全球视野 | Giving USA小组揭示美国慈善事业长期趋势：依赖于巨额捐赠人的趋势令人担忧

The common headline in the nonprofit press has been simple: Giving declined in 2022 for only the fourth time in 40 years. 

非营利组织相关媒体的常见标题很简单：2022年的捐赠减少，这是40年来的第四次。 

Will 2022’s one-year decline become a longer-term trend? The short answer is: “Unlikely.” After all, if giving has increased 36 of the past 40 years, it will probably rise again. 

2022年一年的下降会成为长期趋势吗？简短的回答是：“不太可能。”毕竟，如果捐赠在过去40年中有36年是有所增加，那么它很可能会再次上升。 

But a panel at The Giving Institute’s Summer Symposium made clear that other trends are more concerning. Lauren Steiner, a member of the Giving USA board, moderated the discussion. The panel consisted of three Giving USA leaders: Josh Birkholz, chair of the Giving USA Foundation and CEO of BWF, a fundraising consulting firm; Carrie Dahlquist, co-chair of the Giving USA Advisory Council on Methodology and senior counsel at Campbell & Company; and Anna Pruitt, managing editor of Giving USA and associate director of research at the Indiana University Lilly Family School of Philanthropy. 

但捐赠研究所（The Giving Institute）夏季研讨会上的一个小组讨论明确指出，其他趋势更令人担忧。Giving USA董事会成员劳伦·斯坦纳（Lauren Steiner）主持了讨论。讨论小组由三位Giving USA领导人组成：乔希·伯克霍尔茨（Josh Birkholz），Giving USA基金会主席兼筹款咨询公司BWF首席执行官；卡莉·达尔奎斯特（Carrie Dahlquist），Giving USA方法咨询委员会联合主席兼Campbell & Company高级顾问；安娜·普鲁特（Anna Pruitt），Giving USA执行编辑兼印第安纳大学礼来家族慈善学院研究副主任。 

One key takeaway message: the rise of the über-wealthy in US philanthropy continues. In the age of the megadonor, individual giving is not what it used to be. 

一个重要的启示是：超级富豪在美国慈善事业中的崛起仍在继续。在巨额捐赠人时代，个人的捐赠已经不是过去的样子了。

The panelists began by assuaging concern over the one-year decline. For her part, Pruitt noted, “It is really important to put the decline in perspective,” adding that what was really going on was, after a pandemic giving boost, a “return to pre-2020 levels.” Dahlquist concurred and added that “we are still in an upward trajectory in general.” 

小组成员们首先缓解了人们对2022年一年来数据下降的担忧。普鲁特则指出：“正确看待这一下降确实很重要。”她补充说，经过新冠疫情的推动，实际情况是“恢复到2020年之前的水平”。达尔奎斯特对此表示赞同，并补充说，“总体而言，我们仍处于上升轨道。” 

A bigger concern is the continuing shift in who is giving. Simply put: more and more donations are coming from fewer and fewer people. This, of course, is not a new issue. NPQ covered this now two-decades-long trend at length in 2019. But the trend shows no sign of abating, and the Giving USA panelists were very concerned. “This is what keeps me awake at night,” Birkholz said. Beyond the democratic implications—the more giving becomes concentrated among the wealthy, the more control the wealthy will exercise over where philanthropic dollars go—nonprofit reliance on wealthy donors has other, perhaps less obvious implications. One of these is not so much to expect a decline in giving but rather to expect an increase in the volatility of giving. 

更令人担忧的是捐赠对象的不断变化。简而言之：越来越多的捐款，来自越来越少的人。当然，这并不是一个新问题。NPQ在2019年详细介绍了这一长达二十年的趋势。但这一趋势丝毫没有减弱的迹象，Giving USA小组成员对此非常担忧。伯克霍尔茨说：“这让我夜不能寐。除了民主方面的影响，捐赠越集中于富人，富人就越能控制慈善资金的去向。非营利组织对富裕捐赠人的依赖还有其他一些可能不太明显的影响。其中之一就是，与其说是预期捐赠会减少，不如说是预期捐赠的波动性会增加。” 

As Pruitt explained, “Because there are fewer people giving, it is going to be wealthy people” who are increasingly those who give. Pruitt added that, given that this is the case and given that more than half of individually owned shares are owned by the top one percent, “We might expect trends for giving to resemble more closely [the performance of] the S&P 500,” the stock market index of the nation’s 500 stock corporations. In other words, more and more we can expect giving to follow the volatility of the stock market—rising more in years when stock values rise, and falling more in years when stock values decline. 

