The Big Problem in Charity #GivingTuesday Can't Fix

Charities and nonprofits could hardly contain their enthusiasm leading up to #GivingTuesday. On social media, everything from National Geographic to the Kennedy Center has been promoting it for days. No shame there. Whole Whale, a consultancy for nonprofit organizations, estimates that the charitable-industrial complex can expect to end the day with a record haul of $250 million.

But beneath the success of #GivingTuesday is an uncomfortable reality. While Americans are giving more money to charity than ever before, a little-noticed report released last month by the left-leaning Institute for Policy Studies finds that the money is coming from fewer and fewer people. And that, the research group says, has troubling implications for our democracy, not to mention our nation’s traditional reliance on charity as a mechanism for smoothing gaps in the social safety net.