State of Good for August 17, 2026

Weekly insights on donor behavior, industry trends, and what’s shaping generosity
⏱️ 9 minutes | Once a week

Welcome back. This week brings the sector’s most important annual benchmark, a hard look at who’s actually doing the fundraising work, and a reminder that the infrastructure behind charitable dollars deserves your attention as much as the dollars themselves. Let’s get into it.

First, the economic picture: Consumer sentiment jumped 10.5% to 49.5 this week — a meaningful move, though sentiment remains at historically cautious levels. The personal savings rate slipped to 2.7%, unemployment ticked down to 4.1%, and the Fed held steady at 3.63%. Translation: donors are feeling slightly better but have less cushion in their household budgets. Mid-level asks may face more friction than the sentiment number alone suggests. Plan accordingly.

Giving USA 2026: Fewer Donors, Bigger Gifts, Same Story > Sharper Stakes

The annual Giving USA release is the sector’s report card, and the 2026 edition confirms the trend line we’ve been tracking for years: donor participation continues to decline while giving remains concentrated among major donors.

This isn’t new information. What’s new is how long the pattern has persisted and what that persistence means for how you structure your revenue model. When total giving holds relatively steady but the number of donors shrinks, your organization’s revenue is being carried by fewer relationships. That’s not inherently bad, but it changes your risk profile. Losing one major donor in 2026 hurts more than it did in 2016, because the base underneath is thinner.

I’ve sat in board meetings where this data gets waved away as “a sector problem, not our problem.” Don’t make that mistake. Pull your own donor file and check: what percentage of your revenue comes from your top 20 donors today versus five years ago? For most organizations I see, that number has climbed steadily often without anyone deciding it should.

What This Means for You:

• Run your own concentration analysis this month. Know your top-20 dependency ratio and track it annually.
• Treat major donor retention as a risk management function, not just a revenue function. Build succession plans for key relationships — what happens if your best donor’s circumstances change?
• Don’t abandon broad-base acquisition just because it’s harder. A shrinking donor pipeline today is a shrinking major donor pipeline in ten years.

The People Problem: Who’s Going to Do This Work?

While Giving USA tells us what’s happening with donors, a thoughtful piece in Stanford Social Innovation Review asks a question the sector avoids: who will raise the money when the money raisers are gone?

The article connects the fundraising workforce challenge directly to donor trends, citing the Fundraising Effectiveness Project’s 2024 report showing a 4.5% decline in giving. Here’s the compounding dynamic: as donor participation shrinks, the fundraising job gets harder. As the job gets harder — with rising goals, lean teams, and short tenures — experienced fundraisers leave the profession. And when they leave, donor relationships walk out the door with them, accelerating the very decline that made the job harder in the first place.

I’ve watched this cycle play out at organizations of every size. The average development director tenure is short not because people don’t care, but because the role is often structured to fail: unrealistic goals, no investment in systems, and boards that treat fundraising as someone else’s job.

What This Means for You:

• If you’re an ED or board member, audit your development role before your next vacancy, not after. Is the goal achievable? Is the support real?
• Invest in documentation. Donor relationship knowledge should live in your CRM, not solely in one person’s head.
• Retention math applies to staff too. The cost of replacing a seasoned fundraiser — recruiting, ramp-up, lost relationships — almost always exceeds the cost of keeping one.

Understanding the DAF Infrastructure Behind Your Funding

A new ProPublica review examined donor-advised fund sponsors’ policies and giving records, finding inconsistencies in how sponsors decide which organizations can receive distributions. The reporting highlights that sponsor policies aren’t always transparent or uniformly applied.

Set aside the debate about DAF policy — that’s not our lane. Here’s the practical takeaway for fundraisers: DAF dollars flow through intermediaries, and those intermediaries have their own policies, review processes, and discretion. If DAF gifts are a meaningful part of your revenue (and for many organizations, they’re a growing share), you should understand the landscape you’re operating in rather than treating DAF distributions as functionally identical to direct gifts.

What This Means for You:

• Identify which DAF sponsors your gifts actually come through. Fidelity Charitable, Schwab Charitable, community foundations — know your mix.
• Keep your public-facing information current and clear: mission descriptions, program outcomes, financials. Sponsors and their donors both review this material.
• Maintain direct relationships with your DAF donors themselves. The sponsor processes the grant, but the human recommending it is your relationship — steward it directly.

Make-A-Will Month: A Timely Window for Legacy Conversations

August is Make-A-Will Month, and FreeWill’s August briefing notes the moment arrives amid mixed economic signals and fresh Fundraising Effectiveness Project data on donor behavior.

Here’s why the timing matters strategically: planned giving is one of the few channels where the donor participation trends above work differently. Legacy gifts don’t depend on this month’s household budget — and in an environment where the savings rate is thin and current-dollar asks face friction, inviting donors into estate conversations offers a way to deepen commitment without asking for cash today. It’s also a natural fit for those long-tenured, smaller-dollar loyal donors who may never become major donors in life but can make transformational gifts through their estates.

What This Means for You:

• Use the Make-A-Will Month hook now — it gives you a non-awkward, culturally timed reason to raise the topic.
• Target loyalty, not capacity. Your best legacy prospects are often 10+ year donors at modest levels.
• Make it easy: a simple web page with your legal name, EIN, and sample bequest language removes the biggest friction point.

This week’s takeaway: The sector’s defining dynamic — fewer donors carrying more of the load — is showing up everywhere: in the annual benchmarks, in the pressures on fundraising staff, and in the growing importance of the intermediaries and channels your dollars flow through. The organizations that thrive won’t be the ones that pick sides between major gifts and broad-base fundraising. They’ll be the ones that manage concentration risk deliberately, invest in the people doing the work, and diversify how donors can give.

Three actions for this week:

1. Calculate your top-20 donor dependency ratio and put it on your next board agenda.
2. Review your development role’s structure — goals, support, documentation — before turnover forces the conversation.
3. Launch one legacy-giving touchpoint this month while the seasonal window is open.

💡 Pure Charity can support your 2026 Fundraising Strategies.

 Reach out, and we can discuss.

At a time when federal funding cuts are straining nonprofits across the Pittsburgh region, The Pittsburgh Foundation’s #ONEDAY Critical Needs Alert delivered a powerful wave of community support in a single day of giving

The mechanics are worth studying. Rather than a general giving day, the Foundation framed the campaign around a specific, timely need — nonprofits facing an immediate funding gap. That framing gave donors a clear reason to act now, and it gave the community a way to respond collectively to a challenge no single donor could solve alone. The Foundation supplied the platform, the credibility, and the urgency; the community supplied the generosity.

I’ve helped build regional giving days, and the ones that break through share this DNA: a trusted convener, a concrete moment, and a reason the timing matters.

The Lesson: When the environment shifts, don’t just send another appeal, create a moment. Donors respond when a trusted institution names a specific need, sets a deadline, and invites the whole community to show up together.