Gen Z is Giving More Than You Think

GivingTuesday is less than one month away.

Don’t panic! Be prepared. Knowing who you want to engage with is key to any successful campaign, and most nonprofits are trying to connect with younger audiences, like Gen Z. But they don’t know where to start.

Your best first step is simply getting to know them. Find out what they care about, how they give, and why. We’ve pulled together key takeaways from our recent collaborative report with GoFundMe Pro to get you started in the right direction this giving season.

If you don’t have time to read the full blog just yet, note these takeaways:

Gen Z gives more often and in more ways than other adults
Gen Z’s generosity is personal
Gen Z makes their generosity visible
Among Gen Z respondents who gave through crowdfunding platforms, 91% also gave to a registered nonprofit

Here’s what we know and how you can apply it to your GivingTuesday Campaign

Gen Z has outpaced other generations in every form of giving measured. That’s according to our joint report with GoFundMe Pro comparing data from January 2025-January 2026 of US adults.

From our weekly survey data, 71% of adults ages 18 to 29 say they had given in some form in the past week. Among adults 30 and older, the figure was 65%.

That runs against a common story: young people care loudly but give sparingly, and what they do give doesn’t reach nonprofits.

The data in our award-winning report told a different story.

GivingTuesday’s Data Commons collaborated with GoFundMe Pro to dive deeper into how Gen Z givers express generosity and what that means for the organizations that want to support and engage with them. Generosity, in this report, encompasses multiple ways people give: money, items, time and voice.

You can make stronger connections with Gen Z Givers ahead of GivingTuesday on Dec 1, here’s how:

1. Don’t judge Gen Z by the size of their donations

Gen Z gives more often and in more ways than other adults, and that holds for money too. In the week before they were surveyed, 43% of Gen Z gave money, compared with 39% of adults 30 and older. About 48% gave to a registered nonprofit, compared with 45% of older adults.

They did this with fewer resources. Some 68% of Gen Z respondents reported household income under $75,000, compared with 50% of other adults. Gen Z was also more likely to be students or unemployed.

Total dollars from this group are lower, which is typical of life stage. Giving has long grown with income and stability. But Gen Z is already ahead in the other forms of generosity:

Time: 35% volunteered in the past week, compared with 25% of other adults.
Voice: 32% advocated for a cause, compared with 19%.
Items: 45% donated goods, compared with 41%.

How to apply this to your GivingTuesday campaign: Offer Gen Z supporters more than one way to support you. A monetary donation is only one way people give, it’s also not something everyone can do. A volunteer shift, a share on social media or a donated item can be a way to open the door to more supporters.

2. Build relationships intended for the long haul

Gen Z’s generosity is personal. About 57% of Gen Z respondents said family or peers shape their giving choices, compared with 43% of other adults. They also lead in the forms of giving that feel closest to home. Compared with older adults, Gen Z was 13 percentage points ahead on advocacy, 12 points ahead on giving directly to individuals and 11 points ahead on informal giving to groups that are not registered nonprofits.

Trust is moving the same way. Institutions earn less of it than they once did, and people increasingly trust the friends and family who vouch for a cause.

That is why peer-to-peer fundraising matters, but the traditional version is struggling. Industry benchmarks show the number of peer-to-peer campaigns grew 18% in 2024, while dollars raised per participant fell 20%. More people are showing up, and fewer are being given a way to turn that interest into results.

How to apply this to your GivingTuesday campaign: Make getting involved flexible and open to all. Encourage supporters to engage with your campaign or organization when something personal moves them, such as a birthday, a milestone or a loss, and give them simple tools to tell their own story. You provide the framework, and they bring their community.

3. Make giving back more visible

For Gen Z, being generous often means being visible about it. In our survey, 20% of Gen Z respondents had publicly recommended or endorsed a registered nonprofit, compared with 12% of other adults.

Digital spaces are where much of that happens. Among Gen Z respondents who planned their giving in advance, 31.8% said they were asked to give through organic social media, compared with 18.6% of spontaneous givers. Social media also helps people act on intentions they already hold.

GoFundMe Pro’s own research shows what sharing is worth. Gen Z is 10 times more likely than Boomers to share their donations on social media, and half of Gen Z shares a cause or fundraiser at least weekly. On GoFundMe Pro’s platform, fundraisers shared on the first day raise 10% more on average, and each share from an organizer brings in about $100.

How to apply this to your GivingTuesday campaign: Make it incredibly easy for people to show your campaign or organization some love on social media. Give folks a Canva template they can customize or suggest a copy that they can paste into a repost. Then, encourage them to keep talking about how they showed up.

4. Treat crowdfunding as a bridge

Many nonprofits worry that crowdfunding pulls young donors away from them. We found no evidence of that. Among Gen Z respondents who gave through crowdfunding platforms, 91% also gave to a registered nonprofit. That is 16 percentage points higher than Gen Z givers who did not use those platforms.

These donors also showed stronger leanings toward giving. They were 9.4 points more likely to trust nonprofits and 8.1 points more likely to say they were raised with giving as a value. They reported less financial strain (48.8% versus 57.5%) and were more likely to say they could afford to give more (65% versus 51.8%).

Our survey shows an association, not cause and effect. Crowdfunding may simply attract people who were already inclined to give. People who respond to a friend’s need are often the same people who support nonprofit causes.

How to apply this to your GivingTuesday campaign: Build a path to crowdfunding that makes sense for you. To rally around a moment, set up a dedicated time-bound page with visual urgency markers like a fundraising thermometer, and empower your community to run individual campaigns online or something in person.

Start with one change this giving season

GivingTuesday falls on Dec. 1, which makes this a good moment to test your ideas. Pick the takeaway that fits your team best and try it on a small scale:

Add a share prompt and a ready-made image to your donation confirmation page.
Invite supporters to start their own fundraiser, with no event date attached.
Count shares and new fundraisers in your end-of-campaign report.

Gen Z is not waiting to be convinced to give. They are already giving, sharing and showing up. The opportunity for nonprofits is to make it easy for them to do all three with you.

About the data

The findings come from GivingPulse, a weekly tracking survey run by GivingTuesday’s Data Commons. Each week, about 100 U.S. adults ages 18 to 85 are drawn from an Ipsos online panel, with quotas matched to U.S. Census Bureau benchmarks for age, gender and geography. For this analysis, we compared 1,990 respondents ages 18 to 29 (Gen Z) with 8,421 respondents ages 30 to 85. Responses were collected Jan. 1, 2025, through Jan. 11, 2026.

Social sharing statistics and the platform figures on fundraiser shares come from GoFundMe Pro research. Peer-to-peer trends come from a 2025 digital fundraising benchmarks report from Raisely.

Read the full report, developed with GoFundMe Pro: Gen Z Is More Generous Than You Think.