State of Good for August 24, 2026
Weekly insights on donor behavior, industry trends, and what’s shaping generosity
⏱️ 9 minutes | Once a week
This Week's State of Good
This week’s brief covers a fresh read on public trust in our sector, what a massive dataset of text messages tells us about donor communication, and two important shifts in the institutional funding landscape. We close with a story about a group of young fundraisers who built something remarkable, fast.
Trust Is Still Your Biggest Asset, If You Keep Earning It
Here’s the good news to start your week: nonprofits remain America’s most-trusted sector, according to a new poll covered by NonProfit PRO. In a moment when trust in most institutions is hard to come by, our sector still holds the high ground.
But the poll comes with a clear condition attached: Americans want nonprofits to be transparent. Trust isn’t a permanent asset — it’s a renewable one. Donors extend it, and they expect to see how it’s being honored.
The same research points to a tactical opportunity worth noting: predictive insights can help nonprofits identify likely donors and focus acquisition resources more strategically. Trust gets a donor to open the door. Data helps you knock on the right doors in the first place.
What This Means for You:
- Audit your transparency touchpoints this quarter. Is your impact reporting easy to find, easy to read, and current? Donors shouldn’t have to hunt for it.
- Lead with your trusted status in acquisition messaging but back it up. “Here’s exactly where your gift went” is one of the most powerful sentences in fundraising.
- If you haven’t explored predictive analytics for donor acquisition, start small. Even basic modeling on your existing file can sharpen where you spend your next acquisition dollar.
What 136 Million Texts Tell Us About Reaching Donors
I’ve seen thousands of campaigns, and one pattern holds: the channels donors actually use are rarely the channels nonprofits invest in first. That’s why an upcoming analysis of 136 million nonprofit text messages caught my attention this week.
A dataset of that scale is rare in our sector. Most texting advice is anecdotal “we tried it and it worked” from one organization’s campaign. A 136-million-message sample gives us something closer to actual benchmarks on donor response and engagement patterns in text-based fundraising.
Text messaging sits in an interesting spot right now. It’s intimate (it lands in the same place as messages from friends and family), immediate (most texts are read within minutes), and still underused by most small and mid-sized organizations. That combination usually means opportunity for the organizations that approach it thoughtfully rather than treating it as another blast channel.
What This Means for You:
- If texting isn’t part of your donor communication mix, put it on your 2027 planning agenda now. Data at this scale suggests the channel has matured beyond “experimental.”
- Treat text like the personal channel it is. Frequency discipline and genuine two-way engagement matter more here than anywhere else in your stack.
- Watch for the findings from this analysis and pressure-test your current messaging cadence against them.
The Institutional Funding Map Is Being Redrawn
Two stories this week point to the same underlying reality: institutional funding (both foundation and federal) is shifting, and organizations need to understand where they sit on the new map.
First, Nonprofit Quarterly examines why youth-led climate organizations receive less than 1% of major foundation grants. The piece makes an argument worth sitting with regardless of your cause area: the standard prescription teach emerging organizations to fundraise better, misreads the situation. The barrier isn’t capacity or talent. It’s access to the relationships and networks where foundation funding decisions actually happen.
That’s a useful diagnostic for any newer or emerging organization. If your grant applications are strong but your win rate is low, the missing ingredient may not be a better proposal. It may be that you’re not yet in the rooms where funders form their priorities.
Second, a forthcoming Brookings report examines federal and philanthropic funding to Native American communities, including data on grant and contract cancellations affecting nonprofits serving those communities. The analysis, drawing on data compiled by Candid, looks at gaps in both government and philanthropic funding streams.
The practical takeaway extends beyond any single community: organizations that depend on federal grants and contracts are navigating a period of real change, and the philanthropic side hasn’t automatically filled the gaps. Revenue concentration, in any single funder type, is the risk factor to manage.
What This Means for You:
- Map your funder relationships honestly. How many program officers actually know your work firsthand? Relationship-building deserves a line in your development plan, not just proposal-writing.
- If you’re an emerging organization, invest in network access: funder briefings, sector convenings, peer introductions. These often move the needle more than another round of grant-writing training.
- If federal funding is a significant share of your budget, run a scenario plan now. Know which programs are most exposed and what your diversification timeline looks like.
- Funders read this brief too, if you fund emerging organizations, consider whether your pipeline reflects who’s doing the work or who already knows how to find you.
Why Donors Give?
Community & Belonging
Donors who feel part of a community have 3x higher lifetime value. So here’s the question: are you building community, or just collecting donations?
Humans are tribal by nature. We’re wired to seek belonging to be part of something larger than ourselves. When donors feel genuine membership in a community united by shared values, giving transforms from transaction to expression. The gift stops being a line item and starts being an identity statement.
This is why peer-to-peer fundraising is so powerful. People give to people. They give to be part of movements. They give because their tribe is giving.
The psychology of belonging also transforms retention. When a donor feels like a member rather than a customer, leaving isn’t just canceling a recurring gift it’s leaving a tribe. That’s a much higher psychological bar, and it’s why community-connected donors stick around.
Try This:
- Create spaces for donors to connect with each other, not just with you events, online groups, volunteer opportunities that put supporters shoulder to shoulder
- Use inclusive language everywhere: “our community” and “together we,” not “your donation helped us”
- Recognize donors publicly when appropriate belonging requires visibility
- Ask yourself after every campaign: did this make donors feel more connected to each other, or only to our organization?
The question isn’t whether you have donors. It’s whether they feel they belong.
💡 Pure Charity’s Fundraisers features can be used to track specific segments and campaigns to provide insight into differences in generational giving to your nonprofit.
Bottom Line
This week’s takeaway: The fundamentals favor you — public trust in nonprofits remains strong but the environment around you is shifting. Institutional funding streams are being redrawn, communication channels are maturing, and the organizations that thrive will be the ones that pair earned trust with sharper data, stronger funder relationships, and diversified revenue.
Three actions for this week:
- Run a transparency check. Pull up your website and your last three donor communications. Can a first-time visitor quickly see what you accomplished and where the money went? Fix the gaps.
- Assess your revenue concentration. List your top five funding sources by percentage of budget. If any single source — or single funder type — exceeds a third of revenue, start a diversification conversation with your board.
- Pick one relationship to build. Identify a funder, peer organization, or network you’ve been meaning to connect with and send the email today. Access compounds over time; start now.
💡 Pure Charity can support your 2026 Fundraising Strategies.
Stories of Good
When immigrant youth looked at what families facing deportation needed most, the answer was clear: lawyers. So instead of waiting for someone else to act, they built a $15 million legal defense fund themselves and in the process, created a new model for rapid-response philanthropy.
What makes this story remarkable isn’t just the number, though $15 million raised by a youth-led effort would be notable on its own. It’s the design. The people closest to the need identified the single highest-leverage intervention, built infrastructure to deliver it quickly, and proved that rapid-response giving can work at scale for time-sensitive needs.
The Lesson: Proximity is a fundraising superpower. The people closest to a problem often see the solution most clearly — and donors respond when lived experience, urgency, and a specific, tangible intervention come together. Don’t over-engineer your case for support. Name the need, name the fix, and move fast.