The American Beliefs Study (ABS) provides proprietary data for MissionInsite related to religious behaviors, beliefs, and practices in the U.S. In between the large sample studies of 15,000 respondents, which take place every few years, the study also explores timely topics of faith, technology, and social trends. In March of 2026 the ABS project gathered 1,500 responses about several topics, including AI, worship attendance, friendship, and truthfulness.
A question that began as a “fraud trap” in the 2025 research (which provides evidence of people paying attention while responding to a survey…) has offered some insights into people’s reports of their charitable giving. We asked, “Approximately how much money did your household give [in 2025/in 2024] to each of the following types of charitable organizations?” In the last two years of research, the average giving of respondents was $1,408.70 for 2024 and $1,031.00 for 2025 (see Table 1 below).
The June 2026 release of the “Giving USA 2026 Report” indicates that charitable giving in the United States reached more than $600 billion for the first time in 2025. According to the report, “Religion” accounted for 23% of all charitable dollars. Amounts of giving reported by category in the American Beliefs research also showed that churches or faith communities received the bulk of people’s charitable giving, followed by faith-based charities, public broadcasting, health/hospital groups, and educational institutions. In 2024 churches were also at the top of the list, but the rest of the top five categories were educational institutions/programs, then faith-based charities, health/hospital groups, and social service organizations. The upsurge in giving to public broadcasting in 2025 likely correlates with the elimination of federal government funding for that programming.
Consistent with findings in the ABS, Vanguard Charitable also reported in November of 2025 an average household giving of $1,394 and a previous year average of $1,081. Current projections in MissionInsite place median household income across the U.S. at just over $88,000; therefore, the average reported giving per household falls well below the biblical standard of a tithe, at roughly 1.17%. Even so, our results indicate that Christians and people of other faiths tend to give more to charities of all types than people with no ties to any faith community (see Table 2 and Table 3).
Within the MissionInsite system, several data sets provide local context for additional analysis, starting with average and median household income for the area being examined. Paired with congregant giving data from your church management software, you can begin to paint a picture of the amounts and percentages given by community income level. But there’s more!
Using the congregant upload feature of MissionInsite allows you to plot the precise addresses of your givers. The system then assigns a Mosaic® profile to that address, calculating the projected median income of that household according to that Mosaic® code. By generating a ComparativeInsite report, you can calculate household giving potential for the entire congregant/giver data set. Here’s SAMPLE of that bottom line projection.
In this example, 234 congregant households have a projected median income of $14,760,994, making a tithe upwards of $1.4 million. Even a 2% giving rate returns almost $300,000. With an average U.S. giving rate of less than 2% across all charitable categories, you can see there is room for people to give more. Your stewardship strategy will benefit from this combination of national trend information and local detail grounded in your own congregation’s data.
Interested in making these tools work for you? Our team is happy to assist! Contact Emily at Consulting@acst.com.
One last thought: Though giving is a high-value topic for churches, talking about it too much gives people the impression that “Religion is too focused on money.” According to ABS research data that goes as far back as 2013, that’s high on the list of reasons people are not involved in a religious community. But we’ll save that commentary for another day.
Emily Reece
Ministry Advancement Strategist
ACS Technologies
