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Nonprofit organizations in the United States play a vital role delivering services, strengthening communities, and facilitating civic engagement. They are diverse in size and type, ranging from all-volunteer organizations with no revenue to multibilliondollar institutions managed by highly professionalized staff. They have diverse revenue sources, including individual donors, fees for service, and public and private institutions. Though research has illuminated much about these organizations in recent years, we lack a nationally representative portrait of the nonprofit sector detailing donation trends and who is served, where, and by whom. Our nationally representative study fills these gaps.We focus on operating 501(c)(3) public charities whose activities range from direct service provision to community building and advocacy. We exclude many service providers in specialized fields, including hospitals, schools, higher-education institutions, churches, and other houses of worship, and we exclude organizations that usually fund other organizations rather than providing services directly. This report complements studies on donation trends conducted from individual donor and sector-wide perspectives by focusing on the experiences of nonprofits, donations that they rely on, the contexts and contours of their programs, and the US communities they serve.

Nonprofit organizations in the United States play a vital role delivering services, strengthening communities, and facilitating civic engagement. They are diverse in size and type, ranging from all-volunteer organizations with no revenue to multibilliondollar institutions managed by highly professionalized staff. They have diverse revenue sources, including individual donors, fees for service, and public and private institutions. Though research has illuminated much about these organizations in recent years, we lack a nationally representative portrait of the nonprofit sector detailing donation trends and who is served, where, and by whom. Our nationally representative study fills these gaps.We focus on operating 501(c)(3) public charities whose activities range from direct service provision to community building and advocacy. We exclude many service providers in specialized fields, including hospitals, schools, higher-education institutions, churches, and other houses of worship, and we exclude organizations that usually fund other organizations rather than providing services directly. This report complements studies on donation trends conducted from individual donor and sector-wide perspectives by focusing on the experiences of nonprofits, donations that they rely on, the contexts and contours of their programs, and the US communities they serve.