Benjamin Soskis is a senior research associate at the Urban Institute’s Center on Nonprofits and Philanthropy and the editor of the Generosity Commission’s final report.

The Generosity Commission is a group of leaders from across the charitable sector committed to celebrating and supporting Americans’ spirit of generosity as expressed through everyday giving, volunteering, and other forms of civic participation. Launched in October 2021, the Commission was born in response to the decline in the number of people in America who are giving and volunteering. Through commissioned research and conversations, the Commission seeks to contribute to national understanding about how individual givers and volunteers are reimagining generosity in powerful and positive ways, strengthening our society and democracy in the process. The Generosity Commission is an independent project of The Giving Institute and Giving USA Foundation™.

This landscape analysis, funded by the Generosity Commission, is part of the final report from the Generosity Commission and summarizes what we currently know about the decline in giving and volunteering rates, with a particular focus on the “dollars up, donors down” (or “volunteer hours up, number of volunteers down”) dynamic and how it was manifested during the COVID-19 pandemic.

read the landscape analysis