Americans’ generosity is at an all-time high

0:00You're listening to the Hidden Lightness on America Out Loud Talk Radio. I'm your host Jimmy Hinnon. Well, giving in America is it up or down as people feel the crunch this year. A lot of people very unhappy, a lot of people Republicans, the farmers, truck drivers, all very unhappy with Republicans and what's going on with fuel prices. So the question is, is giving up or is it down? Well the answer might surprise you. Giving is actually up significantly in 2026. Now I've said this before, it doesn't matter what the economy does. People still give. Now remember before we talked about how microgiving is on their eyes. Microvolunteering, microgiving, that's on the increase but an interesting trend has shifted

1:02a little bit. And there is a transfer of wealth. And now it seems like according to research anyway, giving is coming from out-oat-or-rich people and they're giving a lot. We can see this with the Trump accounts. We can see this with all kinds of different philanthropy that happens by big corporations, big businesses. Now they're the ones who are vilified of course but they're given tremendously. So I'm going to begin before we get into that. I want to begin by talking about the squeeze that Americans are feeling gas and diesel are incredibly high. And this definitely is having an impact on giving. There's no question about that. The rates were just raised last week. That's putting more, more-gated. Market is at a, I believe it's a 19 year high or something like that. It's something crazy but the mortgage rates are really high right now.

2:02And they just saw another increase so that's by design. They're trying to level out the housing market and cool it off a little bit and just the market in general to bring inflation down, to bring it into check. But that doesn't help Americans who are struggling. And I've been staying this repeatedly. I think that President Trump is missing a really good opportunity to side with the American people and to just acknowledge their pain. But instead he's doubling down on this idea that well, you know, if you don't like it then you must like nuclear weapons. In fact, I'm going to play an audio clip. This is an interview. He was interviewed the other day and here's what he had to say about that. Weak and oil and gas prices are going to come down. Oil is now back above $100 a barrel. And Mr. President, you've been saying for weeks that oil and gas prices are going to come down. Oil is now back above $100 a barrel.

3:02How do you explain this to Americans who are wondering, we're going to come down. I think it's very easy to explain to America. What do you have to do is say, when you let Iran have a nuclear weapon and the answer is no. And they're doing very poorly. Their country is in shambles right now. They are, as you probably have seen, the number is 300 percent inflation. Their money is valueless. They're not paying their soldiers. We control the straight and lots of other things. So for a little while, I would say this shortly, but right after the election, because they'd like to have it that way. But right after the election, oil prices are going to be tumbling downward. They're going to be tumbling down and we'll get them down. I think for gasoline, we'll get them below $2 a gallon. All right. So kind of interesting. He keeps going back to this. Well, right after the election, it's going to go down. They like it that way. Well, I'm sorry, it just doesn't work that way. And if he was just honest with the American people, he'd only have an average of $2.

4:06You don't have to say why fuel prices are so high. Everybody already knows that. All he has to do is say, you know, I really feel, I feel for the farmers. I feel for the farmers that are going out of business. There are farmers that are going belly up. Multigeneration farms are closing down. Trucking companies are going out of business. It's happening. And instead of acknowledging that and saying, you know, we're going to do everything within our power to bring the prices down now. He's not doing that. He's like, well, you know, they're doing this. They're keeping it, you know, not saying who they are. I think the implication is the Democrats. And so this is not sitting well with the American people. I want to read a couple quotes from him. This was, let's see, I don't see a date on this, but I think it was just the other day he posted this. He said, I hope everyone realizes that price increases throughout America were caused

5:08by sleepy Joe Biden and the Biden administration, not by Trump. Even oil was higher under Biden than it is right now. And we prevented Iran from having a nuclear weapon with a temporary exception of oil. Prices are coming down sharply. That's categorically false. And oil would drop like a rock as soon as the military conflict with Iran is over. And that will not be long. Thank you for your attention to this matter. President Donald J. Trump, now he's been saying this since the war began in February. He's been saying, well, you know, give it a couple more days, 30 days, and we'll be out of there. And you'll see fuel prices so low, you won't know what to do. And now he's saying it again. Here we are in almost October. And fuel is hitting record highs. Airlines just re-did their schedules because of the cost of fuel.

