The nonprofit sector has spent much of the past year bracing for a donor retreat. The data tells a different story.
Active donors (who have given within the past 12 months) remain deeply committed to the organizations they support, with 95% saying they trust the nonprofits they donate to with their funds and 97% agreeing those organizations are aligned with their values. The findings cut against a narrative of sector-wide erosion that has dominated recent industry commentary.
The Harris Poll surveyed 1,003 donors and 405 fundraising decision-makers across the US in March, with the donor sample weighted by age, gender, race and ethnicity, region, and household income to reflect national demographics.
What the research shows in a report from fundraising software firm Bloomerang is less a crisis of confidence than a crisis of execution — and for financial advisors whose clients include active philanthropists, the gap between donor intent and completed gifts has direct implications for charitable planning conversations.
The numbers on motivation reframe how donors think about their own generosity. When asked why they give, respondents ranked purpose and identity far above financial capacity. Ninety-six percent said wanting to make a difference motivates their charitable activity, and 92% said giving is simply part of who they are. Only 68% cited having disposable income as a meaningful driver.
The implication is that philanthropic conversations anchored in tax efficiency alone may be missing the emotional architecture that actually drives giving decisions.
Clarity about where money goes is the single largest conversion factor the report identifies. Ninety-four percent of donors said they are more likely to act when a nonprofit tells them precisely where their contribution will be directed, and 90% cited impact communication as a key motivator. Vague appeals to organizational mission move donors significantly less than specific, tangible breakdowns of what a given amount accomplishes.
One of the report's more pointed arguments concerns how the sector, and by extension the advisory community, thinks about generational wealth and giving. Millennials are routinely framed as a philanthropic constituency to cultivate for the future, once inherited wealth arrives. The data suggests that framing is already out of date.
Seventy-five percent of Millennial respondents said they expect to increase their giving this year compared with the prior year, against 49% of Gen X and 36% of Baby Boomers. Eighty percent said they plan to give to at least one organization they have never previously supported — more than double the rate among Baby Boomers. And 42% reported having already used a donor-advised fund or similar tax-advantaged vehicle, a share substantially higher than older cohorts and a figure that will be relevant to advisors tracking DAF adoption across their client base.
Ninety-seven percent of Millennial donors said feeling like part of something motivates their giving, compared with 86% and 87% for Gen X and Baby Boomers respectively.
For first-time donors specifically, 46% of Millennials named that sense of belonging as a top-three motivator; a figure that drops to 28% when the same donors consider giving again to an organization they already know. Belonging, in other words, is particularly potent as an entry point into philanthropic relationships, not just a retention mechanism.
The report's findings on donor-advised funds point to a knowledge deficit that sits squarely within the advisory relationship.
While 64% of nonprofit organizations said they are prioritizing DAF giving as part of their fundraising strategy, 12% of donors said they were unsure whether they had even made a DAF gift in the past year. Twenty-nine percent were uncertain whether they intended to use a DAF in the coming year.
Millennial donors are by far the most active users among the generations surveyed, with 42% having made a DAF gift in the past 12 months and 55% expressing interest in doing so in the year ahead. Among Baby Boomers those figures were 10% and 14% respectively — a gap that suggests the vehicle's growth is being driven by younger donors who may have encountered it through platforms or peer networks rather than formal financial planning conversations.
The distance between institutional enthusiasm for DAFs and donor-level comprehension of the vehicle is wide enough that advisors who can close it, explaining the mechanics clearly and connecting the tax timing to a client's existing philanthropic intent, are adding value that the charitable sector itself has not yet systematically delivered.
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