At the 2026 Investment Stewardship Academy, held at Yale University this past June, three leaders in the philanthropic sector — Dr. Amir Pasic, Eugene R. Tempel Dean at Indiana University's Lilly Family School of Philanthropy; Dr. Karen DuBois-Walton, President and CEO of the Community Foundation for Greater New Haven; and Gretchen Wood, Vice President of Institutional Advancement and Executive Director of Monroe Community College and Foundation — sat down to connect the dots between fundraising, endowment stewardship, leadership, and storytelling. What emerged was a candid picture of a sector that is generous but increasingly tenuous, and a set of practical lessons on how organizations are adapting.
The Data: Where Philanthropy Stands Today
Dr. Pasic opened the panel by grounding the conversation in Giving USA data — the longest-running measure of charitable giving in America. Since the panel convened, the newest edition, Giving USA 2026 covering calendar year 2025, has been released, and it sharpens several of the trends highlighted by the panel:
- U.S. charitable giving hit $617.0 billion in 2025, which was up 5.7 percent in current dollars, and represents the first time that total giving has crossed $600 billion. It's the second-highest inflation-adjusted total on record, behind only 2021.
- Giving by source: individuals gave $394.2 billion (64% of the total), foundations gave $117.15 billion (19%), bequests totaled $62.2 billion (10%), and corporations gave roughly $43.7 billion (7%). Bequests were the standout, surging 19.7 percent in current dollars (16.6% adjusted for inflation) — the largest jump of any source and the third year of the last four with over 20 percent growth, a pattern tied to the "Great Wealth Transfer."
- Individual giving is growing but shrinking as a share — up 4.1 percent (1.4% after inflation), yet down from roughly 80 percent of total giving in the mid-1980s to 64 percent today, even as giving concentrates among fewer, wealthier donors: mega-gifts of $600M+ totaled about $19.2 billion in 2025 (~4% of individual giving), led by MacKenzie Scott, Michael Bloomberg, Bill Gates, and Paul Allen's estate.
- On the receiving end, eight of nine subsectors grew in current dollars; religion remained the largest category at $151.6 billion but was essentially flat after inflation (-0.2%), while education ($92.0B, +11.7%), public-society benefit ($72.1B, +11.6%), and environment/animals ($24.6B, +11%) led growth — the only recipient category to decline was giving to foundations, down 16.2 percent after a 2024 peak.
- Structural shifts to watch: Donor advised funds (DAFs) now represent an estimated 15.1 percent of all giving, with nearly a quarter of individual giving flowing through them, and the One Big Beautiful Bill Act's tax changes (deduction floors/caps, QCD rules) took effect in 2025–26, reshaping incentives fundraisers need to track.
Three Themes from the Panel
1. Storytelling must hold two truths at once
Both practitioners described a genuine tension: donors are experiencing record capital markets, while the communities they serve are not. Dr. DuBois-Walton described a period early in her tenure when generous donors felt political and social turbulence made it unclear where to direct support. Her foundation's response was to lean into its role as a trusted intermediary: hosting community convenings and webinars to help donors make sense of fast-moving issues, from threats to immigrant-serving organizations to the fate of DEI-focused nonprofits. Wood emphasized that at a community college, storytelling is inseparable from longevity of relationships. Scholarship recipients speak at every board meeting and every donor event so endowed-fund donors can receive regular updates on the students they support. Both panelists made one goal very clear: to make giving feel like an ongoing partnership rather than a transaction.
2. Leadership requires learning while building
When asked how they lead through a poly-crisis environment, both practitioners resisted the idea that there's a stable "new normal" to arrive at. DuBois-Walton described a discipline of entering conversations with curiosity, treating change itself as the constant, and continually re-evaluating where a 98-year-old foundation needs to invest next — from workforce needs tied to new technology to intentional focus on community and connection, not just crisis response. Wood echoed the emphasis on relevance, describing how her foundation's engaged, 56-member board is structured so that every member — not a dedicated fundraising committee — is expected to serve as an ambassador to keep the institution's priorities visible and its leadership accountable.
Pasic added a research-backed dimension to the practitioners’ experiences: trustees who personally give and fundraise materially lift an organization's entire fundraising performance, and 100% board-giving participation has long served as a marker of institutional vibrancy to outside funders. He also flagged the more uncomfortable trends of public and policymaker skepticism toward institutions with large endowments, as well as a serious conversation in the sector about mergers, consolidations, and even closures as strategic options rather than failures.
3. Endowment stewardship requires balancing current need against long-term sustainability — and being honest about fees
Panelists described deliberately hybrid models rather than an all-or-nothing approach: splitting gifts between endowment and immediate use, capping how much of a donation can be restricted, and letting some portion support operations. Fee transparency came up directly — panelists acknowledged their fees tend to run higher than a low-cost brokerage account, but that the value proposition has to be based in strong relationships and local knowledge, not price competition. Panelists also spoke about mission-oriented investing as a means to align current and future needs by investing endowment dollars in community-level priorities like housing and small-business development.
Where This Leaves Fundraising Leaders
The panel's throughline was that trust, not just capacity, is a scarce resource in philanthropy right now, and that fostering it can be a gamechanger. Giving USA's newest data reinforces that point: total dollars just crossed $600 billion for the first time, propelled substantially by a rebound in bequests and steady foundation growth — even as record-low consumer sentiment and a shrinking, more concentrated donor base might indicate that broad-based participation is eroding. The organizations that seem to be navigating this effectively share a few habits: they treat every board member and staff member as an ambassador rather than isolating fundraising in a single committee; they invest in convening, listening to, and educating their communities, not just soliciting them; and they're willing to have direct conversations with donors about fees, mission alignment, and where dollars are actually going — rather than assuming a level of legacy trust in the institution will carry the relationship forward.
