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:
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.
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.