Global Generosity Skyrocketed Last Year but Less so in the U.S.

A report based on a GivingTuesday research collaboration delivered hopeful news on global generosity, finding that 83.6% of people worldwide donated to others in some way last year.

But, in a surprising “double-whammy,” the recently released research also found that both the number of givers, and the dollars they donated, fell last year in the U.S. for the first time since 2010. Also, stock market declines in 2022 appeared to cause large donors everywhere to give less.

The research, titled “Rethinking Resilience: Insights from the Giving Ecosystem,” was compiled by GivingTuesday Data Commons, a project involving more than 300 organisations and more than 50 global data labs. The Data Commons looks at “giving behaviours, contexts and patterns, movement growth, and altruistic motivations” with a goal of determining and sharing best practices for driving philanthropy.

GivingTuesday began in 2012 as an effort to encourage charitable contributions on the Tuesday after Thanksgiving in the U.S., and has expanded into a global movement.

“Rethinking Resilience” gleaned data from Asia, Africa, Europe, South America, and North America, finding that 56% of people across the globe gave in at least three ways last year, including donating their time, donating things they owned, or providing money; also, 57% gave to all of the three types of recipients that the report tracked: formal charities, informal groups, and individuals.

The report “makes it clear that in many communities, giving to others is not an optional ‘extra’ but rather a first principle of community membership,” Woodrow Rosenbaum, chief data officer at GivingTuesday said in an introduction to the research.

The Data Commons goal, Rosenbaum said, is to “bring the same sorts of data-driven tools to the social sector that the business sector has had for decades.” These tools should help to counter what has become a narrow view of philanthropy.

“Our research reveals that broadening outreach and engagement to include previously under-represented demographics can significantly improve organizational resilience, especially in times of economic volatility and uncertainty,” Rosenbaum said.

The report found a significant rise in volunteering everywhere, which often happens when the economy is shaky. It also found that young people everywhere were “giving more often and in more ways” than older ones.

Overall, this global data gathering exercise revealed that giving can look far different country to country. The “most inescapable insight,” the report said, is that less wealthy countries were consistently more generous than wealthy ones. Kenya, for instance, demonstrated “a near universal commitment to generosity across all metrics,” with India as a close second.

In the U.S., the number of givers fell by 10%, driven by an 18% drop in new donors and a huge drop in donor retention: 26.4% from first-time donors and 3.5% from repeat givers.

Contributions by “major” philanthropists, who give between US$5,000 and US$50,000, and “supersize” ones who give more than US$50,000 fell the least, but because of the large size of their donations, the drop off was more keenly felt. Total dollar contributions fell by 1.7% last year.

The biggest decline among these philanthropists was in the fourth quarter of last year as a 20% drop in stocks took a toll. That fall off could be “the canary in the coal mine,” the report said. “Should large donors suddenly retreat further, the impact on an unprepared social sector could be devastating.”

The message to nonprofits is to actively build a wider, more diversified base of support beyond big philanthropists to “strengthen resilience and reduce the adverse effects of steadily growing competition for a shrinking pool of increasingly cautious large donors who may be retreating in the face of economic uncertainty and volatility,” the report said.

First, the good news for office landlords: A post-Labor Day bump nudged return-to-office rates in mid-September to their highest level since the onset of the pandemic.

Now the bad: Office attendance in big cities is still barely half of what it was in 2019, and company get-tough measures are proving largely ineffective at boosting that rate much higher.

Indeed, a number of forces—from the prospect of more Covid-19 cases in the fall to a weakening economy—could push the return rate into reverse, property owners and city officials say.

More than before, chief executives at blue-chip companies are stepping up efforts to fill their workspace. Facebook parent Meta Platforms, Amazon and JPMorgan Chase are among the companies that have recently vowed to get tougher on employees who don’t show up. In August, Meta told employees they could face disciplinary action if they regularly violate new workplace rules.

But these actions haven’t yet moved the national return rate needle much, and a majority of companies remain content to allow employees to work at least part-time remotely despite the tough talk.

Most employees go into offices during the middle of the week, but floors are sparsely populated on Mondays and Fridays. In Chicago, some September days had a return rate of over 66%. But it was below 30% on Fridays. In New York, it ranges from about 25% to 65%, according to Kastle Systems, which tracks security-card swipes.

Overall, the average return rate in the 10 U.S. cities tracked by Kastle Systems matched the recent high of 50.4% of 2019 levels for the week ended Sept. 20, though it slid a little below half the following week.

The disappointing return rates are another blow to office owners who are struggling with vacancy rates near record highs. The national office average vacancy rose to 19.2% last quarter, just below the historical peak of 19.3% in 1991, according to Moody’s Analytics preliminary third-quarter data.

Business leaders in New York, Detroit, Seattle, Atlanta and Houston interviewed by The Wall Street Journal said they have seen only slight improvements in sidewalk activity and attendance in office buildings since Labor Day.

“It feels a little fuller but at the margins,” said Sandy Baruah, chief executive of the Detroit Regional Chamber, a business group.

Lax enforcement of return-to-office rules is one reason employees feel they can still work from home. At a roundtable business discussion in Houston last week, only one of the 12 companies that attended said it would enforce a return-to-office policy in performance reviews.

“It was clearly a minority opinion that the others shook their heads at,” said Kris Larson, chief executive of Central Houston Inc., a group that promotes business in the city and sponsored the meeting.

Making matters worse, business leaders and city officials say they see more forces at work that could slow the return to office than those that could accelerate it.

Covid-19 cases are up and will likely increase further in the fall and winter months. “If we have to go back to distancing and mask protocols, that really breaks the office culture,” said Kathryn Wylde, head of the business group Partnership for New York City.

Many cities are contending with an increase in homelessness and crime. San Francisco, Philadelphia and Washington, D.C., which are struggling with these problems, are among the lowest return-to-office cities in the Kastle System index.

About 90% of members surveyed by the Seattle Metropolitan Chamber of Commerce said that the city couldn’t recover until homelessness and public safety problems were addressed, said Rachel Smith, chief executive. That is taken into account as companies make decisions about returning to the office and how much space they need, she added.

Cuts in government services and transportation are also taking a toll. Wait times for buses run by Houston’s Park & Ride system, one of the most widely used commuter services, have increased partly because of labor shortages, according to Larson of Central Houston.

The commute “is the remaining most significant barrier” to improving return to office, Larson said.

Some landlords say that businesses will have more leverage in enforcing return-to-office mandates if the economy weakens. There are already signs of such a shift in cities that depend heavily on the technology sector, which has been seeing slowing growth and layoffs.

But a full-fledged recession could hurt office returns if it results in widespread layoffs. “Maybe you get some relief in more employees coming back,” said Dylan Burzinski, an analyst with real-estate analytics firm Green Street. “But if there are fewer of those employees, it’s still a net negative for office.”

The sluggish return-to-office rate is leading many city and business leaders to ask the federal government for help. A group from the Great Lakes Metro Chambers Coalition recently met with elected officials in Washington, D.C., lobbying for incentives for businesses that make commitments to U.S. downtowns.

Baruah, from the Detroit chamber, was among the group. He said the chances of such legislation being passed were low. “We might have to reach crisis proportions first,” he said. “But we’re trying to lay the groundwork now.”

Global Generosity Skyrocketed Last Year but Less so in the U.S.

Office owners are struggling with near record-high vacancy rates