Benchmark Analysis: Major Donors, Planned Gifts, and Endowments

June 27, 2023

As many organizations revisit and/or launch new endowment campaigns, we want to learn about the overall state of major donors and their giving trends, planned giving efforts, and the impacts the pandemic and possible economic slowdown have had on private support.

Our latest Arts Leader Survey asked arts leaders to benchmark themselves against their peers to understand the current trends in giving and endowments.

Highlights from the survey include:

• Many arts organizations are seeing in increase in the number of individual donors and total contributed income at the major gift level since 2019.

• A majority of organizations have planned giving strategies in place, and almost all have plans to increase their emphasis on planned giving in the future.

• Most organizations plan to draw less than 6% from their endowments this year.

• Half of all responding organizations are in or soon launching a capital campaign, and organizations are mostly confident in meeting campaign goals.

See the full data at the end of this page or click below to download a pdf version.