6:09Things are about to get very, very expensive. I mean, very expensive. So this is a major inflation driver. And rather than acknowledge it or at least have a little bit of empathy, he's basically given a middle finger and he's like, well, if you don't like the fuel prices, then screw you. So here's another thing he said. I hope everyone realizes that price increases throughout America were caused by sleepy Joe Biden. And the Biden administration, not by Trump. That was September 14th that he said that. Now here's what this is just off the wall. This is what I mean. Like he's out of his mind. He posted this on truth social September 16th. Gas prices are too high. So we are announcing a tremendous new initiative. Watered down gas. I could do not like this. I thought this is parody.

7:11But he actually posted this very simple. Something nobody thought of before. You just take a gallon of gasoline, half gas, half water, and guess what? You just cut the price in half. The so-called experts will say it can't be done. They always say that. But water is basically free. And we have more water than anybody. Oceans of it. Excuse me. This will save the American people billions and billions of dollars. Half the gas, half the price. Common sense. Thank you for your attention to this matter. DJ T. Now I have one more audio clip from President Trump from just a few days ago. And again, you can't make this stuff up. Here's what he said. And then on gas prices, how long will Americans continue to keep in high gas prices? Well, they're not very high. If you look at what they were supposed to be in order to get rid of a nuclear weapon with the danger that it tells, so the gas prices have come down very much over the

8:14land of three-four days. I know. You know, that's what ABC says. The fact is that if you look at the stock market's up, everything's doing really well. And the big thing we have to do is we have to make sure that Iran is... All right, there you go. Gas prices are not that high. It's just it's in your head. It's your imagination. They've actually come down. He keeps repeating this. And I'm telling you, he has the potential to wreck the midterm elections by repeating this stuff. We'll just water down the gas, half water, half gas. I mean, this is insanity. So at any rate, I wanted to point that out and just say he's being very disingenuous. He's being very dishonest. And it's not sitting well with the American people. I assure you of that. There was a rally. He was at... I heard a clip where I watched the video. It wasn't just listening.

9:14I watched the clip. And he said, you know, gas prices aren't that high. He said, everybody's complaining about it. All these people are complaining about it. They're really not that high. And we're going to bring them down so low that you won't even know what to do with it. And America's doing great. The economy's doing great. Everybody's doing great. And there was like one person that gave a half-hearted clap in the audience. Like, he's losing his own audience at these rallies. And man, it's just those claims when people are struggling. I mean, the business owners, people who own diesel trucks, they're especially getting hit hard. The cost to travel, the cost to fly, like everything's up to groceries, they're all going up. And then he makes the claims that everything's down with the exception of gas. Everything else is down. It's down so much that America's winning. So I just wanted to put that out there again because he keeps repeating this over and

10:20over and over again. And the Americans don't like it. And I don't know. I think somebody in his administration probably needs to reinheim in and be like, look, people are looking for empathy, not basically telling them, screw you. If you think fuel prices are high, you haven't seen nothing yet. They could go much higher. And that's just the price we have to pay. And Sleepy Joe did this. And it's like he's talking about both sides of his mouth. And again, people are not stupid. People understand. So with that said, budgets are definitely getting strapped. There's no question about that. Fuel in the last month or two has really put a grind on the American wallet. And so with that said, also inflation has increased all throughout this year. Inflation is up, not down. The economy is doing well.

11:21That is a true statement. The economy is resilient. The economy is doing well. However, we can't throw caution into the wind. Yet we've got to stay on our toes because it's a very delicate balance right now. And fuel controls everything. It really controls the price of just about everything because everything is transported. So back to giving. I thought this was really interesting. This is giving USA.org. The number of nonprofits in the United States has increased by 34% in the last 20 years. That's incredible. In that same period, the percentage of US households giving to charity fell from roughly 66% to less than half. More nonprofits, fewer donors to support them. That's trouble.

