A Resource for Donors
Now is the time to review your CFC description
As CFC charities are getting their 2025 campaign acceptances, now is the time to look closely at your CFC description. You can change your description when you pay the CFC’s “listing fee,” after you receive your acceptance.
In the past, you wanted to write as compelling a case as you could about your work and why it’s important…in 25 words.
Even as the Combined Federal Campaign raises less, data suggests that CFC-focused promotion still helps many charities
With CFC donations down nearly 60% since 2017, many charities are wondering if it still makes sense to invest in reaching out to CFC donors.
The Office of Personnel Management continues to take steps to shut down the federal government’s charity drive, evidently hoping that what it’s doing won’t be noticed with so much else in the news.
Last fall, OPM said that the application process for the 2026 CFC -- a process that normally begins in December – was being postponed as OPM evaluated the campaign and considered whether it should be continued.
In 2024, the Combined Federal Campaign raised nearly $70 million from nearly 71,000 federal employees, members of the military, and retirees. Most of this support went to charities meeting the most basic of needs: feeding the hungry, responding to disasters both here and across the world, providing health care and conducting medical research, meeting the needs of local communities.
This year’s Combined Federal Campaign has been about as chaotic as the larger political world, but it is still proceeding and raising more money than many thought possible.
The latest estimate as of last week was about $35 million. Every year a lot of money is given in the campaign’s last two weeks, so hopefully this figure will go up. Last year’s CFC raised $66 million.
After an outpouring of support from charities, the Office of Personnel Management announced on Sept. 10 that it would allow this year’s Combined Federal Campaign to continue.
Here is our plan for promoting charities in the 2025 Combined Federal Campaign. https://www.charitychoices.com/sites/default/files/2025%20Contract.pdf
Despite all the uncertainties last fall, giving through the CFC remained strong, especially in the DC/Baltimore area, where giving stayed almost constant (a 1.2% decline). Overall, CFC giving fell 4%, to $66 million.
CFC giving last fall was down again, but not nearly as much as was in 2022: just 2.7% in 2023, vs. a decline of 9.6% in 2022.
Since 2016, the Combined Federal Campaign has declined by 58% (not counting inflation) and lost more than 80% of its donors.
In contrast, the DC-area CFC has gone down much less since 2016, just 31.8%. In 2022, it raised $2 million more than it did in 2018, while the CFC overall is down $20 million since 2018. As a result, the DC CFC now accounts for nearly half the dollars raised through the CFC (46.6%, vs. 28.8% in 2016).