How a network-driven generation is redefining giving
of Gen Z gave in some form in the past week
say family or peers shape their giving decisions
of crowdfunding users gave to nonprofits
There’s a persistent narrative that Gen Z cares loudly but gives sparingly, that their public advocacy doesn’t translate into real impact, and that their generosity has shifted away from nonprofit organizations.
The data tells a different story.
This report, developed in partnership with GivingTuesday, explores how Gen Z adults (aged 18–29) express generosity today and how nonprofits can capture and sustain that participation, guiding supporters from awareness to sharing, from sharing to mobilization, and from mobilization to giving.
GoFundMe partnered with GivingTuesday to bring together two complementary perspectives on Gen Z: how they give today, and what broader, longitudinal data reveals about where their giving is headed. The work is driven by a shared interest in breaking through a decades-long plateau in giving, which has remained around 2% of GDP, and identifying what could move it.
The findings in this report are based on GivingTuesday’s GivingPulse surveys, a weekly tracking study conducted by the GivingTuesday Data Commons. The Data Commons brings together a global network of partners to share data and insights that advance understanding of generosity.
Each week, approximately 100 U.S. adults aged 18–85 are sampled from an Ipsos previously recruited online panel, with quotas aligned to U.S. Census Bureau benchmarks for age, gender, and geography. The survey captures a broad range of giving behaviors—including monetary donations, item giving, volunteering, and advocacy—directed toward registered nonprofits, community groups, and individuals, as well as attitudes toward generosity, nonprofits, and civic life.
Respondents report on their giving behaviors over the past week and month. Results are analyzed in aggregate across weeks (to support larger subsample analysis) and as rolling four-week averages to track trends over time. Additional methodological details are available here.
For this analysis, we compare respondents aged 18–29 (n = 1,990), referred to throughout the report as Gen Z, with those aged 30–85 (n = 8,421), referred to as other adults. Data was collected between January 1, 2025, and January 11, 2026, and represents a total sample of 10,411 respondents.
When asked if they had given in the past week, Gen Z respondents were more likely than other adults to say yes. About 71% had participated in some form of giving, compared to 65% of adults between ages 30–85, and their participation spans far more than a single behavior.
They lead in participation across every modality measured in GivingPulse, including giving to registered and unregistered organizations, informal giving, donating items and money, as well as volunteering, advocacy, and direct support to individuals.
This pattern is especially notable given their financial reality.
Compared to other adults, a considerably higher share of Gen Z respondents fall into lower income brackets (68% versus 50%, +18 percentage points), are students (+13 percentage points), and are unemployed (+9 percentage points).
By traditional assumptions, this would point to lower participation. Instead, we see the opposite.
Nearly 43% of Gen Z reported donating money in the past week (roughly 4 percentage points higher than other adults).
While participation is higher, total dollar contributions are lower. This isn’t a contradiction, but likely a reflection of life stage: Traditional philanthropy has long been an age-onset behavior, with financial contributions often increasing alongside income and stability.
This makes it especially important to look beyond immediate dollars alone.
Gen Z is significantly more likely to share and amplify causes within their networks, extending the reach of both an organization’s mission and every donation.
Their giving often includes recruiting others, making them not just donors but amplifiers of generosity.
That multiplier effect is measurable: fundraisers shared within the first day raise 10% more on average,* and each organizer share drives an average of $100 toward the goal, according to GoFundMe research.
This behavior is both intentional and frequent. According to GoFundMe’s Social State of Giving report, 46% of Gen Z believes sharing donations helps spread the word and inspire others, and half shares causes or fundraisers at least weekly.
* GoFundMe internal platform data
Looking more closely at how Gen Z participates in giving, the largest generational gaps emerge in relational behaviors: They’re more likely to support individuals directly, volunteer, participate in advocacy, and engage in informal giving. These forms of generosity are immediate, personal, and often shaped by moments of need, relevance, or connection.
This shift reflects a broader change in how trust is formed.
Gen Z is growing into their giving power in a landscape where trust is no longer granted institutionally, but transferred socially. With institutional trust more fragile and peer trust stronger than ever, we see that shift reflected in their giving, which often flows toward people, stories, and causes that feel close and tangible.