12:23We have a sector that isn't sustainable. And the growing number of nonprofits is a major contributor to the generosity crisis we're facing. Better fundraising alone won't save this. More nonprofits mean more duplication of effort. Resources that could be concentrated into fewer, stronger institutions are instead spread thinner every year, often because overlapping missions. There's already a finite bench of board talent and staff turnover rates are skyrocketing. In the for-profit world, companies acquire and merge because scale works. It consolidates talent, eliminates duplicated back-office cost, extends reach to consumers, and gives the strongest management teams more resources to work with. So why is it that only about 1% of nonprofits merge in a typical year?

13:24Even when most nonprofit leaders, say collaboration could help them fulfill their mission better. Now this is a really fascinating article and great, great point. We're getting more and more nonprofits. And people look at that and they're like, oh, that's a good thing, right? More nonprofits means more people are succeeding, I guess, in this mission to help our fellow man. The reality is less is better. The less nonprofits you have, the better. They're more efficient. They have lower costs, overhead costs. Think about what it costs to start a nonprofit and to run a nonprofit. And especially if you're staffing a nonprofit. If you're not using volunteers, if you're staffing the nonprofit, that alone takes up a very significant part of the budget.

14:27So this is problematic and it's absolutely true. So I will come back to this article because this is almost kind of a paradox. There are two things going on that I think are really important and really significant and we need to pay attention to both of them. Here's the other article. This is philanthropy, Indianapolis and it's from the Indiana University, Indianapolis. They did a major study and here's what they say. Giving USA, US charitable giving rose 617.2 billion in 2025, surpassing the 600 billion mark for the first time. That's actually incredible. All right, giving grew 5.7% amid strong financial markets and a complex economy.

15:34So the annual report on philanthropy for the year 2025, report the giving by individuals request foundations and corporations to US charities increased 5.7% in current dollars. 3% adjusted for inflation to an estimated 617.2 billion dollars last year. The quest giving rose nearly 20%, 16.6% adjusted for inflation over 2024, the largest increase of any of the four sources of giving in 2025. Education, public society benefit and environmental slash animals saw more than 10% growth in current dollars. So giving is up. Hands down, there's no question about that. Again, on the numbers person, the numbers don't lie. So how do we have these two almost seemingly opposing ideas?

16:41One is that giving is the highest that it's ever been. Two is that people are struggling and three is that we have more nonprofits than ever before and that's not necessarily good thing. So we'll break that all down after the break. We are coming up on the break. Be sure to check out the America Out Loud Store where you will find incredible deals. Check out Chemical Free Body, green 85, still always one of my favorites. And use the code out loud for 20% off. Visit AmericaOut Loud.News, sit tight, we'll be right back. The smartest food on the planet doesn't come from a lab or in a package. It grows in a class jar. I'm Doug Evans, author of the National Best Seller, The Spout Book. The Spout's deliver up to 100 times the antioxidants of mature vegetables. They grow in just three to five days for under a dollar serving. Get your spouting kit at thespoutingcompany.com slash out loud.

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18:47siege from those carrying the banners of socialists, communism and Marxism, America out loud.News is the antidote to these poisonisms. America out loud.News is that place to awaken your heart, soul and mind to the out loud truth. What are the most terrible charitable giving in the United States? Reach-group record highs last year. And this year we're set on track to probably break 2025's record. Now a lot of people say, well how can that be? Because when the economy slows or at least when people feel the pain of inflation, which certainly they're feeling right now, no question about that. How is it possible the charitable giving goes up? Well, we're going to break that down.

