It’s the dog days of summer, and I hope you are surviving the heat waves without melting.
It’s also that time of year to review donors flagged “mail only,” “digital only,” “newsletter only,” etc. For those who are now lapsed, it’s especially important to rethink that flag.
Between new benchmarks dropping and an economic backdrop that keeps everyone on their toes, July gave us a lot to chew on in the fundraising world. This month’s group of articles covers donor behavior, AI, search, creator marketing, payment methods, and the economy.
Through it all, one thing remains constant: fundraisers will continue to innovate, adapt, and find new ways to connect donors with the causes they love. There's no shortage of ideas to consider as you head into fall planning.
Pour your favorite beverage, grab your lunch or a snack, prepare to kick up your feet and get comfortable. Let's dive into this month's highlights, insights, and studies.
The Fundraising Effectiveness Project's Q1 2026 results are in, and the headline tells a story that is becoming increasingly familiar: dollars are up, but donors are down. Total dollars raised grew 4.3% year over year—ahead of the typical organization's 3.2% gain—but the total donor count fell 0.8%, while the typical org held flat. The good news is that retention is essentially holding, a meaningful stabilization after years of steeper drops.
The data by donor size tells the real story: micro donors ($1-$100), who make up 57% of all donors, declined 2.5% in both count and dollars. Meanwhile, the top of the pyramid is carrying more and more weight. Supersize donors ($50K+), who represent just 0.3% of donors, now account for 46.9% of all dollars raised—and their dollars grew 5.8%. Major donors ($5K-$50K) grew 4.2% in count and 4.3% in dollars.
The sector is becoming increasingly top-heavy, with small donor acquisition eroding and large donors driving nearly all revenue growth. For your team, this reinforces two priorities heading into fall: protecting and deepening relationships with your mid-level, major, and planned giving donors, while building sustainable pipelines from the bottom up.
The 2026 HJC Animal Welfare Fundraising Report landed this month, developed by Brian Daugherty and Jennifer Grantham for the San Diego Animal Welfare Philanthropy Summit, where initial findings were shared in February.
Here’s the good news: Animal welfare fundraising is not in crisis. A study of nearly 100 organizations across North America found growth across many budget sizes. The real sweet spot? Organizations with annual budgets between $5 million and $10 million reported universal revenue growth, with more than half reporting growth of 20% or more. The report calls it a "Goldilocks effect"—large enough to have infrastructure, yet agile and close to donors.
The findings worth noting include: monthly giving is strong (more than 60% of orgs report an average monthly gift of at least $25), but only 39% have a dedicated monthly donor upgrade strategy. And nearly 18% of respondents did not know their own retention rate. The biggest storytelling barrier isn't a shortage of content. It's time, internal complexity, and coordination. Sound familiar?
The Independent Sector's annual trust report, covered by The NonProfit Times, is partly reassuring and partly a clear signal. Americans' trust in nonprofits held at 56%—above the military, and well ahead of government, corporations, and philanthropy broadly. But it slipped one point from last year. Trust in "philanthropy" (foundations, corporate giving, and major individual donors) dropped four points to just 29%.
What drives trust? Transparency and genuine connection—when donors feel they have an active role in the mission rather than a transactional one, trust follows. A note on AI: public trust in nonprofits' AI use is conditional, driven by familiarity but tempered by concerns about risk. Worth keeping in mind as more organizations begin integrating AI tools visibly.
New Q1 2026 benchmark data from Fundraise Up—drawn from more than 1,000 nonprofits—tells a nuanced story your team will want to hear about before fall planning. One-time gift averages are up in the U.S., UK, and Canada, reversing last year's trend toward smaller donations. But here is the twist: credit card share is declining across every market as donors shift to Apple Pay, Google Pay, and other frictionless payment options.
Donor channels are also fragmenting—conversion rates on LinkedIn and Instagram grew sharply in Q1 while other channels moved in the opposite direction. The headline finding? The real story behind mobile giving isn't about mobile at all. It's about reducing friction at every step of the giving journey and meeting donors on the platforms where they're already engaged.
The Chronicle of Philanthropy shared an excellent article, Giving USA Reports a Record High. But Here's What It Misses. Yes, total U.S. charitable giving hit a record $617.2 billion in 2025—and that headline deserves a moment of celebration. But the donor pool shrank for the fifth straight year, with the number of individual donors falling 3.6% and the steepest losses among small-dollar givers of $100 or less.
The author's argument is one of the more thought-provoking things I've read this year: we are measuring giving "like vinyl in a Spotify world"—meaning our benchmarks only capture traditional channels, while massive peer-to-peer and creator-led campaigns (one 23-year-old in Poland raised nearly $70 million for a children's cancer charity in nine days through a livestream) fly completely under the radar.
The takeaway isn't panic. It's an invitation to ask where your donors are actually spending their time and generosity, and whether your organization shows up there.