正如普鲁特所解释的，“因为捐赠的人总数越来越少，所以捐赠人里的富人会越来越多。”普鲁特补充说，鉴于这种情况，并且考虑到一半以上的个人持股是由最富有的1%的人持有，“我们可以预期，捐赠的趋势将更接近于标准普尔500指数的表现”，该指数是指美国500家上市公司的股票指数。换句话说，我们可以越来越多地预期捐赠会跟随股票市场的波动。在股票价值上涨时，捐赠会增加；在股票价值下跌时，捐赠会减少。

Another way that the wealthy give differently than those who are less wealthy is the growing tendency of wealthy donors to donate first to donor-advised funds (more commonly referred to as DAFs), rather than donating directly to nonprofits of their choice. The way DAFs work, technically speaking the money ceases to belong to the donor once they donate to the fund; however, practically speaking the donor can “advise” the fund on which nonprofits they should open their checkbooks for, with the donor’s “advice” being honored by the fund administrator in nearly all cases. 

富人的捐赠方式与穷人不同的另一个表现是，越来越多的富裕捐赠人倾向于首先捐赠给捐赠人建议基金（通常称为DAF），而不是直接捐赠给自己选择的非营利组织。DAF的运作方式，从技术上讲，一旦捐赠人向基金捐款，这笔钱就不再属于捐赠人；但实际上，捐赠人可以向基金“建议”他们应该为哪些非营利组织打开支票簿。几乎在所有情况下，基金管理人都会采纳捐赠人的“建议”。 

For the first time, this year’s Giving USA report included a chapter on DAFs. To date, the group has accumulated two years’ worth of data. Obviously, in future years they will have more data, allowing for more long-term analysis. Pruitt noted that analyzing DAF distributions is critical to getting a full picture of giving: if DAFs were counted as a category, in 2021 they would be responsible for 8.9 percent of all giving—a number, she noted, that is greater than all corporate giving combined. 

今年的Giving USA报告首次纳入了有关DAF的章节。迄今为止，该小组已经积累了两年的数据。显然，未来几年他们将拥有更多的数据，从而可以进行更长期的分析。普鲁特指出，分析DAF的分配情况，对于全面了解捐赠情况至关重要：如果将DAF作为一个类别来计算，那么在2021年，DAF将占所有捐赠的8.9%。普鲁特指出，这一数字超过了所有企业捐赠的总和。 

There is also a lag in acquiring data on where DAF dollars go. Pruitt said that this year’s Giving USA report could only compare DAF giving for 2019 and 2020. We will not know what DAF contributions to nonprofits looked like in 2022 for a while yet. 

在获取有关DAF资金去向的数据方面也存在滞后性。普鲁特说，今年的Giving USA报告只能比较2019年和2020年的DAF捐款。我们还需要一段时间，才能知道2022年DAF对非营利组织的捐款情况。 

What the 2020 data does permit, however, is to “really isolate what happened during the [first year of the] pandemic.” In particular, in 2020 there was an extraordinary 78-percent increase in grants given through DAFs to nonprofits. This means that many donors with DAFs did draw down on funds in their accounts that year, with DAF donations thus serving as a kind of “rainy day” fund, as advocates had promised. 

然而，2020年的数据所能做到的是“分辨出在新冠疫情（第一年）期间所发生的事情”。尤其是2020年，通过DAF向非营利组织提供的赠款增加了78%。这意味着，许多拥有DAF的捐赠人确实在那一年动用了他们账户中的资金，DAF捐赠因此成为一种“未雨绸缪”的基金，正如倡导者所承诺的那样。 

A related issue concerns who gets the money that is disbursed from DAFs. Historically, Pruitt noted that education and religion were the most common categories, with education receiving by far the largest share of DAF dollars. Earlier research Pruitt did with her colleague Jon Bergdoll found that from 2014 through 2018, 28 percent of DAF dollars went to education, with religion coming in second at 14 percent. In 2020, however, while education remained in first place, there was a major increase in DAF grants being directed to “public sector benefit” organizations, a category that includes civil rights, voting rights, and community development finance. In 2020, 16 percent of all DAF grants were made in this category, and voting-rights groups and others, such as the American Civil Liberties Union, benefitted from this shift. 

与此相关的一个问题涉及DAF分配的资金归谁获得。普鲁特指出，从历史上看，教育和宗教是最常见的类别，其中教育类别获得的DAF资金份额最大。普鲁特早前与同事乔恩·伯格多尔（Jon Bergdoll）一起做的研究发现，从2014年到2018年，28%的DAF资金流向了教育，宗教以14%的比例位居第二。然而到了2020年，虽然教育仍然排在第一位，但DAF赠款流向“公共领域福利”组织的比例却大幅上升，这一类别包括民权、投票权和社区发展融资。2020年，DAF赠款总额的16%属于这一类别，以及投票权组织和其他组织，如美国公民自由联盟（American Civil Liberties Union），就从这一转变中受益匪浅。

Birkholz noted that, beyond DAFs, in individual giving education traditionally has been one of the top three donor categories, but for younger donors it has dropped to fifth or even sixth position. Part of the reason for this decline in interest seems obvious—if you’re a younger person who is still making student loan payments to cover inflated tuition costs, why would you give to a university? 