19:48I'm going to go back to this study from Indianapolis. It's the Indiana University Indianapolis. And they composed alongside of Giving USA Foundation, which is a public service initiative of the Giving Institute. They publish this report, which is excellent. And here's some of the key points. Again, total charitable giving reached new high in current dollars and the second highest amount on record in inflation-adjusted dollars, driven by strong financial markets and growth in other economic factors, closely associated with giving. The quest of increased 20 percent or more in current dollars in three of the last four years. And historically, the quest giving fluctuates substantially from year to year. All four sources of giving increased in current dollars in 2025 and three of the four grew

20:54after adjusting for inflation. So very fascinating, US, here's a quote here, US charitable giving exceeded 600 billion in 2025, a milestone that reflects the resilience of American generosity. That's the point that I've been making. You see, even when times are tough, maybe even especially when times are tough, giving increases. And remember the recession of 2008, 2009, guess what giving did? It increased. Now I've talked about the GoFundMe accounts and the crowdsourcing last year that also reached an all-time record high by a lot. And so people are like, well, how can that be? How does that happen? Don't people just stop giving whenever times get tough?

21:58Logically you would think yes, but in a nutshell, the answer is no. Now it does put a crunch on it. There's no question about that. But even in times of despair, even in times of market downturns, people still give. People are still very generous. So I find this to be a fascinating study. All right, let's dig a little bit deeper. A strong market lifted individual giving 4.1% in current dollars, 1.4% of inflation-adjusted dollars. However, consumer sentiment, which also influences giving, remained near historic lows, and may have dampened giving by some households. So consumer sentiment is that's kind of where the consumer says, well, I got to slow down my personal spending.

23:02And I'm not going to spend as much money because I feel the crunch. Things are getting tighter. My personal budget is getting tighter. So consumer sentiment reached historic lows. And that does dampen giving by notice how it says, some households. I find that to be really interesting. Psychologically, there's something about struggling people, helping struggling people. We saw this when Hurricane Helene hit. Who were the people who were helping out? Well, there were businesses. Certainly, they were very, very generous. But most of the volunteerism came from who? Struggling people. Ordinary people like you and I, this is what the hidden lightness is all about. It's that when times are tough, what we don't need is a president running his mouth, talking

24:05about how fuel prices aren't there, not that bad. He says that in one breath and then in the other breath, well, fuel prices are high, but it's sleepy Joe Biden, didn't that. You wait till after the midterms. You wait till the war is done. You wait till March, April, wait till May, wait till the summer, wait, you know, it's always wait. Wait, wait, wait, wait. You wait and see. Do I think the fuel prices will come down? Yeah, eventually. But I don't think they're going to come down anytime soon. I think people need to prepare for months of high fuel prices. Now when will they come down? Nobody really knows. But the Trump administration is taking steps. We're building what is it? Two new refineries where we can actually process the oil that we produce in America. Right now we don't have refineries that can produce our oil.

25:05We export all of it. All of our oil is imported because we don't have the capability to refine our crude oil. The light crude or whatever it's called that we produce here in America. Our refineries are not designed to refine it. Well, that's a big problem. You can drill baby drill, but it doesn't help us at the pump. Not yet. But you see that's what President Trump ought to be focused on. He ought to be focused on telling the people, hey, listen, we have these two refineries that are in the process of being built. And that's long term that's going to benefit America big time. We'll be energy independent. But instead he's like, you know what, we're going to put water in the gas. Half water, half gas. Thank you for your attention to this matter.

26:06Like what in the world? How does that help anybody? So yeah, I think at this point it would really help consumer sentiment if he was honest and said, look, here's a timeline. Here are the steps that we're taking. Here's our plan. We have a plan in place. And by month, whatever fuel will come down, X amount of percent. By month, too, it'll come down X amount of percent. Here are targets. Here's what we're doing to accomplish that. But there is no plan. At least if there is none of us know about it. So that increases the consumer sentiment. Well, decreases consumer sentiment. It brings it down where people are afraid to purchase.

27:07Like nobody has any idea how long oil is going to stay this high. Fuel is unbelievably high. So at any rate, that does affect giving. But at the same time, it's a really interesting psychological concept. When struggling people see other struggling people, they open up their wallets. And I think that ought to give us tremendous hope in America. Yeah, I've said it countless times before. We should never look to the government to bring us relief, to bail us out, to give us stimulus checks. You know, on and on and on to give us health insurance. Like we should never look to the government to do that because I promise you, out of 100% of the time, they're going to disappoint us about 100% of the time. They don't have a good track record.

