State of Good Report for July 27, 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 noise. This week it handed us signal. New research on how nonprofits are actually raising money, fresh polling on how the public sees us, and legislative movement in Washington that deserves a spot on your board’s radar. Let’s get into it.
The Fundraising Playbook Is Shifting Under Our Feet
The 2025 Nonprofit Fundraising Study landed with findings that will feel familiar to anyone who’s sat through a development committee meeting lately: donor acquisition is getting harder, planning remains inconsistent across organizations, and digital giving patterns are moving away from the traditional year-end campaign model.
That last point deserves your attention. For decades, the December surge has been the load-bearing wall of nonprofit revenue models. This research suggests donors are increasingly giving throughout the year, through digital channels, on their own timelines and not ours.
I’ve seen this play out across thousands of campaigns. The organizations struggling most right now are the ones running the same calendar they ran in 2015: quiet spring, summer lull, fall ramp-up, December sprint. The organizations gaining ground treat giving as a year-round conversation and meet donors where the digital behavior already is.
The acquisition challenge compounds this. When new donors are harder to find, the cost of losing existing ones goes up. Retention isn’t a nice-to-have metric anymore, it’s the whole ballgame for many shops.
What This Means for You:
- Audit your revenue calendar. If more than half your individual giving arrives in Q4, you have a concentration risk worth diversifying.
- Build at least two non-December giving moments into your annual plan: a spring campaign, a giving day, a mid-year impact report with a soft ask.
- Treat “inconsistent planning” as the fixable problem it is. A simple 12-month fundraising calendar, reviewed quarterly, puts you ahead of a surprising share of the field.
- Shift acquisition dollars toward retention if your donor file is shrinking. Keeping a donor is almost always cheaper than replacing one.
The Public Still Trusts Us & That’s an Asset Worth Managing
Independent Sector released new national polling this week showing 56% of Americans highly trust nonprofits, while trust in government and corporations remains much lower (Independent Sector).
Read that again in the context of everything else happening in public life. At a moment when confidence in most major institutions is soft, a majority of Americans still place high trust in nonprofit organizations. That is a genuine competitive advantage and one that most organizations never explicitly leverage in their fundraising.
Trust is the precondition for giving. Before a donor asks “is this cause worthy?” they ask “will this organization actually do what it says?” The sector-wide answer, for now, is yes. But sector-wide trust is a shared resource. Every organization that communicates transparently strengthens it; every organization that goes quiet on impact reporting quietly draws it down.
What This Means for You:
- Make trust-building an explicit communications goal, not a byproduct. Show your work: outcomes, financials, and honest accounts of what didn’t go as planned.
- Use third-party validation (audited financials, charity ratings, community testimonials) prominently in appeals and on your donation page.
- Don’t assume donors know you’re trustworthy. Tell them why, specifically, with evidence.
Washington Watch: Nonprofit Bills Move Through Committee
A House committee advanced a package of nonprofit-related bills this week in a contentious, partisan markup session (Independent Sector).
I won’t speculate on where these bills land, committee action is an early step, and the legislative path from markup to law is long and uncertain. But the practical takeaway for nonprofit leaders is straightforward: the regulatory and tax environment for our sector is actively in play, and the process is moving through channels where sector voices can still be heard.
Whatever your organization’s mission, changes to nonprofit tax treatment, reporting requirements, or operational rules affect your planning horizon. This is a “monitor and prepare” moment, not a “panic” moment.
What This Means for You:
- Add a standing legislative-update item to your next board agenda. Boards hate surprises; brief them early.
- Subscribe to sector policy updates from Independent Sector, the National Council of Nonprofits, or your state association so you’re not relying on secondhand summaries.
- If your organization does any advocacy within legal limits, know that committee-stage legislation is precisely when constituent input matters most.
- Scenario-plan lightly: if giving incentives or compliance requirements shifted, what would change in your budget? A one-page answer now beats a scramble later.
Why Donors Give?
Here’s a puzzle from this week’s data: Americans trust nonprofit organizations, but trust in philanthropy overall sits at just 29%, down four points from last year and a full 27 points below trust in nonprofits themselves (The NonProfit Times).
How can the public trust the organizations but not the enterprise of giving?
The answer, according to the research, is perceived motive. The survey found that nonprofits’ perceived independence from profit motives drives their stronger trust standing. When people believe an organization exists to serve a mission rather than an interest, confidence follows. When giving feels entangled with other agendas like commercial, personal, reputational, skepticism rises.
This is a foundational insight from psychology: humans are motive-detectors. We don’t just evaluate what someone does; we constantly evaluate why they’re doing it. Donors extend that same scrutiny to us. Every appeal, every event, every corporate partnership gets run through the donor’s internal question: “Who really benefits here?”
Try This:
- Lead with mission, not machinery. Frame every ask around who is served, and make the beneficiary — not the institution — the hero of the story.
- Be transparent about partnerships. If a sponsor benefits from association with your cause, say so plainly; disclosed motives read as honest, hidden ones read as suspect.
- Show donors where the money goes with specificity. “Your $50 provides X” answers the motive question before it’s asked.
- Audit your appeals for institutional self-interest language (“help us grow,” “support our organization”) and replace it with mission language.
Your organization likely enjoys more trust than “philanthropy” as an abstraction. Earn it in every message.
💡 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 are moving — how donors give, when they give, why they trust, and the rules we operate under. None of it is cause for alarm, but all of it rewards organizations that plan deliberately instead of running last year’s playbook on autopilot. Your greatest assets right now are donor trust and a clear-eyed annual plan. Invest in both.
Three actions for this week:
- Map your revenue by month. Identify your concentration risk and pick one new giving moment to build outside of Q4.
- Add one trust signal to your donation page — an outcome stat, a financial transparency link, or a third-party rating — before your next appeal goes out.
- Brief your board on the policy landscape. A five-minute standing update keeps leadership prepared and positions your organization to respond, not react.
💡 Pure Charity can support your 2026 Fundraising Strategies.
Stories of Good
Sometimes the best fundraising story isn’t about one organization, it’s about an entire state pulling in the same direction.
The Utah Nonprofits Association released its UTAHGIVES 2026 report, documenting the results of its statewide giving campaign. What stands out isn’t just the outcome, it’s how they got there. The campaign’s success was built on collaboration among nonprofit leaders, community partners, and volunteers, all rallying around a shared moment rather than competing for attention.
Having helped build regional giving days myself, I can tell you this is harder than it looks. Every participating organization has to believe that a rising tide lifts all boats, and then behave that way. Utah’s nonprofit community did, and the results speak for themselves.
The Lesson: Collaborative campaigns work because they change the question donors are asked, from “will you support us?” to “will you support your community?” If your region doesn’t have a giving day, you might be the one to start the conversation. If it does, show up fully. Shared moments create momentum no single organization can generate alone.