Charitable losses

U.S. charitable giving ­suffered a setback in 2022. Americans gave $499 billion to U.S. charities last year—a 3.4 percent decrease from 2021, according to a new report from the Giving USA Foundation. Adjusted for inflation, that’s a drop of 10.5 percent.

Among recipients of the donations, religious groups came out on top, receiving $144 billion, a 5 percent nominal increase over the previous year. Foundations and international affairs groups each saw 10 percent growth in donations, while education charities and public-society benefit organizations such as United Way and civil rights groups saw the steepest declines.

The drop in donations from ­individuals, foundations, estates, and corporations followed two record-­setting years of giving fueled by donor responses to the pandemic and race-related causes such as criminal justice and police reform.

Disposable income, generally associated with giving, also grew in 2020, boosted by government intervention in the form of stimulus checks, a universal charitable deduction for federal income tax, and other pandemic-­related assistance given to individuals and businesses, according to researchers at the Peterson Institute for International Economics.

Analysts at Giving USA, which released results from the annual philanthropy report on June 20, attributed the decline in giving to a volatile stock market and economic uncertainty. The S&P 500 dropped nearly 20 percent in 2022 and declined steeply toward the end of the year, when large charitable donations usually occur. Personal income also remained flat or declined due to inflation, which reached a 40-year high.

Total charitable giving has fallen only three other years in the last four decades—in 1987 when the stock market crashed, and during the Great Recession in 2008 and 2009.

Fresh idea for food insecurity

A nonprofit is providing low-income families better access to healthy foods—and also giving farmers markets a boost. Double Up Food Bucks expanded statewide in New York on July 1: The donor- and federally-funded program, launched in Detroit in 2009 and now operating in 30 states, matches Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program dollars spent on locally grown fresh fruits and vegetables.

When an aid recipient spends up to $20 in SNAP funds at one of about 65 participating New York farmers markets, he receives the same amount of tokens or credit on a Double Up Food Bucks card that can be spent on fruits and vegetables at the market. More than 95 percent of past program participants said their families were eating more fresh produce, according to the Field & Fork Network. —T.V.