Attitudinal data reinforces this picture: Gen Z respondents were 14 percentage points more likely to agree that peer influence and family input shape their giving, suggesting that generosity isn’t just a personal decision, but socially learned, reinforced, and expressed.
Peer-to-peer fundraising is uniquely positioned to meet this moment, offering a distinct advantage: trust transferred through personal relationships. When supporters fundraise on an organization’s behalf, they lend their credibility, voice, and community to the cause.
Just not in the way it’s traditionally been defined or executed.
While the volume of peer-to-peer campaigns grew 18% in 2024, following pandemic-era declines, dollars raised per participant fell by 20%, revealing a widening gap between participation and performance.
This isn’t just an execution issue. It reflects a deeper mismatch between how peer-to-peer fundraising has been designed and how people engage today. Participation is more frequent, more social, and less tied to specific moments or campaigns.
When peer-to-peer is confined to time-bound events or rigid campaign structures, it limits the behaviors that drive participation. The result is more people showing up, but fewer pathways to translate that engagement into meaningful outcomes.
My giving choices are shaped by input from family and others.
57% of Gen Z
agree
vs. 43% of other adults
To close this gap, the model itself must evolve. Peer-to-peer fundraising must reflect how today’s supporters engage, enabling always-on, relationship-driven participation.
Community fundraising represents this next evolution, where participation is continuous, personal, and network-driven. It isn’t just a natural entry point. It’s increasingly where Gen Z giving begins.
Organizations need to rethink where time, budget, and attention are focused, shifting beyond tightly controlled frameworks to more open, supporter-led approaches. In this model, supporters can share their stories, mobilize their networks, and raise funds in ways that feel personal and relevant.
Community fundraising doesn’t replace traditional peer-to-peer events and campaigns. It builds on them. Grounded in trusted relationships and lived experiences, this approach is more authentic, more participatory, and more aligned with how giving happens today.
The nonprofit provides the framework, but the supporter drives the action, creating space for continuous participation, shared advocacy, and deeper connection.
While younger generations have long been perceived as less generous, that view may be especially pronounced for Gen Z. This isn’t because the desire to make an impact has diminished, but because the environment in which that impact takes shape has changed.
For Gen Z, that environment is largely digital, shaped by spaces where impact requires active participation to be visible and understood.
Community, identity, activism, and giving are no longer separate or primarily physical, but networked, immediate, and online.
As a result, generosity isn’t just an action. It’s a signal, often expressed publicly on social media, through shared campaigns, or within community spaces where others can see and respond.
In this context, visibility becomes validation. Participation builds credibility, reinforces identity, and invites others to engage. Causes gain momentum through social proof as people see who is giving, sharing, and showing up.
As giving becomes more social, it also becomes more participatory. Each act of generosity increases the likelihood of another, creating a network effect that can scale quickly across communities.
GivingTuesday’s GivingPulse survey found that Gen Z is 8 percentage points more likely than other adults to recommend, encourage, endorse, advocate for, or publicly share the activities of a community group, registered nonprofit, or independent effort to help others.
This gap is especially pronounced when you compare Gen Z to Boomers: Gen Z supporters are 10 times more likely than Boomers to share their donations on social media.
By mobilizing their communities, Gen Z acts as a powerful amplifier, bringing more donors into the fold. Within this broader shift toward trust in peer networks, their role is increasingly critical to nonprofits’ health and continued relevance.
Digital spaces don’t just prompt action. They capture and reinforce intent. Gen Z respondents who planned their giving in advance were more likely to report being reached via digital giving prompts (+13.2 percentage points on social media and +6.4 percentage points online via websites) as compared to spontaneous givers in the same age group.
This suggests that digital environments—especially social media channels—play a dual role: They surface giving opportunities while also helping individuals act on motivations they already hold.
In this environment, fundraising is no longer confined to controlled spaces, like direct mail or formal campaigns. Instead, it unfolds across decentralized, networked systems where visibility, timing, and social context shape participation and scale.
