuesday

GivingPulse data backs her up. Among Americans who were asked to give in 2025, 87% gave money, up more than six percentage points from 2024. GivingTuesday’s research estimates that broader outreach could unlock $19 billion to $46 billion in additional annual giving in the U.S.

Curran’s response to nonprofits wondering why people don’t give anymore is, “Giving does usually require an invitation. People need to feel that they can do it, that they know where to do it, that it’s easy, that it’s visible.”

Fewer donors, more concentrated dollars

DeParolesa pointed to a split in the Q1 2026 report of the Fundraising Effectiveness Project (FEP): dollars raised grew 4.3% year over year while donor count fell 0.8%. The decline is shallower than the 2.3% drop a year earlier, but FEP notes that new donor counts are still falling although, importantly, the only donor tier to shrink was gifts of $1–100.

Curran traced part of the problem to a long-running focus on major gifts at the expense of everyday giving strategies. When major donors pull back, organizations without a broad base of givers have less (or nothing) to fall back on.

She pointed to three changes GivingTuesday’s data supports:

• Broaden the “ask.” Whole groups of people, including many young people and residents of the U.S. South, rarely receive a solicitation at all. Some organizations broadened theirs simply by opening their doors for a wine and cheese reception so neighbors could see their work.
• De-seasonalize giving. GivingPulse shows generosity bottoms out in July and peaks at year-end. Curran questioned why summer has to be a fallow period. (If nothing else, it could be used as a time to tackle corporate matching gifts.)
• Prioritize recurring giving. According to GivingTuesday, monthly donors generate 2.75 times the annual value of non-recurring donors, yet half of nonprofits don’t acquire a single new recurring donor each year.

“Fundraising is a part of community building, and the bigger your community, the more engaged your community, the more resilient your community is.” - Asha Curran, CEO of GivingTuesday

Say “giver,” not “donor”

GivingTuesday calculates generosity in several ways. On GivingTuesday 2025 alone, 13.5 million Americans donated goods and 11.1 million volunteered, according to GivingTuesday. Curran recommended that nonprofits widen their own lens to match. Her suggestion for a quick mindset reset is:

“Stop using the word ‘donor' for a week. Every time you want to say ‘donor,' say ‘giver' instead, because ‘donor' really does imply money.” - Asha Curran, CEO of GivingTuesday

Someone who can’t give $5 today may have an hour to volunteer, a voice for advocacy or a network with which to share your story.

She also highlighted coalition campaigns, where organizations with a shared mission or region band together and lead with “mission over brand.” In one GivingTuesday analysis of a storytelling contest, the presence of a logo in a story was negatively correlated with votes for it. People respond to the story and the invitation, not the brand.

Volunteering, belonging and the pull of in-person connection

Curran expects a strong year for volunteering and offers a theory about why: when times feel this hard, people rediscover that being with others in real life is the most comforting thing there is. “Staring at our devices is making us lonelier,” she said. For a movement that started as a hashtag, GivingTuesday itself is now making offline, collective giving a priority.

The midterm elections, which fall a few weeks before GivingTuesday this year, may add to that pull. Curran said GivingTuesday has historically seen a jump in participation during election years, contrary to the organization’s early fears that politics would drown it out. “It’s also a pivot back to optimism and hope and connection,” she said.

In-person connection matters because belonging and generosity reinforce each other. Only 34% of Americans report a genuine sense of community belonging, according to GivingPulse. Among that group, 72% recently gave to a nonprofit in some form. Curran connected this to social proof: people want to see their neighbors acting on shared values such as kindness and helpfulness. When generosity is visible, more of it follows.

“When we increase belonging in our community, we increase giving of all kinds. And when we increase giving in a community, we increase belonging as well.” - Asha Curran, CEO of GivingTuesday

Trust isn’t the question that matters

GivingPulse finds 71% of Americans trust nonprofits. Curran argued that, while that’s good, nonprofits should focus on a harder question.

“I don’t think the question is: Do you trust nonprofits? I think the question is: Do you think nonprofits can get stuff done?” - Asha Curran, CEO of GivingTuesday

Fewer people answer yes to that. Curran framed the challenge as relevance: whether people see the work nonprofits do in their own lives. Young people often give to crowdfunding campaigns because the impact feels immediate and the money doesn’t seem to filter through layers of bureaucracy. Nonprofits that show their work can earn that same sense of immediacy.

Young people don’t want exclusivity

One webinar attendee asked whether to launch a “friends of” giving society, since younger givers seem less drawn to exclusivity. Curran agreed with the instinct. Young people today are distrustful of institutions, and anything that feels institutional risks scaring them off. They respond to mission, not membership tiers.

What works instead: ambassador and champion programs that give young supporters ownership.

"Young people really like to be put in a position where they have a little bit of authority, a little bit of control over what they’re doing." - Asha Curran, CEO of GivingTuesday

She encouraged nonprofits to rethink what the word volunteer means in the 21st century.

GivingTuesday’s own youth program reflects that self-direction. It began as GivingTuesday Kids, started by a kid, and now operates as GivingTuesday Spark for young people of all ages. “Young people are so much more self-directed when it comes to giving and philanthropy than anybody ever was in my generation,” Curran said. “That makes me hopeful.”

Small organizations have the advantage

Curran called the myth that small nonprofits can’t compete on GivingTuesday a pet peeve. In her experience, small and mid-sized organizations do very well because they’re close to their communities and free of the approval layers that water down creative ideas at large institutions.

Her favorite example: Badass Animal Rescue, a largely volunteer-run Brooklyn rescue that drove south to save dogs from a high-kill shelter, documented the entire road trip on Instagram and broke every fundraising record it had – all with no budget.

As for which social channels to use, Curran cautioned against chasing trends. She sees a growing LinkedIn presence around GivingTuesday, but with social media always in flux, she believes specific platform advice could be outdated within a month. Her guidance is to show up where supporters already are, whether that’s WhatsApp, TikTok or somewhere else. “Use the places that people are already congregating,” she said.

Fitting GivingTuesday into your year-end plan

Several attendees asked how to handle GivingTuesday when they already run a year-end appeal or community campaign. Curran’s advice is to keep your campaign and use GivingTuesday as a spike point. Secure a board match, launch a storytelling push or turn it into a thank-you day with no “ask" at all. She recalled an organization in Baltimore that spent the first GivingTuesday calling every giver just to say thanks and raised $1 million.

GivingTuesday is the year’s biggest conversation about generosity, and Curran encouraged every organization to take part in some way. Her reframe for teams that feel awkward asking:

“It’s a gift to give somebody the opportunity to give.” - Asha Curran, CEO of GivingTuesday

What comes next

People are ready to give, but many are waiting for an invitation that never arrives. Curran’s closing advice was to shift fundraising from transactional to relational and treat GivingTuesday as a day for experimentation. Gather your team and ask what you’d try if you ignored the old rules.

She also left attendees with a line Charboneau promised to remember: "resentment and gratitude can’t occupy your mind at the same time." In a hard year, leading with gratitude is good practice for your organization and your givers alike.

Watch the webinar on demand for the full conversation. For tools, explore GivingTuesday’s free 12 Weeks of Action and Give Lively’s GivingTuesday page and our 12-week flowcharted countdown to GivingTuesday, complete with priority actions.