Fundraise Up introduced DAFPay to its donation form. Built in partnership with Chariot, DAFPay is now live in the Fundraise Up checkout. Donors can give directly from their donor-advised fund, right alongside credit card, Apple Pay, and other payment options.
The Chronicle of Philanthropy took a deep look at how lean teams are using AI to launch and grow monthly giving programs they never had the bandwidth to build. One standout story: Haven House for Children in Tennessee, a two-person nonprofit, saw its monthly giving revenue jump from $3,000-$6,000 per month to $10,000-$12,000 per month after using AI tools for donor outreach, segmentation, and follow-up. Their retention rate nearly doubled, from 22.6% to 41%, and overall giving in the first half of 2026 was up 29% year over year.
If your team has been saying "we'll get to monthly giving someday," this piece makes a compelling case that someday is here.
NonProfit Pro's breakdown of rethinking donor segmentation argues that most nonprofits are inadvertently running two competing campaigns—one to keep operations funded, one to build for the future—instead of one integrated story.
The author introduces a useful framework: "investment-focused" donors (motivated by long-term vision, sustainability, return on investment) versus "present-focused" donors (motivated by urgency, emotional connection, and immediate impact). The fix isn't to choose one audience—it's to build a single narrative with two clear invitations inside it: "give today to meet the need in front of us" and "invest in tomorrow to build the conditions that reduce that need over time."
The Chronicle of Philanthropy examines a promising signal for major gift fundraisers: wealthy donors appear to be stepping up again after a notably cautious 2025. In May, seven philanthropists each gave $100 million or more—the first time this year so many nine-figure gifts were announced in a single month.
Advisers say the political and economic uncertainty that froze many major donors last year hasn't disappeared, but donors have largely decided they can't do nothing forever. Some are shifting how they give, moving away from targeted issue-area grants toward charities with broader missions that may draw less political attention.
The practical takeaway: stay in close, genuine contact with your longest-tenured major donors right now, thank them sincerely, and don't hesitate to ask them to accelerate existing commitments. And don't write off your lapsed major donors—some may be ready and waiting to re-engage.
Candid makes the case that stock gifting represents a $90 billion untapped funding opportunity for nonprofits—and most organizations are barely touching it. Of the 100 million Americans who own securities outside retirement accounts, only $12 billion was donated directly to nonprofits in 2024, per 990 data.
The numbers show why this matters: the average stock gift was $9,000 in 2025 and more than $10,000 year-to-date in 2026, stock donors have nearly 40% retention rates, and retained stock donors gave 55% more in 2025 than they did in 2024.
Five practical tips to grow stock gifting include making the process easier for donors and advisors, optimizing your "Ways to Give" page with stock gifting above the fold, and building it into all donor communications. This is a smart fall planning conversation to have with your major gift team.
The QCD (Qualified Charitable Distribution) limit rose to $111,000 for 2026, up from $105,000 last year. QCDs allow donors aged 70½ and older to make tax-advantaged gifts directly from their IRAs, with no income tax on the distribution.
With donor-advised funds (DAFs) continuing to grow in popularity and the 2026 tax landscape creating some uncertainty, your fall appeals are a natural place to feature QCDs, DAF grants, and bequests as donor-friendly giving vehicles—especially for your loyal, older donors. Charles Schwab has a helpful overview, and the Chronicle of Philanthropy's 2026 fundraising trends piece offers good context.
The Chronicle of Philanthropy reports that Points of Light is launching a National Volunteer Strategy as the first phase of a $100 million plan to double the number of U.S. volunteers to 150 million by 2035. Only about 28% of Americans currently volunteer, still below pre-pandemic levels, and the administration's gutting of AmeriCorps in 2025 left nonprofits scrambling to replace lost workers and funding.
What Points of Light found in its yearlong listening tour is telling: the interest is there. The nonprofit infrastructure to connect, onboard, and genuinely engage volunteers isn't. The strategy focuses specifically on investing in volunteer managers within nonprofits as the critical lever for change—a nuance worth noting for any organization that depends on volunteer capacity.
There’s a shift happening in how brands approach social media marketing and digital storytelling. The Wall Street Journal reports that about 45% of total U.S. influencer marketing spending will go toward creators with fewer than 20,000 followers in 2026—up from just 19.5% in 2021—as algorithmic changes make large follower counts less predictive of reach.
Brands including Target, SoulCycle, and American Eagle are running advocacy programs for people with as few as 500 followers. The nonprofit parallel is worth a conversation: your most authentic storytellers may already be among your donors, volunteers, and board members. Are you making it easy for them to share?
Two stories related to the item above: Gap Inc. opened its creator program to all corporate, distribution, and store employees, building on a program that has already reached nearly 154 million consumers through 30,000 posts since its October launch.
And Starbucks became the first brand to pilot a custom Creator Network with TikTok, formalizing a program where its baristas post brand content at three times the rate of employees at comparable chains. The underlying data point in both stories: 61% of Gen Z say they frequently learn about new products from employee-generated content.