28:08The government is not efficient. They're not good with our tax dollars. They overspend. There's tremendous amount of pork. And that's why I always say it's up to us to do our own budgets, to get our own house in order, to live below our means, to do everything within our power to be able to help other people out. You know, it's kind of interesting too as a minister. You know, this is something we have benevolence calls constantly. I just had a benevolence call yesterday. Somebody I know, this is a friend and they were asking for what was it, past due, oh, it was electric. And yeah, he was just like, times are really tough and he explained a situation and I definitely

29:09have empathy. A lot of compassion. I was like, look, I get it. I understand. And we're going to do everything in our power to be able to help you out. Now I don't make those decisions, but I said, I can and I will pass your information on and I can definitely put a word in for you, not because we're friends because I don't, I don't ever want to get caught in that cycle. You know, like the buddy system. But I want to do it because we care. Right? We do this for everybody to the best of our ability. The church helps people out. And I had a long conversation with them. I was like, look, what steps are you taking? Where do you need help? How can I help you? Whatever you need, you know, to the best of my ability, I and we can help you out. And so I was talking with somebody before another Christian and they're like, you know,

30:11you remember back in the day when people didn't, I just didn't look to the government for all this help. Like it's gotten really out of control now. The church used to, they used to do food banks. They used to help homeless with, with housing. On and on and on. The community gardens. With then Uncle Sam stepped in. And they started saying, well, you know, this is, this is food that could be contaminated and so you can't any longer can food. You can't have these community gardens where people come and they pick and they, they can their own foods or you can the food for them because you need FDA or approval. You need permits. And so the church has kept trying and then they were getting fined. And then it just got to the point where churches were completely exasperated and they were tired of the government coming in and shutting down their operations.

31:16So the church is stopped giving. Now they still give. Don't get me wrong. Churches still give. Churches are still very generous. But what we saw was a shift in church culture. And it's the me, myself, and I culture. It's the prosperity culture. It's the celebrity pastor culture. Back in the day, nobody, nobody could have ever fathomed to having these celebrity pastors. Nobody in their wildest dreams. Like it never would have been tolerated in America. We would have been like, get out of here. You loser. You think you're somebody and you're not. The church is about helping its fellow man. The church is about being much better, much more efficient than what the government can ever be and helping people out.

32:18Helping them to find jobs, helping them to find housing, helping to feed them, to clothe them. That's exactly the mission that Jesus set us on. But at some point, the government exasperated the churches. And they created this culture of dependence. And you see it all the time. I talk about it all the time. It's the promises. What Trump did with that $5,000 promise. Every publicans win the election and every American adult gets $5,000 check. That's insanity. That's stupidity. And it makes it so much harder for the churches and the nonprofits to be effective. Because people are waiting for that money hopelessly. Waiting for that money.

33:18I say hopelessly because I think there's no hope that they're ever going to get it. And it's created this system where millions of Americans are holding their hand out, waiting for the government. And they're like, these Christian, mega people, they ruined our life. They voted for Trump and they cut our food stamps back or they did whatever. You know, like this is the mentality. It's like the government, the government's not helping us out because of these mega Republicans. It's a really toxic system if the government would just butt out of people's lives. Now again, I'm not against some of these programs. I'm not against food stamps. In fact, I don't think we do enough with it.

34:19But we've not created a system of accountability. And I know a lot of people who milk the system, they do. It's just, it's a fact. They know how to get the most out of the government. They know all the government programs. They, a lot of people are lying. They're cheating the system. And it's just sad. You know, when the church works with people, there's a whole lot more accountability. I promise you. Whatever we give, we do not just give blindly. Right. We ensure that when we give the people, there's some kind of accountability built into that. You can do that on an individual basis. The government cannot. So we've created this monster of a system, this culture where people are so dependent on the government that they're, they're starting riots. Right. It's all the protests. It's the shouting and yelling and the division on social media.

