CounterPunch Exclusives

CounterPunch Exclusives

The Top Charities Aren’t What You Think

For the past four years, we have compiled a list of the twenty public charities in the United States that took in the most donations.

We build our rankings by pulling contribution information from the tax returns of the largest donor-advised fund (DAF) sponsors and universities in the U.S. and then combining that with Forbes’ list of the top-fundraising non-DAF, non-university charities. The most recent year available now is 2024.

In 2024 (as in 2021, 2022, and 2023), DAF sponsors fared phenomenally well. DAF sponsors accounted for eleven of the top 20 charities, including every spot in the top five. These eleven DAF sponsors brought in more than $67 billion in donations, 74 percent of the $91 billion total brought in by the entire group. And the five largest sponsors together brought in more than $51 billion, well more than half of the total.

Some of the operating nonprofits on our list — such as the United Way and the Salvation Army — sponsor DAF programs as well, but we didn’t categorize them as sponsors because their DAF........

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