Over 50 Surprising Statistics About Tithing and Church Giving [2022]

Tithing is one of those Biblical commands that many modern Christians tend to debate whether or not it is still relevant for today or not. I still believe that tithing serves a purpose for modern-day Christians. Generosity is one of the ways we can not only show the love of Christ towards others, but it also shows God our trust in him and his promises to provide for us.

It may or may not be very obvious to you, however, according to the stats church giving and tithing is on the decline. One of the most shocking statistics about church giving is that church members are currently giving a smaller percentage of their income today (2.5%) than church members during the Great Depression (3.3%).

While a lot of these tithing statistics may seem a bit dismal, not all hope is lost! In fact, faith and religious services to account for the largest percentage of charitable gifts at 29%. This is pretty great, considering that 30% of the U.S. makes no charitable contributions whatsoever according to Church-Development.com!

Check out these 60+ surprising statistics about tithing and church giving to learn how many Christians actually tithe today as well as how much church members are giving to their churches. — PIN FOR LATER

Here’s the big list of money topics in the Bible, and here is a list of over 100 Bible verses about money.

Most Surprising Statistics About Tithing

The first thing to point out about these tithing statistics is that when referencing tithing, we mean tithing in the literal sense: giving 10% of one’s income. So to ask, “How much does the average person tithe?” is sort of the wrong question. However, many churches categorize member donations as the tithe or have what is called a tithe fund. In the shared stats, I try to distinguish between the two.

Only 5% of church goes give a traditional tithe (NP Source)

80% of Americans only give 2% of their income. (NP Source)

Only 3-5% of Americans who give to their local church do so through regular tithing. (NP Source)

Statistics reveal that 77% of traditional tithers donate above 10% (roughly 11-20%) of their income (NP Source)

About 70% of tithers base donations on gross income rather than on net income. (NP Source)

75–90% of church members do not give towards the tithe fund. (Subsplash)

For families making $75k+, 1% of them gave at least 10% in tithing. (NP Source)

Almost 70% of Catholics who donate money give between 2-5% of their income. (U.S Catholic)

15% of Catholics give a traditional tithe. (U.S. Catholic)

Women throughout North America make up three quarters of the donors (Nonprofit Tech for Good)

Most Surprising Statistics About Church Giving

There are a lot of very interesting statistics about church giving including the fact that in the Protestant church, the average adult gives less than $900 per year. One of the most surprising statistics that I learned about church giving was the fact that megachurches have a lower overall percentage of attendees who give than smaller churches. While the median income for megachurches in the United States is around $5.3 million, megachurches with slower growth experienced a median annual giving per attendee of $2,092 verses only $1,336 for those megachurches experiencing rapid growth (of those attendees who actually gave).

The average giving by adults who attend US Protestant churches is less than $900 per year averaging about $17 a week. (NP Source)

Christians are currently giving roughtly 2.5% of income; during the Great Depression it was 3.3%. (NP Source)

37% of regular church attendees and Evangelicals don’t give money to church. (NP Source)

12% of North Americans give to faith & spirituality causes (Global Giving Trends Report)

95% of Catholics who donate money, financially support their parishes.

26% of Catholics in the US prefer acts of service to money donations. (U.S. Catholic)

Faith and religious services to account for the largest percentage of charitable gifts at 29% (NSCEP)

In 2018, religious giving experienced a decrease(-1.5%, -3.9% adjusted for inflation) for the first time since the Great Recession (NSCEP)

The faster a church is growing, the less people give. Thus, per-person giving is far greater in churches that are declining, stagnant, or who have only very slight growth. In fact, the more the decline, the larger the per-capita giving amount. (Hartford Institute for Religion Research)

How Many Church Goers Give the Traditional Tithe?

Only 5% of churchgoers give the traditional 10% tithe (Church Development)

80% of Americans only give 2% of their income. (NP Source)

Only 3-5% of Americans who give to their local church do so through regular tithing. (NP Source)

Statistics reveal that 77% of traditional tithers donate above 10% (roughly 11-20%) of their income (NP Source)

How Much Are Church Members Giving?

