Get On Board: Expectations and predictions for Giving Tuesday 2025

Erin Booker

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August 18, 2025

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4 minutes

Nonprofit Trends

This article is part of a series

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Giving Tuesday 2025 is gonna be The One That Blew Us Away.

In 2024, we all knew Giving Tuesday would be a wild ride.

In 2023, we said Giving Tuesday would be "inspiring".

In 2022, we predicted that Giving Tuesday would be "epic".

And we were right—with increases every year, Giving Tuesday has never failed to bring in billions for worthy causes worldwide.

In 2025, we're wishing that this is the year that all your Giving Tuesday dreams come true. (It's about time, right?)

But listen, we know how much work you and your nonprofit's team of unicorns are putting into your Giving Tuesday 2025 strategy. You're writing the emails; you're prepping your ask comms; you're organizing your volunteers (and maybe wrangling some AI tools to get it done.)

And we believe that at the end of the (giving) day, all of us will be surprised and inspired by the ways our global community shows up to support on Giving Tuesday, December 2, 2025.

$3.9 Billion. (Maybe even $4B!)

If you're wondering what that massive number is doing there, sitting smack-dab in the middle of your screen, we're here to inform you that that is our prediction regarding the online amount to be raised this December 2nd, aka Giving Tuesday 2025.

How'd we come up with that number, anyway?

Ok, we admit it, we asked AI. We asked it to take into account trends in Google Search terms around “Giving Tuesday" and national giving trends as well as last year's record-breaking haul, historical trends as to the growth of Giving Tuesday year over year, and the current economic and societal pressures on donors. (You can see our sources at the end of the article.)

“So what does this mean for my nonprofit's ability to fundraise on Giving Tuesday 2025 and our yearly budget?”

Well, first things first. Let's establish that this is a prediction, not a certainty. We think it's a pretty darn good prediction based upon the mathematics. But we're not Nostradamus, and even if we were, he was wrong a lot of the time, so let's not put all of our faith in possibly-fictional characters from the ancient past.

Which factors will affect Giving Tuesday 2025?

In the lead-up to Giving Tuesday 2024, there were a lot of moving pieces. At the time, we thought keeping track of them was exhausting.

Fast forward to 2025 and 2024 seems like a walk in the park. Here are some of the factors we're dealing with now.

The Economic Situation

All eyes are on ol' Jerome and the Federal Reserve. Despite really really wanting a reduction in interest rates, the economy is still recovering from white-hot inflation of recent years. Not only that, but unemployment isn't as low as anyone would like, the job market is super weird, and regular people (and our pocketbooks) have yet to feel any sort of relief.

Soooo...check in with your donors! See how they're doing. If everyone's making it rain for luxuries like gas, milk, and housing, well, this might not be your best Giving Tuesday ever. But if your donor base is holding steady with employment and community, this could be a very good year indeed.

Tarriff-ic Turmoil

Oh, tarriffs. As we write this, the effects of tarriffs are still to be determined. Depending on who you listen to, they're the end of the road for the American consumer or the savior of America's economy. Either way, what we've seen so far is that the markets aren't patient, and neither are the American people. The safe bet is to expect reactions as trade deals are inked and tarriffs crash into our supply chains.

Government Chaos

Y'all. This year, the year of flooding the zone, is overflowing with agitation, impatience, and intense desperation. Not only are we witnessing the escalation of major crises all over the world, with every form of communication chock full of information and asks and predictions and warnings, we're also seeing our national village crack and sever in realtime.

To combat the panic, our suggestion is to start early and stick with one main channel for Giving Tuesday communications. In this case, donors' trust in your organization doesn't come from popping out from behind every corner; it comes from earned expertise consistently presented in a transparent system. Pick email, text messaging, ads, social media, news media, and shout into your chosen void.

Student Loan Payments

After the pandemic and a series of stop-and-start relief initiatives, nonprofits are once again competing with student loans, so donors may be focused elsewhere.

Tap into that sense of investment prior to Giving Tuesday—folks that have invested in their own future may relate to the idea of building a better world for the next generation. Give them a guarantee that their donation will do some real good this Giving Tuesday—when it comes to investments, a sure thing is hard to pass up.

Looking Back

2024 was uncharted waters. The big news was that overall giving was down (especially adjusted for inflation) and there were more natural disasters and urgent needs than ever, meaning there was a constant ask in the air for donors everywhere. Add in a record for elections across the globe—including the United States' roller-coaster election cycle... and the amount of upheaval and need affected our climate of giving in unprecedented ways.

