Lisa Anastasi, Boys & Girls Club of America chief development officer, joins 'Squawk Box' to discuss the state of philanthropy, corporate vs. individual charitable giving, and more.

Charitable giving in the United States reached a historic high of $590 billion, according to Lisa Anastasia of the Boys and Girls Club of America. Both corporate and individual donations contributed to this record, with corporate giving at its highest level in four decades. 

Recent trends show increased participation in events like Giving Tuesday, growth in donor-advised funds, and the introduction of new government-facilitated giving vehicles such as 'Trump accounts.' While these new methods may change the landscape, established charities continue to play a significant role in the sector.

Charitable giving hit all-time record of $590B this year

The year's most important giving season has arrived amid economic uncertainty, but corporate philanthropy is holding strong. Joining us right now is Lisa Anastasia. How do I pronounce your last name? I apologize. I feel like I'm mispronouncing it. Anastasia, don't worry about it. She is the Chief Development and External Relations Officer at Boys and Girls Club of America. Good morning to you. Help us understand what's going on in the world of philanthropy right now, especially, well, there's the corporate giving and then individual giving. What are you seeing? Yeah, it's really interesting. So despite some of the economic uncertainties and pressures of this year, charitable giving hit an all-time record of $590 billion, and corporate giving is actually the highest it's been in 40 years. And there's a good reason for that. Corporate giving is a business strategy. It helps drive sales, it improves customer loyalty, increases brand awareness. So at the end of the day, giving back is good for business. But you're saying now that corporations are giving more money charitably than they ever have, because there was a real pullback on charitable giving for a long time. There was. Post-2017 with the changes in the tax structure that allowed everybody to not have to itemize, but by not itemizing, you wouldn't get your deductions on the charitable giving. But what's interesting is with Giving Tuesday results recently, it was a 13% increase year over year. $4 billion donated and 38 million people participating. So consumers still want to give. They're just giving in different ways. But I'm curious about the corporate giving, because back in the 80s, corporations gave actually a lot of money. There was a huge amount of philanthropic giving. But people thought of it as marketing. Oftentimes they thought that CEOs were actually abusing the company coffers, because they had their pet projects. There was a real pullback on corporate giving, because shareholders said, what are you doing with my money? You shouldn't be giving my money away. Give it to me, and I'll give it away. Do you think there's something changing? I do. Corporate giving now is actually a business strategy. 50% of young adults say they're more likely to buy from a brand that gives back. And almost 60% of consumers say they'd be willing to pay more for a product that does good. So I think companies are now seeing this actually as a key way to improve customer loyalty and connect with key audiences. Has the corporate giving taken over for a drop in individual giving? Or is individual giving up, too? Individual giving is up, too. So they both have been rising. And how much are you getting from these donor-advised funds and things like that? Because that's actually also a major shift among the wealthy, if you will, in America. Yes, so donor-advised funds continue to grow, depending on the year, as much as 10% or 20% year over year. And we expect to see that rise over time as well. And when you think just about the future of giving, how much of it, when you think about your own budget, for example, is going to end up coming from the corporate side? Are you spending more time trying to raise money there? Or are you going more after the individual world? So when you look at giving as a whole across the country, individuals is still the largest portion. In some cases, corporate giving only makes up 7% of the amount of money a nonprofit raises. But a lot of times, it varies depending on the organization. When you think about matching, because the other piece of this has always been a match, some companies actually got rid of their matches. Are you seeing more companies putting matches back in? What's happening there? We are, particularly because employees are expecting that of their companies today. About 70% say they want to work for a company that gives back and offers matching gift programs. What we're also seeing is a rise of matching gifts with consumer programs. So for example, we had a big matching gift with Planet Fitness during Giving Tuesday. Kohl's is doing one right now as well. Consumers love it. It's like buying something on sale, right? Your dollars go further. Let me ask you one final question. I'm sure this is probably not on your bingo card. So one of the things that's actually happened, and it was quite remarkable earlier this week, you saw Ray Dalio, I don't know if you focused on this, gave money. This is now through the Treasury Department. This is the Trump accounts that are starting. I don't know if you followed this. Michael Dell participated, gave $6 billion. And you're able now to donate directly to young kids effectively through a government vehicle. This is really the first time we've ever had anything like this before. And Ray Dalio earlier this week did it for every kid, I believe, in the state of Connecticut. You can do it now by zip code. So you can actually go state by state or street by street. And I actually wonder how you think that, depending on how Trump accounts, is what they're called, some people invest in America or invest in America, whether ultimately, actually, that becomes a real vehicle for charity that may be fabulous in certain ways, but actually could ultimately take away from other charities. You know, that's an interesting, I think we have a lot to learn there. I would say in general, charities have been around a long time, right? Boys and Girls Clubs has been around for 160 years. I think a lot of times that structure, that strategy is really important. So I think you'll see a rise, but I think charitable giving will still be strong.

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