Over 80% of gifts processed on Tithe.ly were over $100, with 33% above $500, and 18% of the gifts processed on Tithe.ly were over $1000! (Tithe.ly)

In 2020, donors gave more to churches through online giving solutions than with cash or checks. (Subsplash)

Smaller donations (less than $250) increased by over 17% in 2020. (Subsplash)

Involvement in a small group increases the amount given per month by an individual. (Hartford Institute for Religion Research)

50% of the U.S. give more than 0% but less than 2% of their income to charity; and 15% give more than 2% but less than 10% of their income to charity (Church Development)

Where Are Church Members Donating Money?

In the United States of America, 49% of the overall study population gave to religious organizations, but a far greater percentage of African American donors (64%) and Latino/Hispanic donors (59%) gave to these causes. (The Philanthropy Outlook)

Faith congregations continue to receive the largest percentage of charitable giving in the U.S. – twenty-nine percent of all charitable dollars ($124.52 billion in 2018). (NSCEP)

More than giving money, most Christians associate acts of service with generosity. (Barna)

What Is Church Revenue Like?

The Center for the Study of Global Christianity reports that the total income of Christians worldwide is now $53 trillion per year. How much do we spend on Christian causes per year? $896 billion—less than 2 percent of our income. The Church’s income is only $360 billion globally!

In 2018, the Catholic congregations were also the only tradition with a higher proportion of congregations decreasing (56%) than increasing (31%) in revenue. (NSCEP)

Twenty-eight percent of congregations received less than $100,000 in 2017 and the median amount of money received was approximately $169,000. The largest share of congregations (33%) received between $100,000 and $249,999 and 17% reported receiving between $250,000 and $499,999. About 22% of congregations received half a million dollars or more in their past fiscal year (NSCEP)

Among the congregations that conduct an annual stewardship campaign, 64% explicitly asked their participants to pledge – asking them to commit to giving a specific amount over the next year. Among congregations that ask participants to make a pledge, on average 53% of regularly participating adults made a pledge. (NSCEP)

An average of 96% of a megachurch’s total budget comes from participant contributions (Hartford Institute for Religion Research)

How Do Church Members Prefer to Tithe?

Congregations with digital giving options receive on average 22% of their total giving digitally, and on average, 24% of regularly participating adults made at least one digital contribution to their congregation in the past year (NSCEP)

49% of all church giving transactions are made with a card. (NP Source)

Among congregations with more than 1,000 participating adults, 95% allow members to give online, 28% allow congregants to give through text messages, and 48% utilize smartphone giving apps. (NSCEP)

55% percent of congregations provide the option for individuals to set up recurring contributions to the congregation through their bank or credit card. Yet among these congregations with the capacity to receive recurring gifts, 15% do not receive any gifts through these methods. On average, congregations that reported receiving any recurring donations received about $4,500 monthly from recurring gifts. (NSCEP)

13% gifts given were done through “recurring giving” where an individual decides to setup an auto-pay gift that happens weekly, twice a month, or monthly, while 87% of digital gifts processed were one-time. (Tithe.ly)

About half of the contributions made to megachurches in America are coming from online giving (Hartford Institute for Religion Research)

90% of megachurches used online giving before the pandemic began (Hartford Institute for Religion Research)

While education attracted the most dollars from donor-advised-fund grants (DAFs), religious organizations received the second largest amount (Giving USA)

When Are People Most Likely To Tithe?

Because of the rise in online giving, we have a lot more data to show specifically when people are giving money! Thanks to the platform, Tithe.ly we now have accurate data to show precisely when people are giving down to the hour.

Over 31% of all church giving happens in the last three months of the year. (Tithe.ly)

Giving spikes on the first and fifteenth, but take a look at the second, fifth, twelfth, nineteenth, and twenty-sixth (Tithe.ly)

While Sunday accounts for 33% of digital giving, when you give people the ability to give any time, anywhere, that 67% of giving happens Monday through Saturday! (Tithe.ly)

40% of gifts come in between the hours of 9am and 2pm, which means that 60% of gifts come in early in the morning or late at night! Over 28% is given between 10pm and 7am — the “late hours” of the night. (Tithe.ly)

Are Churches Teaching About Giving and Tithing?

