United Way, Salvation Army Top List of Charities Americans Gave Billions to in 2020

Americans gave more charitable donations to the United Way Worldwide and the Salvation Army in 2020 than to any other nonprofit that focuses on direct aid, the Associated Press reported. The rankings come from The Chronicle of Philanthropy's list ofwhich organizations received the most direct financial support.

The United Way's top rank came amid the devastating economic troubles of the COVID-19 pandemic, and as giving has transitioned from individual donations from a broad spectrum of donors to donations from more concentrated numbers of America's richest. The change raised concern with Tolli Love, chief investor relations officer at United Way Worldwide.

"United Way likes to think of ourselves as democratizing philanthropy," Love said. "To have fewer people deciding where the philanthropic resources go, it's a danger or a risk that could possibly leave everyday community supporters disenfranchised."

Though Salvation Army raised $1.8 billion in 2020, an increase of 31 percent from the previous year, an official from the organization was apprehensive about whether that success would continue as the world approaches two years in the pandemic.

"What we fear, like other nonprofits, of course, is donor fatigue," said Dale Bannon, Salvation Army's national community relations and development secretary.

For more reporting from the Associated Press, see below.

The most striking increase in charitable giving last year came at Feeding America, a national network of more than 200 food banks, which grew the fastest of the 100 nonprofits in the Chronicle rankings. Feeding America raised over $515 million last year, more than three-and-a-half times what it brought in in 2019.

Even with that increase, though, Feeding America officials — like the leaders of other nonprofits — are worried about what will happen as the urgency of the health and economic crises fade but demand for charitable services continues.

"We are in a fortunate position to have such an influx of donors, but the need is enormous," says Casey Marsh, chief development officer at Feeding America. "The cameras have started to go away from the food bank lines, but the lines haven't gone away. It's so incredibly important that people stick with us."

Roughly $1 out of every $11 donated in 2020 went to the 100 nonprofits on this list, a sign of the gigantic percentage big nonprofits get compared to the more than 1 million other charitable organizations in the United States.

While the big charities get a large share of Americans' dollars, they did not do as well last year as nonprofits overall. Adjusted for inflation, the 100 top charities raised 2.7 percent more than in 2019. Overall, charitable giving last year grew 3.8 percent in 2020, according to estimates from the annual "Giving USA" report.

The share of Americans who give has been declining for decades and now hovers at 50 percent even as total giving continues to increase. But the pandemic deepened charities' reliance on donors who can make the biggest gifts, and that is likely to continue in the years ahead, says Eric Javier, managing director at the consulting firm CCS Fundraising.

"If the market stays high and full employment lags, I would predict that this trend will continue: Charities will depend on the wealthiest donors," he wrote in an email. "These donors have both the financial capacity and psychological comfort to consider major gifts."

But working nonprofits like the Salvation Army and Feeding America are not the only entities that can accept tax-deductible contributions. In recent years, many high-net-worth donors have chosen to give to donor-advised funds, the charitable-giving accounts housed at commercial banks, community foundations, and other charities.

While donors receive an immediate tax break for their contributions to these funds, there is no required timeline for directing those funds to working nonprofits. That's why the Chronicle does not count them in its rankings, which focus on money flowing out of donors' hands into charities doing work today.

Still, the size of those donor-advised funds compared with other nonprofits is eye-catching. Fidelity Charitable alone took in upwards of $10.7 billion last year, almost triple the nearly $3.6 billion United Way Worldwide (No. 1 in our survey; raised 3.3 percent more than in 2019) raised and nearly six times what the Salvation Army collected.

To compete for funding in an environment in which the wealthy dominate charitable giving, United Way Worldwide has made big changes. It was once defined by its workplace-giving campaigns, which raise recurring, modest contributions from everyday people. But those efforts have been declining for years, falling 15 percent in 2020, in large part because of remote work or layoffs due to the pandemic.

Gifts of $10,000 or more helped the organization increase its cash support by more than 3 percent from 2019 to 2020. Those big contributions meant that for the first time since 2014, United Way Worldwide's donations grew year over year. Among those big gifts were contributions from MacKenzie Scott, the novelist and former wife of Jeff Bezos, who supported 46 United Way affiliates across the United States.

One reason major donors felt emboldened to give big last year was the booming stock market. Some charities — especially colleges and universities — have decided to launch major fundraising drives to attract big gifts from high-net-worth donors.

"There's a momentum there, there's a heightened interest in philanthropy," says Karin George, managing principal at Washburn & McGoldrick, a fundraising firm that primarily works with independent schools and colleges and universities.