Accompanying the release of “Giving in Canada: Insights from the GSS-GVP & S-GVP, 2018 to 2023.
When Statistics Canada released its latest giving and volunteering tables, the headline that travels fastest is usually the total: about $13.4 billion donated in 2023. In constant 2023 dollars, with inflation stripped out, real giving was essentially flat between 2018 and 2023, down roughly 4%. The nominal figures look like growth; the real picture is a sector holding steady in dollars while losing donors underneath it.
A shrinking base is doing more of the work
The donor rate fell nearly 14 points, from 67.8% to 53.9%. At the same time, the average gift rose about 12% in real terms and the median fell about 8%. Read together, those three numbers describe concentration: fewer people are giving, and the ones who remain are giving larger amounts. Total dollars stayed flat not because giving is healthy, but because a narrowing group is absorbing the loss.
You can see the same pattern from almost every angle in the data:
- Age. Canadians 65+ now supply 40% of all donation dollars, up from about 30% in 2018. Meanwhile, adults 25–34 saw the steepest drop in participation (down 18.6 points) and the steepest fall in their average gift (about −23% in real terms).
- Income. Households earning $140K+ now provide 47.2% of all donation value while making up about 31% of the population. Every income band below $100K lost dollar share.
- Education. University graduates are 27% of the population but 46.5% of donation value.
- Religious attendance. Weekly attendees are just 11.2% of the population but account for 40% of donation dollars.
Each of these groups now supplies roughly 40 to 47 percent of the sector’s dollars. Older, higher-income, university-educated, and religiously active donors are increasingly the base the sector rests on, while younger and lower-income Canadians disengage fastest.
What the numbers are, and what they aren’t
The survey captures a particular kind of giving: monetary donations, largely to registered charities, made through formal, tax-receiptable channels. That frame shapes what shows up in the tables. Part of the concentration at the top, for instance, reflects the Charitable Donation Tax Credit itself, which offers a higher per-dollar credit above $200 and so makes larger gifts more visible. Concentration partly measures who the tax system makes legible: not a simple generosity gap.
Just as important is what the instrument can’t see at all: mutual aid, remittances sent abroad, in-kind support, GoFundMe-style direct giving, shared housing and food, and Indigenous and ceremonial redistributive giving. Their absence from these findings is not their absence from civic and economic life.
Why it matters for the sector
For organizations that depend on individual donors, the direction of travel is worth sitting with. A base that is older, wealthier, and smaller is more efficient in the short term and more fragile over time. The engagement gap among younger and lower-income Canadians is the number to watch, because it shapes who the donor base will be a decade from now.
The full report breaks the trends down by age, gender, income, education, marital status, religious attendance, labour force status, and presence of children, with the sources and methods laid out in full.
AFP will be hosting 2 webinars going through these insights. Register here: Free AFP Canada Foundation Webinars | Association of Fundraising Professionals
Data: Statistics Canada, SGVP 2023 & GSS-GVP 2018, Tables 45-10-0031-01 to 45-10-0038-01, released November 21, 2025. All dollar figures in constant 2023 dollars. Produced by the Canadian Knowledge Hub for Giving and Volunteering, with funding from the Government of Canada’s Social Development Partnerships Program. The opinions and interpretations are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect those of the Government of Canada.