One of the tithing statistics that I thought would be interesting to know is whether or not churches teach about giving and tithing. Here are some of the stats I found on that.

8% of congregations never teach about giving. (NSCEP)

While the vast majority of congregations make an appeal for contributions each week, 43% teach passages related to giving in worship services yearly or never. Another 36% of congregations teach about giving quarterly. While a small percentage of congregations teach on giving weekly or monthly, the vast majority do so much less regularly. (NSCEP)

Among congregations that teach on giving weekly (9%), 90% reported financial growth. (NSCEP)

Where Do Churches Spend The Donated Money?

In many of the studies I read through, one of the main reasons that church memebers chose not to donate to their church is that they don’t trust the church to use the money responsibly.

51% of the budget at Evangelical Churches was spend on personnel (pastors, staff, etc). (NSCEP)

The average church spends about 50% of their income on staffing costs (salaries and benefits). (Hartford Institute for Religion Research)

Of the remainder, 20% goes to buildings and operations (e.g. utilities, mortgage, insurance), 15% to program support and materials (e.g. education, evangelism), 11% to mission and benevolence (including denominational assessments), and 4% to all other expenditures. (Hartford Institute for Religion Research)

Are Young Adults More or Less Likely to Tithe?

While 56% of Christian young adults say giving at least 10% (tithing) to their local church is a biblical command for today, AdelFi reports that the typical Chrstian young adult (defined as those age 25-40 with a Christian religious preference) donates on average only $1,820 per year. This is most likely a lot less than 10% of their income.

22% of young adults have given to religious organizations in the last year (AdelFi)

27% have given to a local church in the last year (AdelFi)

The typical Christian young adult donates more than 3 times as much as non-Christians over the course of a year ($1,820 v. $556). (AdelFi)

Although most Christian young adults don’t give to a local church (63%), many still say tithing, giving at least 10%, to their local church is a biblical commandment for today (56%) (Lifeway Research)

Christian young adults gave twice as much as non-Christians to individuals or families in need in the past year ($603 v. $261) (Lifeway Research)

Decline of Church Member Generosity

Vanco suggests that the decline of church giving may be the result of the greater competition for our donated dollars. They say, “When tithing was more common, there weren’t many other charities requesting resources, and those charities only had limited access to the masses. Today, there are thousands of charities for all sorts of causes, and each one can reach potential givers across great distances. Because your givershave a limited amount of resources, they can only give to those they hold most dear. This means churches might not get the full portion of each individual’s tithe.”

According to Giving USA, there was a 5.1% increase in charity donations between 2019 and 2020. This statistic does help support Vanco’s theory that Christians now have a wider range of organizations to give to that might go to a very specific cause they would like to support.

In late 2008, as we officially entered a recession, a survey revealed that one out of every five households began giving less money to faith institutions. Another 22% stopped giving to the church altogether! (Ramsey Solutions)

Between 1968 and 2006, giving received for the church budget decreased from 2.45% to just over 2.17%. (Ramsey Solutions)

Giving for external benevolence causes dropped from 0.66% to just over 0.37%. (Ramsey Solutions)

Between 1990 and 2015 the share of overall donations going to faith dropped by 50% (New York Times). And for the first time ever, faith giving fell below 30% of the total donations in Giving USA’s study.

In 2020, Americans gave $471.44 billion to charity, a 5.1% increase over 2019 (Giving USA)

Statistics About Tithing Conclusion

While some of these statistics about tithing are discouraging, I actually find them quite inspiring. I find that there is actually a lack of giving and generosity within the church, but this ignites a fire in me to help spread the message that we as followers of Christ are called to be generous. My hope is that by sharing these tithing statistics, you feel inspired to be more generous and to encourage others to give more freely as well. I do believe that we are called to give and tithe still today and would pray that you would seek ways to become a cheerful giver!

References: Subsplash, NP Source, Global Giving Trends Report, U.S Catholic, The Philanthropy Outlook, NSCEP, Tithe.ly, Center for the Study of Global Christianity, AdelFi, Lifeway Research, Hartford Institute for Religion Research, Church Development, Ramsey Solutions, Giving USA,