Fidelity Charitable Donors Recommended a Record $18.3 Billion in Grants in 2025

Fidelity Charitable, the largest sponsor of donor-advised funds in the United States, said in its 2026 Giving Report, published March 24, 2026, that its donors recommended a record $18.3 billion in grants to charities during 2025, a 23% increase over 2024. The report, which tracks giving activity across Fidelity Charitable's Giving Account donors, points to a broader shift among affluent households toward donor-advised funds as the default vehicle for tax-efficient giving.

What the report shows

The number of donors with an active Giving Account grew to 395,515 in 2025, up from 352,052 the year before, and those donors made roughly 3 million individual grant recommendations supporting 226,823 charities, itself a record. The average grant size rose 7% to $5,801, and grants of $1 million or more climbed 9% to 2,141. Separately, and distinct from the annual grant total, Fidelity Charitable reported that $18.1 billion in non-publicly-traded assets — private business interests, real estate, and similar illiquid holdings — has been converted to cash for charitable purposes since the organization's founding in 1991, a cumulative figure built up over more than three decades rather than a single year's activity.

Two additional figures point to how quickly and how locally donors are giving. Fidelity Charitable said 42% of every $100 contributed to the organization was granted out to a nonprofit within one year, up from 39% in 2024, and the median Giving Account balance rose 18% to $27,860. Local giving remained substantial: 54% of grants, totaling roughly $7 billion in 2025, went to nonprofits within the donor's home state.

Who is affected

Donor-advised funds have become a preferred giving tool for high earners and business owners because they allow a donor to contribute an appreciated or illiquid asset — publicly traded stock, private company shares, or real estate — take an itemized charitable deduction in the year of the gift, and then recommend grants to specific charities over a period of years. This structure is most valuable to households that itemize deductions and that hold appreciated assets they are already planning to sell or transfer, since routing the asset through a donor-advised fund first can avoid capital gains tax on the appreciation while still generating a deduction based on fair market value. The rising number of $1 million-plus grants suggests the vehicle is increasingly used not only for routine annual giving but for large, one-time transfers tied to a business sale, an inheritance, or a concentrated stock position.

The after-tax math

Example: a business owner holds $500,000 of stock with a cost basis of $100,000, for $400,000 of unrealized gain. Selling the stock directly and donating the after-tax cash would trigger long-term capital gains tax on the $400,000 gain — roughly $95,000 at a 23.8% combined federal rate — leaving about $405,000 to donate. Contributing the stock directly to a donor-advised fund instead avoids that capital gains tax entirely, lets the donor claim a deduction on the full $500,000 fair market value (subject to the usual adjusted-gross-income limits for gifts of appreciated stock), and preserves the full $500,000 for eventual grants to charities, which the donor can recommend on any timeline.

A notable reversal: crypto giving pulled back

One trend line moved the opposite direction from overall giving: cryptocurrency donations to Fidelity Charitable fell to $326 million in 2025 from $786 million in 2024, even as total grants rose sharply. The decline suggests that last year's surge in digital-asset giving was tied to a period of unusually large unrealized crypto gains rather than a permanent shift in how affluent donors give, though crypto contributions remain a meaningful, if smaller, share of non-cash gifts.

What to watch

Households weighing a donor-advised fund contribution in 2026 may want to review the interaction between the fund's deduction rules and other provisions of the One, Big, Beautiful Bill Act that took effect for the 2025 and 2026 tax years, including changes to itemized deduction limits for high earners. Because contribution and grant-timing decisions are irreversible once assets move into a donor-advised fund, this is a case where discussing the size and timing of a gift with a CPA or financial planner before funding the account, rather than after, tends to matter most.

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