State of Good for August 31, 2026
Weekly insights on donor behavior, industry trends, and what’s shaping generosity
⏱️ 9 minutes | Once a week
This Week's State of Good
Some weeks the news cycle hands us breaking developments. Other weeks, like this one, it hands us something more valuable: perspective. This week’s stories ask us to zoom out, to look at fifteen years of sector evolution, to question tools we’ve taken for granted, and to consider what generosity looks like when a business owner thinks beyond the sale price. Let’s dig in.
Fifteen Years of Philanthropy: What Actually Changed and What It Means for Your Next Ask
The Chronicle of Philanthropy published a retrospective this week looking back on 15 years of giving and what has changed and if you’ve been in this work for even half that time, the throughline will feel familiar. The sector has shifted, sometimes slowly and sometimes suddenly, and the organizations that adapted are the ones still thriving.
The headline trend: the rise of general operating support. Fifteen years ago, unrestricted funding was the exception something you earned after years of relationship-building, if you got it at all. Restricted, project-based grants were the default, and nonprofits built entire budgeting and reporting infrastructures around chasing them.
Today, that default is changing. More funders and donors are recognizing that organizations closest to the work are often best positioned to decide how dollars get deployed. General operating support has moved from the margins toward the mainstream of funder conversations a shift that reflects growing trust between donors and the organizations they support.
Why does this matter for you? Because how you ask should evolve alongside how donors give. Many organizations are still pitching narrowly scoped projects to funders who have already signaled openness to broader support. That’s a mismatch and it leaves flexibility (and often dollars) on the table.
The Chronicle’s retrospective also names something we don’t talk about enough: the risk of inaction. Over a 15-year window, the organizations that struggled most weren’t necessarily the ones that made bad bets — they were often the ones that made no bets at all. Waiting for the landscape to settle back into a familiar shape is itself a strategy, and historically it hasn’t been a winning one. Donor expectations, giving vehicles, and communication channels have all moved. Standing still while they move is, functionally, moving backward.
What This Means for You:
- Audit your current asks. How many of your active proposals and appeals request restricted funding by default? Identify two or three funder relationships where an unrestricted or flexible-funding conversation is now realistic and start it.
- Build the case for operating support. Donors who give unrestricted dollars are expressing trust in your leadership. Reward that trust with clear reporting on outcomes, not just line items. Show them what flexibility made possible.
- Name your “inaction risks” explicitly. In your next leadership or board meeting, ask: What are we not doing because it feels safer to wait? Put those items on paper. Some will deserve to stay parked. Others won’t.
- Use the long view in donor conversations. Longtime supporters have watched your organization evolve alongside the sector. A “here’s how far we’ve come together” narrative is one of the most underused retention tools in fundraising and a 15-year sector retrospective is a natural hook for it.
The Long View as a Fundraising Discipline
One more thought on this before we move on. Retrospectives like this one are easy to skim and file away, but there’s a practical discipline hiding in them: the organizations that navigated the last fifteen years well were reading trend lines early, not reacting to them late.
The shift toward general operating support didn’t happen overnight, it built gradually through funder conversations, sector research, and peer influence. The fundraisers who noticed the early signals adjusted their proposals, their donor communications, and their board conversations before the shift became conventional wisdom. The ones who waited for it to become obvious spent years playing catch-up.
What This Means for You:
- Schedule a quarterly “trend review” with your development team. What are funders asking about that they weren’t asking about a year ago? What language is showing up in RFPs and donor conversations? Small signals compound.
- Ask your longest-tenured donors what’s changed in how they think about giving. They’re living the trends the retrospectives eventually document and they’ll tell you if you ask.
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Why Donors Give?
Do charity ratings actually change how donors give? It’s a question worth asking, because an enormous amount of nonprofit energy goes into managing those scores.
New research out of Syracuse University takes a serious swing at the answer. The study analyzed a five-year panel dataset of over one million nonprofit-year records from GuideStar (2014–2018) to examine whether nonprofit rating systems help donors make better decisions.
Here’s the psychology underneath the question: ratings exist because giving involves uncertainty, and donors (like all of us) look for shortcuts to reduce it. A seal, a star count, a transparency badge functions as a trust signal. It doesn’t replace the donor’s decision; it lowers the perceived risk of making it.
But trust signals work differently for different donors. Research like this matters because it pushes us past the assumption that a better rating automatically means more dollars. For many donors, a rating is a screen, not a driver it gets you past the first cut, but it doesn’t inspire the gift. Inspiration still comes from mission, story, and relationship. The rating just keeps doubt from getting in the way.
Try This:
- Treat ratings as table stakes, not strategy. Keep your GuideStar/Candid profile current and complete then invest your real energy in storytelling and stewardship.
- Pair trust signals with emotion. Place your seals and badges near your donation button, where doubt peaks not at the center of your appeal, where inspiration should live.
- Reduce uncertainty in your own voice. A plain-language line like “Here’s exactly what your gift does” often builds more confidence than any third-party score.
- Ask new donors what convinced them. A two-question survey will tell you whether ratings, referrals, or stories actually drove their decision and where to invest next.
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Bottom Line
This week’s takeaway: The long view wins. Donor preferences, funding structures, and trust signals all evolve — usually gradually, occasionally suddenly — and the organizations that read those shifts early consistently outperform the ones that wait for certainty. Your job this week isn’t to overhaul your program. It’s to make sure you’re not operating on assumptions the sector has already moved past.
Three actions for this week:
- Review your default asks. Identify at least two funder or donor relationships where a conversation about flexible or unrestricted support is now appropriate — and put those conversations on the calendar.
- Audit your trust signals. Check that your public profiles are current and complete, then make sure your donation page pairs credibility markers with a compelling, plain-language case for the gift.
- Name one “inaction risk.” With your team, identify one thing you’ve been postponing because waiting feels safer — and decide, deliberately, whether it stays parked or moves forward.
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Stories of Good
When most business owners reach the end of their run, the playbook is simple: sell the company, take the proceeds, maybe give some away. One owner tore up that playbook entirely.
Instead of selling, this business owner donated the entire company to a charitable trust, as reported by PBS NewsHour. Rather than converting decades of work into a one-time windfall, the owner turned an operating business into a permanent engine for generosity a company whose ongoing success now funds charitable work indefinitely.
It’s a striking reminder that major gifts don’t always look like checks. For business owners, the most meaningful asset they hold often isn’t cash it’s the enterprise itself. And structures like charitable trusts can transform that asset into giving that outlasts any single transaction, or any single lifetime.
The Lesson: Some of your most transformational donors aren’t thinking about what to give they’re thinking about what to do with what they’ve built. If your donor conversations only cover cash and stock, you may be missing the biggest gift in the room. Learn the vehicles, ask bigger questions, and give business owners a vision worthy of their life’s work.