35:24When people find out that somebody voted one way, they, they cut them off. They cut off friends. They cut off family members. Why? Because in their minds, it cuts into what the government is giving them. Right. So all of that is eliminated. The vast majority of that anyway is eliminated. When the government butts out and it allows the nonprofits to do what nonprofits do, to be efficient, to be kind, to be generous, to be giving. And so now we have this compound problem. It's been compounded even more. The number of nonprofits has increased exponentially, making them generally less effective. So now you have an ineffective government, inefficient government, and you have inefficient nonprofits. What do you think is going to happen to the society? What do you think will happen to Americans?

36:27Unless we reel this in, unless nonprofits start to consolidate and work with each other, instead of competing with each other, I think we're going to have a pretty hard time. But the good news and all this, the silver lining, is that charitable giving is up and it's way up. And I think that trend is here to stay. I don't think this is a one off. I think that trend is here to stay. So we'll talk about what that means for people in need and helping our neighbors after the break. All of our shows do go to podcasts the next day after the broadcast turned on talk radio. You can hear them on your favorite podcast app. Be sure to subscribe, rate the show, share it, and when we come back, we'll talk more about charitable giving in the United States of America. We'll be right back. Are you tired of struggling with low energy? We get it. That's why we created organic energy juice. In just one minute, you'll have clean, natural energy all day and never struggle with low energy again.

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38:29Clear. Breathe better. Live better. The next pandemic with the wellness companies Contagion Emergency Kit, designed by Dr. Peter McCullough, get life-saving medications like Ivermectin and hydroxychloroquine, plus a free nebulizer and a guidebook for safe use. Order now by going to TWC. .health, forward slash out loud and use code out loud for $65 off your first order plus free shipping. Giving in the United States charitable giving was up really significantly in 2025. We're on track to do really well in 2026 with charitable giving. Now it's kind of interesting. There's a little bit of a paradox because I was quoting a study from giving USA. In fact, giving USA is one of the ones that helped guide this study that we're looking at. Giving USA says that the number of nonprofits in the United States has grown by a lot. Already 4% in the last 20 years.

39:29What that means is that we're less efficient at executing missions. You have the same mission, but now it's spread across multiple organizations. What that does is it creates inefficiency. We need to consolidate nonprofits. So for anybody who's thinking about starting a nonprofit, and I started one before, I co-founded one before and I had a partner that was a complete disaster. And I resigned and got away from it. It was very, very toxic. But it was a mission that when I look back, I'm like, man, there are so many other organizations that have the same mission and they're doing a phenomenal job. So why didn't we consolidate? Well, we didn't consolidate because my partner saw dollar signs and trust me, the dollars

40:31were not there. We didn't make anything off of that. It was a complete disaster. And that's typical for nonprofit organizations. When there's so many that start up, it takes a tremendous amount of skill, effort, energy, time, resources, all of that, overhead, all of that. So it's much better to consolidate. So giving you a say says the consequence of unchecked proliferation. Preliiferation and inefficiency hurt individual nonprofits first. But the damage doesn't stop there. It compounds across the whole sector by tolerating inefficiencies. Sounds like the government doesn't it. Serving donor support and eroding trust. Consider the new Beagle Rescue that gets its 501c3 status because its founder loves the breed. The passion to save these dogs is well intentioned, but the same town already has an organization

41:34for senior Beagles, another for Hounds, and a third for fighting Beagle puppy mills. The new Rescue poaches its development director from the Hound organization and its adoptive option director from the senior Beagle group. Donors get confused by the proliferation of resources and stop giving all together. Families looking for their next pet get overwhelmed by the choices. That's exactly right. Less is more. Businesses understand this. You know, when you have a menu that's six pages long, it overwhelms people. I noticed one of our restaurants in town did something interesting. Now they were always popular. It's a Mexican restaurant. They were always popular, but they changed their menu. They dropped about 50% of the items off in the menu. And their clientele, I guess that's what you call them, their customers exploded exponentially.

