State of Good for Nov 2, 2026

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

Welcome back. This week’s brief covers a sector in transition: donor counts are moving in one direction while dollars move in another, small organizations are recalibrating after federal funding shifts, and the way new donors discover nonprofits is changing faster than most acquisition strategies. Let’s get into it.

More Dollars, Fewer Donors: The Concentration Trend Continues

The Fundraising Effectiveness Project released its latest report, and the headline confirms what many of you are seeing in your own databases: total donation dollars are increasing while the number of active donors continues to decline (AFP Global).

In practical terms, revenue growth is being driven by fewer, higher-capacity donors. That’s good news for this year’s budget. It’s a strategic consideration for the next five.

Here’s why this matters beyond the obvious. When revenue concentrates among a smaller pool of donors, two things happen. First, your organization’s revenue becomes more sensitive to the decisions of individual households — one lapsed major donor can swing a budget line that used to be absorbed by hundreds of smaller gifts. Second, your pipeline thins. Today’s $50 donor is tomorrow’s $5,000 donor and, eventually, a planned gift. A shrinking donor base means a shrinking pipeline, even when the top line looks healthy.

The FEP data also functions as a sector-wide benchmark, which is where the real value sits for most of you. Pull your own retention and acquisition numbers and compare them against the trend lines. If your donor count is declining faster than the sector average, that’s a signal worth acting on now rather than in next year’s planning cycle.

What This Means for You:

• Run your donor count trend for the last three years, separate from your revenue trend. If they’re diverging, name that explicitly in your next board report.
• Protect acquisition budgets even when major gift revenue is strong. The temptation to cut acquisition when revenue is up is exactly how pipelines hollow out.
• Build a mid-level program if you don’t have one. The gap between $100 donors and major donors is where tomorrow’s concentration risk gets solved.

Small Organizations, Large Impact: The Federal Funding Picture

New Urban Institute research, reported by the Chronicle of Philanthropy, puts hard numbers on federal funding changes: small charities lost a median 28% of their budgets due to federal cuts (Chronicle of Philanthropy).

The nuance in the data is worth sitting with. Larger nonprofits were more likely to experience federal disruptions — they hold more government contracts, after all — but smaller organizations felt the impact far more intensely relative to their size. A large institution can absorb the loss of one funding stream. For a small organization, a 28% budget reduction touches staffing, programs, and in some cases, viability.

For fundraisers at small and mid-sized organizations, this shifts the conversation with private donors. Many of your supporters don’t know what portion of your budget came from government sources, or what’s changed. This is a moment for transparency, not alarm: donors consistently respond to clear, specific explanations of what’s changed and what their gift now makes possible.

For funders and larger organizations, the data points to where the sector’s pressure is concentrated — and where partnership, capacity support, and collaborative funding conversations may matter most in 2027 planning.

What This Means for You:

• If government funding was part of your budget, brief your top donors on the specifics before year-end. Donors fill gaps they can see; they can’t fill gaps they don’t know exist.
• Reframe the ask around continuity: “Here’s what we’re protecting” lands better than a generic appeal.
• If you’re a larger organization or funder, consider how this data informs your grantmaking or coalition conversations with smaller peers in your issue area.

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Where New Donors Are Actually Coming From

Two pieces of research this week tell one connected story about donor discovery — and it’s worth reading them together.

First, a new study covered by The NonProfit Times finds that first-time donors are increasingly arriving through social channels, with GoFundMe reporting that nonprofit donor counts grew nearly 10% from July 2025 through June 2026 (NonProfit Times). Peer-to-peer and social fundraising platforms aren’t a side channel anymore — for a growing share of first-time givers, they’re the front door.

Second, Stanford Social Innovation Review examines what it calls the “nonprofit visibility gap,” drawing on M+R’s 2026 Benchmarks Study of 180 nonprofits to show that organic search reach is declining as AI-driven search surfaces narrower result sets (SSIR). The key insight: a motivated donor scrolling quickly through a narrow list isn’t exploring. If your organization isn’t in that short list, you may never enter the consideration set at all.

Put these together and the acquisition map redraws itself. The channel many nonprofits have quietly relied on for discovery — organic search — is narrowing, while social and peer-to-peer channels are expanding as entry points. The organizations that adapt fastest won’t be the ones with the biggest budgets; they’ll be the ones that move their discovery strategy to where donors actually are.

One practical note on the search shift: narrower results mean the organizations that do appear benefit disproportionately. Structured content, clear answers to common donor questions, and authoritative, up-to-date pages matter more than ever — not less.

What This Means for You:

• Audit your acquisition sources. If you can’t say what percentage of your new donors came from social, search, referral, or direct, start tracking this month.
• Invest in peer-to-peer infrastructure. Your supporters’ networks are now a primary discovery channel for first-time donors — make it easy for them to fundraise on your behalf.
• Review how your organization appears in AI-assisted search. Ask the questions a prospective donor would ask and see whether you show up. If you don’t, prioritize clear, well-structured content that directly answers those questions.
• Don’t abandon search — diversify around it. Treat organic search as one channel among several rather than the foundation of acquisition.

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This week’s takeaway: The fundamentals of where donors come from and how revenue is composed are both shifting at the same time. Revenue health and donor-base health are no longer the same metric, and the channels where new supporters discover you are rearranging themselves. The organizations that thrive through this transition will be the ones that measure both, communicate changes transparently, and meet new donors where discovery actually happens.

Three actions for this week:

1. Separate your donor count from your revenue in reporting. Chart both for your leadership and board — if they’re moving in different directions, make that visible now.
2. Audit your new-donor sources. Know exactly which channels brought in your first-time donors this year, and shift at least one test investment toward where discovery is growing.
3. Rewrite one appeal for tangibility. Take your weakest-performing year-end message and replace every abstract impact statement with a specific, concrete one.

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The University of Arizona just closed the most successful capital campaign in its history — and one of the most successful in higher education. The “Rising Tide 2.0” campaign surpassed $2.1 billion in charitable commitments (University of Arizona).

In a season where many fundraisers are navigating uncertainty, a result like this is a useful reminder: donor capacity and donor willingness are both very much alive. Campaigns of this scale don’t happen by accident. They happen through years of relationship building, a clear and ambitious vision, and the confidence to ask for commitments that match the mission’s scale.

You don’t need a billion-dollar goal to apply the principle. Donors rise to the vision they’re offered.

The Lesson: Ambitious, well-prepared asks don’t scare donors away — they signal that your organization believes in its own future. Set the goal that matches your mission, not the one that feels safe.