2026 Top Nonprofit Trends to Watch

Okay, all right, so we’re going to get started as as people start filing into the session. So good afternoon or good morning to those in other time zones. Welcome to today’s webinar 2026 top nonprofit trends to watch and presenting for us today is Julia Patrick. Julia is the Read More

Okay, all right, so we’re going to get started as as people start filing into the session. So good afternoon or good morning to those in other time zones. Welcome to today’s webinar 2026 top nonprofit trends to watch and presenting for us today is Julia Patrick. Julia is the founder and CEO of the American nonprofit Academy, and is a premier thought leader and champion for the nonprofit sector, with decades of experience as a nonprofit board member, volunteer and multi generational philanthropist, Julia is dedicated to empowering nonprofit organizations. She’s the visionary behind the nonprofit show, the nation’s only daily live broadcast designed specifically for Nonprofit Professionals, as well as the author of building board champions, activating impactful nonprofit board members and co author of the architecture of fundraising, building a career, developing relationships, structuring success. So before we get started, please know that this webinar is being recorded and will be sent out to all registrants later this week. And just to make note, this is we have a large number of registrants, so the chat can scroll pretty quickly sometimes, and questions can be missed. So please ask all questions in the Q and A section so that they’re seen and can be answered. So welcome, Julia, you are good to get started. Hey.
Thank you so much for welcoming me. That was lovely. I want to say thank you so much to the DonorPerfect team. Super nice to have you all here with us. We have a huge group with us today, and we have a lot to cover, so we’re going to get right into it. I also want to make sure and give DonorPerfect a shout out, because they were able to get this webinar approved for a CFRE credit. So if you are engaged in that process, definitely take advantage of that. One last thing is, we’re going to cover a lot of information very quickly, and this will be archived with DonorPerfect, but if you want the direct show notes for this, email me directly at JCP at American nonprofit academy.com and I will send you a PDF of that. Okay, well, we’ve gotten our housekeeping going. Let’s get into this. Again. I’m Julia C Patrick, CEO of the American nonprofit Academy, and probably more important, the nonprofit show. And we’ve, we’ve published two books, and we’ve got a lot cooking and a lot going on. So again, I’m delighted to be here with you, and to really get into this. Now, there’s a lot to cover when we talk about trends and what to look for. And so before we get into these very specific things, I want to plant a seed, and that is, we need to look at how all of these trends interconnect how one trend impacts another and another, and so it’s not just one thing to be looking at. It’s many things. And when we understand that the world is our oyster, we get a lot more opportunity to be more effective. So let’s get into it with the very first trend. And this is something that we’ve been talking about for a long time, but right now we’re in the middle. It’s the great wealth transfer. Most folks will estimate between 90 trillion up to 100 when we first started talking about this, about 15 years ago, knowing that it was coming, the number was lower. A lot of wealth has been made in this country and certainly in North America, so we are seeing that great wealth transfer, which is strictly a demographic issue. Basically the the generations are passing away and passing their wealth to the next generations. I want to give a quick shout out here to the notion that it’s not all cash. It can be collectibles. It could be a Beanie Baby collection, it could be a car collection, whatever. But it can also be, and I think this is an exciting thing to think about for fundraisers, intellectual property IP, one of the greatest examples of this is Irving Berlin. He wrote, God bless America, and he gave the royalty rights to the Girl Scouts of America and the Boy Scouts of America. How about that? So these are the sorts of things that can go on, and they’re very, very exciting. And I think they’re exciting for donors as well. So think about that and kind of have that in the back of your mind as we go on throughout today. Okay, the next part of this big trend shift that we need to look at is next generation donor behaviors. They’re very, very different. We’re talking about baby boomers. They’re the largest and the wealthiest donors. No shock there, but Gen X that follows behind them and mills and z’s. They’re not behaving in the same way with their their philanthropic dollars. They’re liking data. They’re liking metrics. They’re not so enmeshed in the emotional side of giving, and their philanthropy tends to be a little bit more strategic, and this can be hard for some nonprofits, because we’re used to kind of that emotional outreach. Tell the story, get somebody, grab them in and get them to become loyalists. With our mission, it’s a little different here you will build loyal donors and loyal donor relationships, but you’re going to need more data, you’re going to need more metrics, and you’re going to need more information so that you can navigate this through. For some of us, that’s going to be a little bit challenging, so let’s talk about that a little bit more. When we talk about next gen behaviors, they’re not necessarily going to fall in line or step in line, however you want to phrase it, with what their parents and grandparents gave right? So they’re going to want to maybe follow along with what they were doing for themselves. They might be more interested in nature and animals and climate they’re not going to be direct funding faith and cultural institutions. Bad news for those of you who are really struggling with your cultural institutions, traditional, ballet, opera, theater, symphony, you’re going to have to do some really innovative things to get those next gen donors interested in you and understanding what it’s going what’s going on again, that data, the metrics. They want to know what’s going on. They’re not afraid of bad information or bad news. They just want good information, right? So as opposed to being everything’s great, donate with us, because it’s the cool thing to do. You can identify problems, and you can reach out and say, we need your help, because this is a problem that shouldn’t exist, and that’s what we call transparency. You’re seeing that more and more that that language being used. Next Gen donors really appreciate that. They can again, they can take the bad news. They can see what’s going on. They just need to understand how to get involved and what that looks like. Last but not least, one of the things that’s a little difficult is that these folks definitely want to navigate their digital giving through their phone, not not necessarily