‘Tis the season for giving, and charitable contributions increasingly flow through creator channels

Traditionally, November and December are the peak months for charitable contributions. The holiday season brings out people’s benevolent spirits, and many families make sure to give annually.

As a volatile economy affects those families’ bottom lines, however, the nature of giving is changing. Nonprofit organizations can no longer rely on the fundraising methods of the past. Instead, they need to get in bed with creators.

So claims the 2025 Giving Season Report, which was published by the fundraising platform Tiltify. By surveying 1,000 donors on their giving habits — and incorporating feedback from 1,000 creators — Tiltify hypothesized that this year’s holiday season will include more donations to creator-led campaigns than ever before.

Through its survey, Tiltify uncovered what it calls “a widening gap between revenue concentration and community participation.” In total, Americans are giving more money to charities than ever before, but for the first time, fewer than half of all U.S. households are making a charitable contribution each year. Translation: The rich are increasingly philanthropic while the rest of us are loath to part with our hard-earned dollars.

Creators, Tiltify claims, can bridge that gap. They have a few advantages over traditional contemporaries: They aren’t beholden to outdated fundraising methods like mail-in campaigns and galas, they know how to harness the power of engagement, and they have a direct pipeline to hard-to-reach Millennial and Gen Z givers.

Tiltify has firsthand experience with creator-led charitable campaigns. It has worked with stars like Jacksepticeye

and Mark Rober, and it was an integral part of one of the biggest charity drives of 2025: MrBeast and Rober’s $40 million effort to bring clean drinking water to needy communities.

Now, Tiltify is tying campaigns like those to a tangible shift in donor behavior. The majority of the surveyed individuals plan to maintain their current level of charitable spending, but the percentage of respondents who plan to decrease their spending (32%) is much higher than the percentage of respondents who will give more (12%). Meanwhile, a “large share” of creators are raising more through their campaigns than they did last year.

“As donor participation declines, creators are showing that generosity can still be vibrant, social, and sustained,” said Tiltify Co-Founder and CEO Michael Wasserman in a statement. “The creator economy is rewriting the playbook for philanthropy by turning giving into a shared, visible, and participatory experience. This data shows it’s working: when giving is interactive and authentic, you unlock a new generation of donors.”

Can creators keep this trend going? Some of them, like Jacksepticeye, are pulling back their holiday season plans to account for fans’ financial hardships. At the same time, the MrBeasts of the world are turning the act of giving into a spectacle. That strategy effectively attracts donors while inspiring new fundraising models. Here’s hoping the shift continues through the 2025 holiday season and beyond.