2024 was the 12th anniversary of Giving Tuesday—meaning that many nonprofiteers remember that first year we tried this wacky idea. But do you remember how much was raised on Giving Tuesday 2012? An adorable $12 million. (Yes, with an "m".)

And now, a little over a decade later, we're looking at beating 2024's astounding $3.6 BILLION raised across 36.1 million donors by (a predicted) 8-11%.

Put it into perspective

We all know what a nonprofit unicorn is, but in the for-profit world, the term has a much different meaning. A unicorn company is a company that has attained a $1B valuation. These are often huge, household name companies, like Nvidia, Spotify, Tesla, Facebook, Airbnb... you get the picture. If Giving Tuesday were a for-profit company, it would easily be a unicorn as well—and with just one day each year of tracked revenue generation.

The average time it takes unicorns to attain that magical $1B valuation? 7 years. So, how long did it take Giving Tuesday to break the Big B? 7 years. That's faster than Eventbrite, Glassdoor, FitBit, BuzzFeed, Shopify, Etsy, Wayfair, SpaceX, and lots more.

A Generosity Tsunami

Giving Tuesday totals may have crept up on you. $3.6B may feel too big to make sense of. So let's look back for a frame of reference: pulling each Giving Tuesday's totals, pre-pandemic growth was minimum 44% each year. Every year from 2012 to 2019, Giving Tuesday grew at least 44% year-over-year. In 2019 and 2020, growth averaged 37%. And even these last few years... despite their difficulties, Giving Tuesday growth has outpaced inflation, growing 13% in 2021 and 15% in 2022.

This is an amazing, incredible, mind-boggling amplification of generosity—and it's ongoing.

2023 raised "only" $3.12B, a mere 0.6% increase over 2022. When adjusted for inflation, that means the money raised in 2023 had less spending power. Not only that, but overall donor engagement was down by 10%. Bummer.

In 2024, we saw an comeback increase over 2023 of 16%, with more people than ever contributing, and we hope that 2025's tsunami will gain even more.

How much time have you spent promoting Giving Tuesday?

Giving Tuesday takes work, nonprofit unicorns! The more time you spend planning your and—even better—putting that strategy into action, the better your Giving Tuesday results are likely to be. If your Giving Tuesday efforts are limited to a single post on social media, you might not do that well.

Buuuut if you email, text, call, post, promote, and push Giving Tuesday like it's a rock up a hill and you're Sisyphus, you're likely to raise far more—and that's money you can use all year, not just on Giving Tuesday.

Look at your trends

Has your nonprofit raised more money each year on Giving Tuesday than the last? That's a sign you'll raise the bar this year, too. Look at historical trends when predicting your Giving Tuesday raise. That'll help you predict what might be in store for this year.

Lean into overall trends

Word on the street is that monthly giving is the key to greater retention, which is proving to be the key to mitigating reduced giving. In fact, forget monthly giving... incremental giving of all kinds is up. Visits to nonprofit websites through mobile devices are up. AI is everywhere; we're basically breathing it in. Interest rates are hopefull on their way down and the stock market is bullish. With so much incredible wealth being held in stocks, DAFs, and crypto—and the tax benefits of asset-based donating—it makes sense to hit non-cash donations.

Last word

None of us can see the future, so it's impossible to predict with absolute certainty what's going to happen this Giving Tuesday. However, with a few data points, you can make a pretty darn good guess—and we think our AI friends did just that. If you're still nervous about Giving Tuesday 2025, download Funraise's toolkit and start planning... we predict you'll love it.

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Sources behind this forecast

GivingTuesday 2024 results (official): $3.6B U.S.; 36.1M U.S. participants; 18.5M U.S. donors, with volunteer and advocacy counts. (GivingTuesday)

Giving USA 2025: 2024 total giving $592.5B and subsector gains (civil rights/community, international, education). (givingusa.org, Barron's)

M+R Benchmarks (2024/2025): sector online trends; recurring growth; mobile vs. desktop behavior; wallet/DAF prevalence on forms; channel shifts to influencers. (M+R Benchmarks 2024)

DAF surge: Fidelity Charitable 2025 report; DAFgiving360 2024 grants. (Fidelity Charitable)

Corporate platforms: Benevity’s GT 2024 volumes. (Benevity)

Crypto philanthropy: 2024 record year ($1B+), “Crypto Giving Tuesday.” (Business Wire)

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