Seven data points from Great Community Give 2025 and why they create hope for the future
The following was published in the Monday, May 12 Daily News-Record.
On April 16, during the Great Community Give, Harrisonburg and Rockingham County beat the odds.
What do we hear about charitable giving in 2025? Overall donations are down, fewer individuals and businesses are giving, fewer citizens are involved in service or faith organizations, and the younger generation is trending away from charitable endeavors like donating and volunteering.
View the GCG photo album.
Here’s what the 2025 Great Community Give teaches us:
Our residents are incredibly generous. For the second consecutive year, donors to the Great Community Give contributed more than $2 million. You helped raise our highest-ever one-day total: an astonishing $2, 212, 649, an increase of $96,609 over 2024.
We have a thriving nonprofit sector in the Shenandoah Valley. Some of the 147 organizations participating in the Great Community Give are independent nonprofits, but many are linked to community service or faith-based organizations. That’s a lot of local citizens working to solve local problems
Our business community cares deeply about and is financially invested in what happens here. Forty-two businesses contributed to a $76,000 prize pool and 100 percent of that went to 38 nonprofits that won hourly contests. Between Harrisonburg Media Group, iHeart Radio, WHSV-3 and the Daily News-Record, nonprofits received countless hours of interviews and public service messaging.
We can glean more positives from this year’s data, too:
- More donors self-reported giving for the first time to an organization.
- More individuals registered to fundraise for a specific organization and more of these peer-to-peer fundraisers (or P2P for short) followed through on their fundraising promise.
- P2P fundraisers made a huge difference during GCG 2025. They helped their organizations raise an average of $29,900— more than double what those without fundraisers raised. These folks were also responsible for raising $71,210 more than last year (for a total of $155,895).
- And one more important detail: Donors using digital wallet options increased, which suggests a rise in donors ages 15-58 — the demographic that most prefers this option.
Everyone who participated in Great Community Give, including our sponsors, nonprofit partners, and the team at The Community Foundation of Harrisonburg and Rockingham, can look at these conclusions with immense gratitude. Thank you for joining in a day where we envision positive change, a transformed world, and belief in each other.
And yes, let’s keep the spirit of the Great Community Give going throughout the year!
Revlan Hill
Executive Director