伯克霍尔茨指出，除了DAF，在个人捐赠中，教育历来是前三大捐赠类别之一，但对于年轻的捐赠人来说，它已经下降到了第五甚至第六位。兴趣下降的部分原因似乎显而易见：如果你是一个还在偿还学生贷款以支付高昂学费的年轻人，你为什么要捐给大学呢？ 

But Birkholz observed that there is another factor at play: namely, as large donors become more important, nonprofits, including university development departments, adjust their fundraising practices to attract those donors. As Birkholz put it, “We have built a model of focusing on the top. If you want to be a future [university development] leader, you better be able to close big gifts. For small gifts, after two to three years there is a [career] ceiling.” Absent effort to change fundraising practice, as nonprofits focus on raising money from larger donors, efforts to raise small-donor donations can atrophy, accelerating the existing trend. 

但伯克霍尔茨观察到，还有另一个因素在起作用：即随着大额捐赠人变得越来越重要，包括大学发展部门在内的非营利组织会调整其筹款方式，以吸引这些捐赠人。正如伯克霍尔茨所说：“我们已经建立了一个专注于顶层的模式。如果你想成为未来(大学发展)的领导者，你最好能够完成大笔捐赠。对于小额捐赠，两三年后就会出现(职业)天花板。”如果不努力改变筹款做法，当非营利组织专注于从大额捐赠人那里筹款时，筹集小额捐赠人捐款的工作就会萎缩，从而加速现有的趋势。

Pruitt noted, “For many years, we tried not to talk about megadonors because that is not the average experience.” But she conceded that the trend has become harder to ignore: “Five percent of individual giving coming from less than 10 people is really of note.” 

普鲁特指出：“多年来，我们尽量不谈论巨额捐赠人，因为这不是大多数人会经历的。”但她承认，这一趋势已变得难以忽视：“5%的个人捐赠来自不到10个人，这确实值得注意。” 

From a research perspective, Pruitt observed that even when donors post who they donate to, as MacKenzie Scott has done, the form of payment can be very unclear. “We don’t know if they are coming out of a DAF, charitable LLC [limited liability company], or foundation.” With Elon Musk, Pruitt said, researchers only became aware the fact that he had a charitable foundation due to a Securities and Exchange Commission filing for one of the companies he owns. “We don’t know what that is yet,” she added. 

普鲁特从研究的角度观察到，即使捐赠人像麦肯锡·斯科特（MacKenzie Scott）那样公布了他们的捐赠对象，支付形式也可能非常不明确。普鲁特说：“我们不知道他们是从DAF、慈善LLC（有限责任公司），还是基金会捐出的。”例如埃隆·马斯克（Elon Musk），研究人员是在美国证券交易委员会为马斯克拥有的一家公司提交文件时，才知道他有一个慈善基金会。普鲁特补充说：“我们还不知道那是什么。”

The focus of the Giving USA crowd is on how to raise money, not on the type of issues that NPQ might focus on—such as: Who controls the money? Or perhaps: Can philanthropy be a form of reparations? 

Giving USA群体的关注点是如何筹集资金，而不是NPQ可能关注的问题类型。比如：谁控制着资金？又或者：慈善可以是一种赔偿形式吗？ 

When a question was posed about legislation to regulate DAFs, the response of all three panelists was to dodge. Pruitt noted, “We haven’t taken a policy position. We have some movement on the policy side and some legislation wanted to change the way DAFs are paid out. I think that the landscape has gotten really complex.” Dahlquist, for her part, said that “the policy questions will be asked and pursued,” but that her focus was to help her clients to raise the funds that they are seeking. 

当被问及立法监管DAF的问题时，三位小组成员的回答都是回避。普鲁特指出：“我们还没有采取政策立场。我们在政策方面有一些动向，一些立法想要改变DAF的支付方式。我认为，情况已经变得非常复杂。”达尔奎斯特则表示：“政策问题将会被提出和追究”，但她的重点是帮助客户筹集他们正在寻求的资金。 

But on fundraising strategy, there was a clear recommendation. Simply put: What the megadonor giveth, the megadonor may also taketh away. In other words, don’t put all of your fundraising eggs in the megadonor basket. 

但在筹款战略方面，有一项明确的建议。简单地说：巨额捐赠人捐赠的，巨额捐赠人也可能拿走。换句话说，不要把所有筹款鸡蛋都放在巨额捐赠人的篮子里。 

Birkholz noted that reliance on larger donors is reinforcing a system of nonprofit “haves and have-nots.” Optimistically, Birkholz said that “there is the possibility to diversity and broaden your constituency.” He added that “it is not just the top places” where fundraising should focus if the goal is to achieve long-term sustainability. 

伯克霍尔茨指出，对较大捐赠人的依赖正在强化非营利组织“富人和穷人”的体系。伯克霍尔茨乐观地表示：“仍有可能实现多元化，扩大你的支持者。”他补充说，如果要实现长期可持续发展的目标，筹款的重点不应仅仅只是集中在“顶层的地方”。