Americans gave more money to charitable causes in 2025 than in any previous year, with total contributions reaching an estimated $617.2 billion. It was the first time annual giving had exceeded $600 billion. The record total, however, does not mean every part of the nonprofit sector is experiencing the same financial strength. Individual donations reached $394.2 billion, but after inflation the increase was only 1.4%. The proportion of charitable giving coming directly from individuals has also declined compared with previous decades.
That changing mix can have an outsized effect on smaller organizations. Community nonprofits frequently depend on donations that can be used wherever they are most urgently required, including employee salaries, utility bills, administration, and other routine expenses. When more philanthropic capital is controlled by major donors and institutions, smaller organizations may find it harder to generate the flexible income necessary to keep their operations functioning. Meanwhile, households dealing with their own rising expenses may have limited capacity to respond to repeated requests for additional donations.
The way people interact with charitable organizations is evolving as well. Supporters are increasingly mobile, may work or live across multiple locations, and often encounter causes digitally rather than exclusively through institutions within their immediate community. That makes it more difficult to assume that a donor will maintain a permanent relationship with one local organization. For nonprofits, adapting to this environment may require funding strategies that correspond more closely with how supporters now live, interact, and make financial decisions.
One alternative is to consider the economic activity already taking place outside traditional philanthropy. Consumers continually spend money on clothing, household items, gifts, and other products. Those transactions already create revenue and profit for the companies involved. If part of that existing commercial value could instead flow toward charitable organizations, consumers could financially support causes without having to make a completely separate donation alongside their normal spending.
That idea emerged for Martiel Beatty through approximately 15 years of involvement with both commercial businesses and nonprofit initiatives. One formative experience involved a relationship between a general contractor and a local Habitat for Humanity affiliate. Beatty questioned why the financial connection needed to follow a conventional donor model when the organizations could potentially participate in the economics of doing business together. “Why wouldn’t you just work in partnership with them as a contractual profit share partner?” she recalls asking. The concept eventually developed into GivMoo.
Beatty’s approach starts with a transaction that would potentially have occurred anyway. A customer purchases an item they want or need, and part of the value generated by the sale is returned to a participating nonprofit. “They’re gonna buy this thing, whatever it is,” Beatty explains. “They don’t have to write another check for a donation.” The charitable component therefore becomes connected to consumer activity rather than existing only as a separate request for money.
For many smaller nonprofits, however, participating in ecommerce creates its own practical difficulties. Selling merchandise successfully requires sourcing products, processing orders, managing inventory and fulfillment, handling customer questions, and dealing with exchanges or returns. Those responsibilities can quickly become unrealistic for an organization with limited employees and resources. Beatty says most nonprofits currently accepted onto GivMoo’s marketplace operate with less than $1 million in annual revenue. Merchandise, products, and services can account for approximately 30% of their yearly income, making commerce potentially important while also exposing how difficult it can be to manage without dedicated expertise.
The GivMoo model is intended to remove much of that workload from participating organizations. Beatty says the company takes responsibility for sourcing, product decoration, order fulfillment, customer service, returns, exchanges, and the underlying ecommerce infrastructure. The nonprofit can therefore participate without having to construct and operate an independent retail system. “We make this a hundred percent turnkey for them,” she says. Products available through the marketplace are connected with participating organizations and causes, giving customers a way to direct support through what they purchase.
Beatty argues that this arrangement differs from more familiar charitable shopping programs. She points to AmazonSmile, which ran for a decade and allowed qualifying purchases to generate charitable contributions while organizations promoted participation. GivMoo instead defines participating nonprofits as “revenue share partners.” According to Beatty, organizations receive at least 20% of the full price of products connected with their stores.
Her argument ultimately concerns the destination of profit rather than the creation of another charitable expense for the consumer. Money spent on an ordinary purchase will already generate economic value for someone involved in producing or selling the product. “That profit is going somewhere, whether you buy it from Amazon or you buy it from your local grocery store,” she argues. Beatty believes consumers could be given a more direct opportunity to influence whether a portion of that value reaches organizations whose work they want to support.
The effect could be particularly meaningful at the smaller end of the nonprofit sector. An organization operating on annual revenue of only several hundred thousand dollars may experience a significant difference from an additional $50,000 each year, Beatty suggests. Rather than focusing only on exceptionally large contributions, her longer term vision involves creating smaller recurring revenue streams across a broad network of organizations. GivMoo ultimately aims to expand participation to 10,000 nonprofits.
Reaching that number would change the scale of the idea. An individual transaction may provide only a limited financial benefit to one organization. Across thousands of nonprofits and a large population of consumers making routine purchases, those individual transactions could accumulate into a more substantial and recurring source of community funding.
The traditional nonprofit model has often treated fundraising as a search for additional charitable dollars. Organizations find new donors, return to existing supporters, launch campaigns, and ask people to contribute money beyond what they already spend elsewhere. Beatty’s proposition approaches the economics from another direction. Americans already direct enormous amounts of money through everyday commerce, and every transaction distributes value among businesses and participants in the supply chain. If nonprofits can participate in some of that existing economic activity, charitable funding may not always need to begin with asking consumers to spend more. It could also begin by reconsidering where a portion of the money they already spend ultimately goes.
