New Donor Giving Behavior Report

Here’s what we’re seeing:

Donors, can’t live with ‘em, can’t live without ‘em! Have you heard? Their behavior is changing.

Oh, they’re still giving, just not necessarily to their schools, churches, shelters, or healthcare organizations like they used to.

Surveys reveal that philanthropy is still important to them and that they still intend to give and volunteer. However, what we’ve learned, because they’ve told us as much,  is that they aren’t as tied in to being loyal in their giving as they used to be.

Specifically, here’s what I’m seeing as we begin the last quarter of 2025. Younger donors are more interested in values-based giving opportunities and less interested in giving to loyalty-based giving, such as traditional unrestricted funds which require donors to have a high level of trust with the institution or its leaders. In fact, younger generations of donors are showing us that they do not inherently trust the organizations they support—at least not to the extent that we thought they did previously.

Our suggestion: There needs to be a much greater focus on the donor journey.

Here are two ways to get that done:

1. Focus on giving through, not to, your organization. Focus on the impact a gift will have in the community, region, or world rather than the impact it will have on your nonprofit. It is very important that you help your donors see/experience impact beyond the walls of the school, hospital, shelter you work for.

2. Consider the first 3-6 gifts a donor makes as trust-building exercises. In other words, the opportunity to re-assure new donors that their gifts are being used and stewarded as they would hope. In the long run, this could prove to be invaluable. Once you have established a trusting donor relationship, then work to move donors to unrestricted asks when there is greater freedom and trust in place.