Nonprofit Statistics and Sector Benchmarks

About 1.97 million organizations were registered with the IRS as tax exempt in 2022, of which roughly 1.48 million were active 501(c)(3) organizations. 501(c)(3) is by far the largest category, around 75% of the total.

Registered is not the same as operating. The figure includes organizations that file the 990-N postcard because they take in under $50,000, dormant entities that have not yet been revoked, and a long tail of very small groups. Only about 300,000 nonprofit establishments have paid employees.

Counts also move for administrative reasons. The IRS revokes exemption automatically after three consecutive years of missed filings, which removes tens of thousands of organizations at a time without anything happening in the real world.

$617.20 billion in 2025, the first year the total exceeded $600 billion. That is up 5.7% in current dollars and 3.0% after inflation, according to Giving USA, researched by the Indiana University Lilly Family School of Philanthropy.

Individuals gave $394.20 billion of it, 63.9% of the total. Foundations gave $117.15 billion, bequests $62.19 billion and corporations $43.67 billion.

The figure covers giving to US charities from US sources. It does not include the value of volunteer time, government grants and contracts, or earned revenue, all of which are large and none of which is charitable giving.

Much less than most people assume, and it varies enormously by subsector.

Across the sector as a whole, fees for services and goods, which includes tuition, hospital charges, ticket sales and government contracts paid per unit of service, are the largest revenue source. Charitable contributions are a minority of total sector revenue.

The picture inverts as organizations get smaller. A hospital may earn almost everything and be given almost nothing. An all-volunteer neighbourhood group may be funded entirely by donations. Sector-level revenue mix tells you almost nothing about what your own mix should be, and the useful comparison is to organizations of your size in your field.

Sector-wide retention was 43.3% in 2025. If yours is around that, you are typical rather than failing.

The number that separates organizations is first-year retention, which is much lower than the overall figure because the overall figure is propped up by long-standing loyal donors. Nationally the number of first-time donors who returned the following year fell 10.2% in 2025.

Retention rewards unglamorous work: a prompt and specific thank you, telling people what their money did, and asking again at a sensible interval. It is consistently cheaper than acquisition, and it is the single benchmark most worth tracking for your own organization over time rather than against the sector.

12.8 million jobs at more than 300,000 establishments in 2022, which was 9.9% of all private sector employment, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics. That made nonprofits the third largest private employer group, ahead of manufacturing.

The Census Bureau's American Community Survey, which asks people rather than employers, found more than 14 million people working for nonprofits in 2023. The two figures measure different things and neither is wrong.

Nearly two thirds of nonprofit jobs, 66.3%, are in health care and social assistance. Educational services accounts for another 16.4%. If you picture the sector as arts and advocacy organizations, the employment data does not support that picture.

$36.14 in 2025, per Independent Sector, up 3.9% on the year. It is derived from BLS average hourly earnings for production and non-supervisory workers, with fringe benefits added. State-level figures are published alongside the national one and differ substantially.

Use it to describe scale, not to inflate income. Saying that volunteers contributed 4,000 hours worth approximately $145,000 is a fair statement in a report. Recording it as revenue is not, and donated services generally do not appear as contributions on Form 990 unless they meet narrow criteria such as creating or enhancing a non-financial asset.

Volunteers cannot deduct the value of their time either. They can deduct out-of-pocket expenses and mileage at the charitable rate.

Less current than it looks, and the lag differs by source.

Giving USA publishes in June for the year just ended, so the giving figures are the freshest, around six months old. Fundraising Effectiveness Project data is quarterly and close to current. IRS Statistics of Income tables currently cover tax year 2022, because they are compiled from returns that were themselves filed months after the year ended. BLS nonprofit employment data also stands at 2022 and is refreshed roughly every five years rather than annually.

Treat any current-year employment or financial figure for the sector as an estimate, and be suspicious of sources that quote one without a year attached.

They are widely published and they measure very little.

The ratio is easily manipulated by how costs are allocated between programme, administration and fundraising, and those allocation choices are largely a matter of judgement. Two identical organizations can report materially different ratios.

The deeper problem is that pressure to minimise overhead has pushed organizations to underinvest in accounting, technology, evaluation and staff, which makes them worse at their work. The phenomenon is well documented and is generally called the nonprofit starvation cycle. Charity Navigator, which once weighted the ratio heavily, has moved away from it.

Better questions: is the organization achieving what it says, does it retain staff and donors, and is its finance function competent enough to be trusted with more money.