42:44That place is always standing room only. There's always a way to get in. And they literally made one change. They didn't change anything about the food, nothing about the quality of the food, nothing about the quality of service. They didn't change their building. They didn't put flower beds in. They literally changed nothing except the menu. They gave less choices, not more. That was a game changer for them. And people have too many choices and when they see proliferation, when they see resources being pulled from one organization and put into another, it confuses them. And they stop giving. So giving you a say says multiply this scenario by the 113,312 new nonprofits approved in 2024 alone. And you get a sector duplicating administrative overhead at an alarming rate. While the best executives grow delusioned by competition in an already shallow talent pool,

43:48donors are left wondering if their gift will ever matter in an increasingly noisy, fragmented landscape. Now, let's apply this to churches. That's my wheelhouse. I've been a ministry for nearly two decades and I see it all the time. Churches that pop up, I mean, they pop up left and right. And they're like, yeah, the first Christian church down the road or whatever, the Christian whatever, fill in the blank for the name. Share this and there that they don't reach out. They don't reach out to the youth in town and they they're not focused on this and they're not focused on that. So instead of working with that church, what they do is they'll take some disgruntled members, they'll leave that church. They'll take some of the leadership or whatever and they'll start a new church literally

44:49right across the street. And now you have multiple churches, multiple denominations and sometimes the same denomination with multiple churches in town and they don't network with each other. They don't even talk to each other. And you've now given people tons of choices and it gets confusing and people don't have a clue what the churches missions are and so what do they do? They stop giving. People don't like to give. None of us like to give if we don't know where our money is going. That's why I'm not a fan of the wealth and health, you know, gospel prosperity movement. It's the, all the celebrity pastors. Yeah, Jolo Steen is which I can't stand that kind of mentality. It's like give, give, give, give, give to her. It's give, give, okay, what are we given to? Well, it's seed money.

45:50If you give, then you'll be wealthy beyond measure. And people fall for it for a time and then they get exasperated and are like, well, we're not really seeing that wealth that you promised. And so they just stop giving all together. And so churches like that, churches like Jolo Steen and I'm just pick them one name. I mean, literally pick one. They depend on this high turnover of constantly getting new people. The prosperity gospel depends on new people coming in and they just repackage it and they give the same message. If you give, this is seed money, you'll be wealthy beyond measure. There is no mission. And then other people see that that works and they're like, we got to start a prosperity church. And they start cropping up. So what's interesting about that is going back to the study from Indianapolis University.

46:55I want to look at the 2025 charitable giving recipients. You ready for this? The first one listed, number one religion, 2.4%. Now that's not number one because it received the most money. They just ordered it and no particular order it seems. Churches have the lowest recipient of money out of any nonprofit organization. What does that tell you? Religion 2.4%. Not given 151.58 billion. Now that's not total dollars given. That's percentage increase of giving year over year. Let me just make that clear. Religion received the slowest or lowest percentage increase year over year.

47:582.4% increase in 2025. Religion services 5.3%. Education 11.7%. Two foundations. 16.2%. Public society benefit 11.6% health 6.1%. International affairs 4.1%. Arts, culture and humanities 7.5% increase. Finally, environment and animals 11% increase year over year. What this tells me is that where people are giving is beginning to shift. It's shifting away from the churches and shifting towards all these other categories. I think there's a very good reason for that. I think people are tired of giving to churches and not really knowing how that money is being used. They're tired of seeing these pastors that are making tons and tons and tons and tons

49:00of money off the backs of poor congregants. They're starting to shift their giving. It's not that they're not giving at all. It's that they're shifting their giving to some of these other organizations. Human services, education 2 foundations, public society benefit, health, international affairs, culture, humanities and environment and animals. I find that really, really fascinating. In fact, religion, when adjusted for inflation, only increased by 0.2% in 2025. I'll be really curious to see what that does in 2026. That report obviously won't come out till 27. But I find it really, really interesting. Churches have been terrible. Instead of consolidating, they do the exact opposite.