For nonprofits, your staff, volunteers, and longtime donors already carry your story. The question is whether your organization is building systems to amplify it.
A new Harris Poll special report on AI in advertising found that 87% of consumers say the presence of "uninvited" AI ads damages brand equity. Among Gen Z, 67% say AI is rarely used tastefully in advertising, with 77% calling it a shortcut that signals a lack of effort. By 2030, Gen Z is projected to represent roughly 18.7% of total global consumer spending ($12.6 trillion), and they currently rank marketers at the bottom of their trusted institutions list.
This pushback isn’t a general rejection of AI, but a preference for human touch. Half of Gen Z (50%) strongly value creativity and originality.
A timely reminder for your donors who still give by check: The New York Times dug into the growing epidemic of check fraud and why sending checks through outdoor blue collection boxes carries real risk. The U.S. Postal Inspection Service estimates check washing and related mail theft schemes cost Americans more than $1 billion annually. Thieves steal checks from mailboxes, dissolve the ink with household chemicals while keeping the signature intact, and rewrite the payee and dollar amount.
Simple precautions: drop mail at indoor postal counters, use black gel pen for any checks written by hand, and pay electronically whenever possible. This is worth considering as you think about the giving experience for your older donors who still give by mail.
This one is worth watching as SEO and Google search change. The Wall Street Journal reports that major digital publishers including Reddit, USA Today, Politico, and Reuters are all reconsidering their relationships with Google as AI-powered search steadily reduces web traffic. USA Today's organic Google traffic from U.S. users fell by nearly half between June 2025 and June 2026. Traffic to Politico fell 23%, CNN’s fell 25%, and Business Insider’s fell more than 85%.
Bots now account for more than half of all web traffic, according to Cloudflare. For nonprofits, the signal matters: if established media brands can't rely on Google search to drive discovery, neither can your organization's website. Social media, email lists, and direct donor relationships are becoming even more essential as the search-driven discovery landscape continues to shift.
According to the Wall Street Journal, U.S. economic growth slowed to a 1.5% annual rate in the second quarter, down from 2.1% in Q1 and below the 1.8% economists had expected. The main drag? Massive imports of AI-related equipment and semiconductors—a bit of an economic quirk where the AI boom is both fueling growth and, because so much of the hardware is made overseas, technically weighing on the GDP calculation.
The signals underneath the headline are more encouraging: consumer spending rose at a strong 3.2% rate (up from just 0.5% in Q1), and underlying demand—what economists call final sales to private domestic purchasers—grew at 3.9%, the fastest pace since early 2023. The Federal Reserve held interest rates steady at a range of 3.5% to 3.75%.
The Fed's preferred inflation measure—the PCE price index—cooled modestly in June to a 12-month rate of 3.7%, down from 4.1% in May. Core PCE (excluding food and energy) came in at 3.3%, also slightly lower. Some progress, but still well above the Fed's 2% target.
Personal income rose 0.2% in June, and consumer spending climbed 0.3%—signs that households are still spending, just very carefully. The direction is encouraging, but this isn't a moment to assume that financial pressure has lifted for donors, and your communications should reflect that.
On the consumer sentiment front, July brought a divided reading worth understanding for your fundraising context. The University of Michigan's consumer sentiment index rose to 55.2 in July from 49.5 in June as gas prices eased to an average of $3.95. At the same time, the Conference Board's confidence index slipped to 90.8 from 92.2, with consumers' assessments of current labor and business conditions softening for the third straight month.
Both surveys point to the same underlying truth: households remain focused on daily affordability, and geopolitical tensions in the Middle East are hovering in the background. For fundraisers, this is a useful reminder that generosity is happening alongside real financial stress.
New Urban Institute research, covered by Yahoo Finance, puts real numbers on something worth keeping in mind as you plan fall donor communications. More than one in four U.S. working-age adults who used a credit card to cover groceries last year struggled to repay that bill—either making only the minimum payment or missing it entirely.
Nearly one in ten relied on buy now, pay later loans for food; one in twenty turned to payday loans for cash. Grocery prices are up nearly 32% from pre-pandemic levels, and the financial strain is increasingly hitting middle-income households earning between $64,000 and $128,600 a year. The share of people unable to make minimum payments rose from 7.1% in 2023 to 8.7% in 2025.
The data shows that wages are keeping up with inflation, yet most Americans are open to switching jobs. Nearly two-thirds (63%) cited rising costs, rather than AI, as the main factor in their decision to look for a different employer.
While the headline labor market numbers look reasonably stable (unemployment has drifted down to 4.2% and jobs have been added for four straight months), the Wall Street Journal spotlights a persistent shadow in the recovery: nearly two million Americans have been locked out of the job market for six months or more, with the share of long-term unemployed hovering near its highest level in five years. The broader economic progress is real, but it isn't reaching everyone.
Hope you’re taking time off here and there to keep yourself refreshed and rested for the busiest time of year. Remember to breathe—you’ve got this!