Fewer Donors Are Giving to Nonprofits — And Trust May Not Be the Problem

Why fewer donors are giving to nonprofits is becoming a central question as participation declines.

But the explanation may not be as straightforward as it seems. Even as fewer people give, Americans continue to express confidence in nonprofits, raising a more complicated question: If trust remains strong, why are fewer people participating?

The answer may have less to do with trust and more to do with how nonprofits are engaging potential supporters.

Trust Isn’t the Problem

Research continues to show that nonprofits remain among the most trusted institutions in American life.

Una Osili, philanthropy chair and professor at the Indiana University Lilly Family School of Philanthropy and executive director of philanthropy, strategy, and operations at Eli Lilly and Company Foundation, serves on the board at the international humanitarian nonprofit CARE. Despite turmoil across the nonprofit sector last year, CARE pivoted and collaborated with other nonprofits like Save the Children and Mercy Corps  — reducing costs, gaining efficiencies and building more trust among donors. As a result, CARE increased its fundraising last year. 

“Nonprofits, in a time when Americans need something to believe in, where there's not as much to be optimistic about the work that you all do in your organizations, can be that hope and resilience in communities around the country,” Osili said during her session at the 2026 Nonprofit Fundraisers Symposium.

However, nonprofits have to be intentional to nurture that trust because it doesn't automatically translate into engagement.

“Many people don’t know a lot about what happens in the nonprofit sector, in the foundation sector, or even the corporate foundation sector,” she said. “So there is another opportunity here, and that is actually to do a better job of communicating our impact with our audiences.”

Why Relevance and Connection Matter

At the household level, giving remains a common behavior in many American households. Donor households contribute about $2,500 annually, but participation has declined significantly. The share of households giving has fallen from roughly two-thirds in the 1990s to below half today — a drop that has yet to recover since the Great Recession.

The decline reflects participation, not a collapse in generosity. If trust remains strong but participation continues to fall, the issue may not be confidence — but connection.

“I actually don't think we have a trust problem in the nonprofit sector in the U.S.,” Woodrow Rosenbaum, chief data officer at GivingTuesday, said. “I think we have a relevance problem.”

That distinction reframes the challenge. Fewer people are giving, not because they don’t care, but because they don’t feel connected. Rosenbaum pointed to a long-term trend in which total dollars increase while the number of donors shrinks — a dynamic that concentrates giving among fewer, typically wealthier, individuals and weakens the sector’s long-term resilience.

Importantly, he cautioned against treating those trends as external forces beyond the sector’s control.

“That's not a weather report,” Rosenbaum said of last year’s giving trends report. “It's our report card. It's not what happened to us. This is what we accomplished. There are many externalities. There are many suppressing factors. It's a complicated, challenging environment. Nevertheless, it is also really clear that we can do something about this.”

Where Nonprofits Are Missing the Mark

Rosenbaum suggested the sector’s own strategies may be narrowing participation. As organizations focus more heavily on major donors, they risk overlooking a broader base of supporters who are willing to engage but are not being asked.

“There is a growing population of Americans who are simply not being invited to be part of supporting nonprofits,” he said. 

That invitation gap means nonprofits are not just missing dollars — they’re missing relationships.

“We don't want all the decision-making, the priorities to be increasingly decided by a shrinking pool of high-value donors,” Rosenbaum said. “And this doesn't mean abandoned large donor stewardship at all, but it does mean we can't continue to prioritize large donor stewardship at the expense of broader engagement because we can't afford to continue to undermine that foundation.”

Rosenbaum also pointed to structural gaps in how nonprofits approach fundraising. Many organizations still rely heavily on year-end campaigns, leaving long stretches of the year underutilized — even though donors are just as likely to respond outside traditional giving seasons. That alone could create $23 billion in new funding.

Additionally, recurring giving remains underleveraged, despite its potential to strengthen retention and build more stable, long-term support. Rosenbaum noted that just 2% of new gifts are recurring, adding that even a modest 5% increase could generate $10 billion in funding, while a 10% increase could result in $20 billion.

“Adding 10% is absolutely doable,” he said. “Not only would that be 20 billion more dollars a year into nonprofits, the retention rate on those donors is so much higher. We get to build on a bigger and bigger base — making recurring a higher strategic priority has an enormous potential to reverse the negative trends.” 

Finally, overemphasizing major donors at the expense of everyday givers has created a self-reinforcing cycle. While large gifts continue to drive revenue, Rosenbaum noted that prioritizing those donors alone can limit participation and narrow the base of support. By engaging donors who have traditionally been undervalued and left out, he estimates nonprofits could unlock between $19 billion and $46 billion annually. 

“This is the most important one,” he said. “It's also the most complicated. We have to find these people at scale. We have to be relevant. But the first step is recognizing that the opportunity exists and caring enough that we are going to make that invitation, that we are going to start the process of finding and engaging these people.”

The Opportunity Ahead

If the sector’s challenge is relevance, not trust, then the opportunity isn’t to rebuild confidence — it’s to redesign how people participate.

With an estimated $128 trillion set to transfer between generations — as older donors reach peak giving years and younger donors gain financial capacity — expectations around engagement are shifting to what Osili calls “all-in giving.”

“People don't just want to write a check anymore,” Osili said. “They want to volunteer. They want to advocate, so provide a range of opportunities.”

That shift, Osili said, creates an opening for nonprofits to rethink how they engage donors — and how they position their work in a changing landscape.

“Nonprofits — in a time when Americans need something to believe in, where there's not as much to be optimistic about the work that you all do in your organizations — can be that hope and resilience in communities around the country,” she said.