50:02They build more churches. They pump tons of money into their buildings. Their overhead is insane. The amount of debt that they carry is wild. And people see this. They're like, yeah, I'm not quite so sure. I want to, not quite so sure I want to give and put my money in the plate. When they're building the gymnasium add-on to the church that's $6.7 million add-on, yeah, I'm not really into that. So I think we have a lot of room to really adjust the nonprofits. I think if we do, now here's my silver lining. There's always a silver lining in all this. The actual dollar amount of giving is up a lot. 2025 was an all-time high record. Over $600 billion.

51:06That's over half a trillion dollars that was given to nonprofit organizations alone. If these nonprofit organizations can start to consolidate and become effective and efficient, can you imagine the impact that we would have not just here in America, but globally? You know, it doesn't take much adjustment, but it does take a whole lot of discipline. We've got to stop competing with each other. We've got to stop every time somebody gets mad and they're like, oh, well, or they're like, oh, I have, I'm going to re-envision the mission. And it's literally the same mission. They just wrote it differently. You know, and again, the government does this all the time. Look at all the programs that the government has. That's why I was all for Doge. And then it just kind of fell off a cliff.

52:07You know, you don't hear anything about Doge anymore. Hey, if you can make the government more efficient, by all means, go in, cut the waste, cut the fraud, cut the abuse, make it efficient and watch the government for maybe the first time ever actually be effective at helping people. What if the churches worked with the government and vice versa, the government worked with churches? I mean, there's nothing that we couldn't accomplish. So it's absolutely incredible. The sky is the limit. The money is there. I assure you the money is there. Elon Musk has been staying this and he gets a lot of crap for it, but he's like, look, there's enough money. There's enough wealth to help everybody. We're just not efficient at doing it. And that's the message I want you to take home today. There's enough wealth to help everybody in need.

53:07There's just not efficient enough. Until we get our heads out of the sand, we're never going to be efficient enough. There's no reason why the homelessness is increasing at the percentage, at the rate that it's increasing. There's no reason why in the wealthiest nation in the world, we have millions of kids living with food insecurity. Now we're complicating that by raising fuel prices and putting farmers out of business. I mean, inefficiency is absolutely killing us, but we can turn that around. And it begins in the home. I always bring that back to the individual. It begins in the home. It begins with us getting our own budgets in order. It begins with us living within our means. Not worrying about being a social justice, social media justice warrior.

54:09That's not going to change one politician's mind. By people typing and hammering and spending all their time wasting all their time on social media, you're not going to change the government that way. If we actually befriended politicians and talk to them and reasoned with them and show them, look, like I know what it takes to maximize efficiency. I know what it takes. We're doing it. Our church is doing it. Our family is doing it or our family business is doing it. Let me show you. I'll give you the recipe. I'll give you the recipe for success. I mean, can you imagine if there were actually politicians who were open to that, to listen to their constituents, but it's got to begin with us. It has to begin with us. You know, it's really difficult to listen to complaining whenever people don't do the

55:13hard work independently. We always point everybody gets so worked up over the president. Our Joe Biden is going to save the world. President Obama is going to save the world. President Bush, President Clinton, we've done it with literally every single president. And it's amazing that we haven't learned by now that it does not work. The people who hold the key to the hidden lightness, are you? It's you. You have the key. You have the answer. And if we join hands, if we're united, if we work together, if we talk to the nonprofits in your town and be like, look, what if you guys consolidated? What if you guys work together instead of competing with each other? What would that look like? How can I help you?

56:14Man, we'd be unstoppable. The money is there. The money is increasing. And that, my friends, is the hidden lightness. You can find more out about my show and get all the latest podcasts if you go to the many navigation bar at AmericaOut Loud.News under our shows or schedule. You'll be in the know. There is a hidden lightness that shines inside of all of us. When so much darkness envelops the world, remember that it doesn't take much light to expose that darkness and to ultimately inspire other people. Join me in being a light.