Donors worth $30 million or more gave an estimated $250 billion in 2025, Altrata reports

People with a net worth of $30 million or more gave an estimated $250 billion to charity in 2025, according to High Net Worth Philanthropy 2026, a report the wealth research firm Altrata released on October 15. That is 38% of the more than $650 billion given by individuals worldwide last year, the report says, from a group of nearly 557,000 people.

What the report found

Altrata puts giving by this ultra-wealthy group 32% above its 2022 level, with average growth of 7.3% a year from 2018 to 2025. Donors in North America gave $115 billion, or 46% of the global total, and the report attributes about $107 billion of that to donors in the United States. Since 2022, ultra-wealthy giving rose 35% in Europe and 42% in Asia, according to the company's announcement.

Education remains the leading cause. About 60% of wealthy donors worldwide gave to education at least once in the past decade, the report says, and The Chronicle of Philanthropy, which covered the report the same day, described education as their top issue. Environmental giving's share was 26% higher in 2021-25 than in 2015-20, and health care and medical research gained 15% in relative share. Altrata also found that wealthy women made a median of 1.7 times as many gifts as wealthy men over the decade, and that at least 17% of the ultra-wealthy have a private foundation.

Competition at the top

Maeen Shaban, Altrata's director of research and analytics, told the Chronicle that some donors have stepped in where government support for environmental programs has fallen: "We did see some very wealthy people almost compensating for that gap by giving major gifts." The Chronicle cited Michael Bloomberg's quarter-billion-dollar gift to environmental programs last year as an example. Julia Chu, who leads philanthropy and family governance at Neuberger Wealth, told the paper, "It's a very competitive space at the tippy-tippy top of a donor's radar screen."

The report also introduces a Giving Opportunity Index that scores 100 cities on wealth, donor affinity and philanthropic infrastructure, weighted 40%, 30% and 30%. New York ranks first, followed by Seoul and Hong Kong, and eight U.S. cities are in the top 15.

How the estimate is built

The figures are modeled, not counted. Altrata says it estimates ultra-wealthy giving with its own Philanthropic Giving Model, which applies data on donor behavior to modeled wealth figures. Anonymous gifts are left out, and giving through personal private foundations is counted as individual giving. Altrata sells wealth data to fundraisers, so its estimates are best read as one firm's view of the market rather than audited totals.

What smaller nonprofits can take from it

In our view, the headline total matters less to a small organization than the pattern underneath it: major gifts that take time to build. Maya Imberg, Altrata's head of thought leadership and analytics and one of the report's authors, told the Chronicle, "Engaging the wealthy takes time, and getting that major gift, it doesn't happen overnight." For how that patience works with the very largest donors, see our story on how much the richest families give each year.

The data on women donors is worth a look too. Chu told the Chronicle that in many traditional couples, while the husband may make the occasional large gift, "it's the woman who really determines who that short list of charities is from year to year." For related data, see our coverage of giving to women's and girls' groups.