Reaching Gen Z within this landscape requires more than adapting traditional approaches. It means showing up where these behaviors already happen and understanding how they take hold and spread. This level of engagement depends on platforms and partners that are deeply embedded in these ecosystems, with a clear understanding of how generosity is expressed, amplified, and sustained, and how these behaviors are continuously shaped through design and interaction.
Understanding that Gen Z’s generosity spans multiple forms, it’s important to consider how nonprofits remain part of that ecosystem. The data suggests that crowdfunding plays a critical role in connecting these different modes of participation.
Findings from this dataset show no evidence that crowdfunding diverts support away from nonprofits, but instead helps expand participation in charitable giving.
91% of Gen Z individuals who give via crowdfunding platforms gave to registered nonprofit organizations
+16 percentage points more likely than those who give but don’t use crowdfunding platforms
Gen Z crowdfunding users also show stronger underlying giving orientations. They’re 9.4 percentage points more likely to trust nonprofits and 8.1 percentage points more likely to have been raised with giving as a value, suggesting these platforms may be attracting individuals already predisposed toward broader generosity.
At the same time, Gen Z crowdfunding users show signs of greater financial capacity and intent. They report lower levels of financial strain (48.8% versus 57.5%) and are more likely to say they could afford to give more (65% versus 51.8%) compared to nonusers.
Together, this data underscores an important reality: Crowdfunding isn’t fragmenting the giving landscape, but instead reshaping how people enter and move through it.
It enables individuals to respond to immediate, relational needs—supporting a person, family, or local cause—while increasing their likelihood of engaging with nonprofits.
Far from competing with traditional giving, it serves as an entry point and an amplifier, bringing more people into the broader ecosystem of generosity.
For nonprofits, the opportunity isn’t to compete with crowdfunding, but to connect to it, meeting donors where they are and building pathways to habitual support for their cause.
While Gen Z’s early participation across many forms of generosity signals strong potential for sustained support over time, organizations can’t assume it’ll automatically translate into increased monetary giving as financial capacity grows. At the same time, pushing Gen Z too quickly into traditional giving models risks overlooking how they already engage and may not align with how they naturally participate.
Instead, Gen Z should be understood as part of a broader portfolio of supporters, each contributing in different ways. While some older generations drive greater immediate revenue, Gen Z currently contributes through reach, influence, and network activation, creating value that extends beyond their own giving.
The opportunity is to build on this network-driven generosity by meeting Gen Z in the environments where they already show up and connecting participation to scaled financial support over time. By embedding natural moments to give within these experiences, nonprofits can make financial support a seamless extension of how Gen Z participates.
This approach not only supports near-term impact through expanded reach and social proof, but also helps build early giving habits. As financial capacity grows, giving becomes a familiar, repeatable behavior they’re more likely to sustain.
To start, organizations need to create experiences that capture and build on Gen Z’s existing participation while establishing clear pathways to future financial giving. When done well, these experiences convert intent in the moment and build the foundation for deeper, sustained support.
This requires rethinking the role of digital environments that connect nonprofits to Gen Z. These platforms must do more than process donations.
They must function as dynamic spaces for participation, supporting how Gen Z engages across channels, formats, and behaviors, and evolving alongside them.
To succeed in this environment, organizations must rethink how they build for giving. That means designing for participation—not just transactions—and recognizing that for Gen Z, giving often begins with expression, community, and visibility before it becomes financial. It moves from seeing to sharing, from sharing to mobilizing, and from mobilizing to giving, repeating and compounding over time.
It also means treating supporters not just as donors, but as distributors. Every act of giving should be easy to share, personalize, and rally others around. Amplification isn’t secondary. It’s how impact grows.
And it requires embracing crowdfunding and community fundraising as engines of growth. The strongest strategies don’t compete with these behaviors, but integrate them, allowing supporters to move seamlessly between helping individuals, mobilizing their networks, and supporting organizations.
Ultimately, the next generation of major donors is already here— not yet as high-dollar givers, but as high-impact participants.
The organizations that succeed will understand it’s not just about capturing immediate dollars, but about activating the networks that generate them over time.
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