State of Good for Feb 2, 2026

by | Feb 2, 2026

Weekly insights on donor behavior, industry trends, and what’s shaping generosity
⏱️ 4 minutes | Once a week

Donors & Industry Indicators

The Great Giving Concentration: Why Your Major Gift Strategy Needs Attention

The fundraising landscape is reshaping itself. According to GivingTuesday’s analysis, the 2025 year-end giving season revealed a stark pattern: “The largest gifts were coming from smaller groups of people. At the same time, smaller, transactional annual gifts were more uneven than in years past.”

This doesn’t appear to be a temporary blip, it could be a structural shift that demands your attention. While grassroots donations are showing decline in early 2026, major donors are consolidating their influence on nonprofit revenue streams.

What This Means for You:

  • Your major gift fundraising efforts need more resources and support than ever before
  • Consider reallocating budget from new broad acquisition campaigns to deeper donor cultivation and donor retention
  • Build contingency plans for irregular annual giving patterns, the predictability of small-dollar donations is very relevant but also changing.

💡 Pure Charity’s Fundraisers Features support recurring donor programs that support deeper donor cultivation & giving.

Volunteerism Surges While Giving Stalls: The Engagement Paradox

Here’s a puzzling dynamic: Gallup finds that volunteerism has rebounded to pre-pandemic levels, but charitable giving participation hasn’t followed the same recovery path. People are showing up with their time but not their wallets.

This divergence creates both challenge and opportunity. With consumer sentiment climbing to 52.9 (up 3.7%) and unemployment dropping to 4.4%, the economic headwinds may be easing. Yet personal savings rates have fallen to just 3.5%, suggesting donors feel financially constrained despite improving conditions.

What This Means for You:

  • Design volunteer experiences that naturally lead to giving conversations
  • Create “volunteer-to-donor” journey maps with specific touchpoints
  • Leverage increased volunteer availability for peer-to-peer fundraising campaigns

💡 Pure Charity’s Fundraisers Features make it easy to empower people to begin peer-to-peer campaigns and fundraise for your organization.

One-Third of Nonprofits Reducing Services: The Sector’s Reality Check

The Center for Effective Philanthropy’s new study delivers sobering news: nearly one-third of nonprofit leaders report their organizations had to reduce services. This operational squeeze hits just as donor patterns become more concentrated and unpredictable.

Combined with the concentration of giving among fewer donors, this creates a two-sided pressure: reduced capacity to deliver services while facing more complex fundraising requirements. Organizations caught in the middle, neither large enough to attract major donors nor nimble enough to pivot quickly, face the greatest challenges.

What This Means for You:

  • Audit your service/program costs and identify what’s truly essential
  • Consider strategic community partnerships to maintain service levels with reduced resources
  • Communicate service impacts transparently to donors, they need to understand the stakes

Why Donors Give?

 

Why Donors Give: Generational Differences

The Setup: New research from The Chicago Community Trust reveals that community connection ranks as the primary motivation for giving among major donors, followed by “feeling that those who have more” should give back.

Meanwhile, Inside Philanthropy notes that while government funding remains the main source for development work, private philanthropy’s role is both growing and changing.

The Psychology: Wealthy donors increasingly view their giving through a community lens rather than a purely charitable one. They’re not just writing checks – they’re investing in the places and causes that shape their own lives and identities.

Try This:

  • Frame your ask around shared community outcomes, not organizational needs
  • Create giving circles that connect donors with similar community ties
  • Highlight how private philanthropy fills gaps that government funding can’t address
  • Design donor experiences that reinforce their sense of local ownership and impact

What's Changing?

Workplace Giving Pivots to Domestic Priorities

The landscape of corporate philanthropy shifted dramatically in 2025. Benevity’s data reveals that employees pivoted from international aid to domestic emergency response as their primary giving focus through workplace programs.

Why It Matters: This shift reflects broader donor sentiment about focusing resources closer to home during uncertain times. International development organizations may find workplace giving campaigns less productive, while domestic emergency response groups could see unexpected windfalls.

Your Move:

  • For domestic organizations: Update workplace giving materials to emphasize local emergency response capabilities
  • For international groups: Evaluate your workplace giving programs to track giving patterns and focus on donor retention and acknowledgement activities (also, consider if there are opportunities to partner with domestic organizations).
  • For all nonprofits: Audit your corporate partnerships and adjust messaging to align with this evolving domestic focus

Federal Regulations Create New Compliance Landscape

The regulatory environment for nonprofits underwent significant changes throughout 2025, with new executive orders and IRS enforcement updates creating additional compliance requirements. The IRS has adjusted its enforcement posture, with particular attention to criminal compliance considerations.

Why It Matters: These regulatory shifts arrive just as nonprofits face operational constraints and service reductions. The additional compliance burden could strain already limited administrative resources, particularly for mid-sized organizations without dedicated compliance staff.

Your Move:

  • Immediate action: Schedule a compliance audit with qualified legal counsel
  • Budget consideration: Allocate resources for potential compliance infrastructure upgrades
  • Risk management: Review donor agreements and operational procedures for regulatory alignment

Bottom Line

This week’s takeaway:

The concentration of giving among fewer donors isn’t a trend, it’s a new reality. Organizations that adapt their strategies to cultivate deeper relationships with major donors while creatively engaging volunteers should find opportunities for increased fundraising. Those relying solely on broad-based giving to return to historical patterns will struggle; however, donor retention focus is an effective investment to maintain and increase recurring donor programs.

Three actions for this week:

  1. Calculate what percentage of your revenue comes from your top 20 donors. If it’s over 50%, you may need additional focus on major donor relationships and planned giving immediately.
  2. Design one specific volunteer experiences that could convert participants to donors
  3. Review your compliance procedures in light of new IRS enforcement priorities

💡 Pure Charity can support your 2026 Fundraising Strategies.  Reach out, and we can discuss.

Good In Action

The Knights of Columbus just proved that faith-based giving remains a powerful force, reporting record-breaking charitable contributions of $197 million and 48 million volunteer hours for 2024-2025.

But here’s what makes this story remarkable: they achieved these records not through flashy campaigns or viral moments, but through consistent, local engagement by their members worldwide.

Meanwhile, the University of Arkansas at Little Rock discovered the secret to internal campaign success: faculty leadership. Nine departments coordinated efforts in a faculty-led campaign that set new records for both participation and giving in 2025.

The Lesson:

Whether you’re mobilizing a global faith community or a university campus, the formula remains constant, engaged leadership plus local ownership equals exponential impact. Your next breakthrough campaign might not need a bigger budget, just better buy-in from the people closest to your mission.

💡 Have a Good In Action story that you would like to share?  Respond to this email and share the details.