a desktop. So you’ve got to have your donor interface and your collection of any type of funds, whether it be DAFs or direct deposits, monthly giving, whatever it is, it really needs to be navigated smoothly on a phone, and so you’re going to have to test that so that you’re not missing out on anything really super important. And one of those things that can be a little challenging, cyber security number three, oh, my goodness, are we hearing about this all the time? Yes, we are, and we should be, but I’m going to talk about this in a little different way. It’s not just information about what is going on through internally and how you can be impacted. You need to do penetration testing. We call it pen testing and training. You need to have your teams understanding that why cybersecurity works. We use an accounting term here, tone at the top. That means everybody from your leadership C suite needs to be involved in this and understanding why it’s so critical. We see a lot of fear in this, and we see a lot of problems with people that might open up an innocuous looking email, and then they’ve really put their organization into a crisis, and they’re afraid to say something because they don’t want to be fired. So we need to be doing training. We need to be talking about this, and we need to talk about when an incursion happens, how it’s going to be administrated. But I want to talk briefly today about third party platforms. All of us are using third party platforms we’re on. Zoom right now, right? I mean, we need to be asking the partners that we work with, what are your cyber security issues? How do you mitigate issues? How will we know if there’s been an incursion, especially when we talk about platforms that engage our donors, their their information, certainly, if they are doing any type of if you’re doing any type of fundraising and securing funds through a third party, you need to be asking these questions third party platforms are. Brilliant, and they help us so much. But if we’re not understanding how cyber security is being monitored and issued on their side, we could be setting ourselves up for some problems, and we definitely want to navigate away from that. Okay, I told you we were going to be zipping through this, and we got a lot cooking here. Let’s talk about number four, and that is super important a changing labor force. Now, this is part and parcel to demographics and of an aging society, right? But I like to kind of plant the seed on Monday morning, about 11 million Americans go to work for a nonprofit each week. We are attracting that many people who are getting paid, who are paying taxes, who are engaging in the philanthropic process. So what happens when we start having retirement, when we start seeing our leaders, predominantly older women leaving? These are founders. These are CEOs. These are C suite. These are fundraisers. They’re leaving, and we haven’t necessarily done a good job of pulling up that next gen leader. And so this is going to be one of those issues that a lot of folks really struggle with. And I’m pointing this out because
we got to be addressing this. We should have been doing it right before the pandemic, because we started to see this retirement wave coming through. But so many leaders, and you might be one of them, were asked to stay on so that we could get through the pandemic, and now these folks are exhausted. They’re aging. They’re seeing their retirement time slip away. So we’ve got to be understanding how we’re going to be looking at this with this new labor market. The work environment’s changed, right? They want to do things differently. They want to be flexible. They might want to work for long days. They might want to work more in the morning, more in the evening, certainly remotely. They might want to be more present for family issues, and that’s not just caring for for children, that’s caring for elderly parents and even grandparents. So we need to be cognizant of that, and if you can understand how your organization can navigate to this changing labor force, you’re going to have a healthier environment of where things are going. Another issue I really want to bring up is that changing labor force in terms of what it might look like for not only yourself in your organization, remember, we have 1.8 million registered nonprofits in this country. So when we talk about labor changes, we have a lot of competition, because there are a lot of nonprofits out there, and so we need to make sure that the value proposition of our work and our work environment is competitive. That means salary, that means policies, that means opportunities for more advancement, for education, for training, and so we need to look at that, but at the same time, we’re being challenged by loyalty and tenure. It used to be, especially in the nonprofit sector, that you wore your time and tenure like a badge of honor, not so much with next gen leadership, they kind of see it as getting stale, and they are pre programmed to understand that you want to move up, you want to move out, you want to move around. It’s not that negative thing that previous generations thought, and this is a big shake up for the industry, so we need to be thinking about that. And last but not least, hey, let’s face it, this is also impacting our boards, because our board of directors, our trustees, our committees, they’re aging out too Right? And so we need to be thinking about that as well. How do we navigate our next gen leadership on the board committees and not just internally, on how we run our organizations. Really some interesting things. And you can already see today with what we’re talking about, how things are linking when we talk about number five, artificial intelligence. Yeah, we’ve all been talking about this. It’s amazing, from chat GPT to internal sources that you might have. We have aI working with us, for us, without even knowing it. And so that discussion aside, we need to understand within our organizations what’s intelligent versus what’s smart. I think a lot of us using AI.
Don’t understand that if we ask our AI platform to engage with us, whether it be to check spelling or check data or we upload something, we need to know where that information is going. Is that data secure, right? And so the veracity and the accuracy. Of how we’re navigating this must be discussed. You need to have an AI policy within your organization. You need to be training on this, looking at what is going on and how it can be used. That’s the other piece of it. I think it’s an exciting time. I know within my business, AI has been a game changer for my myself and my team, and we’ve tried to be intelligent about it and look at it. It’s ever changing. And this is where you can link back through to cyber security and understand what some of these issues might be, and how you and your nonprofit can be looking at this super important, especially for those of you who have remote workforces, which we pretty much all do, right? And this is the way we’re working, and we’ll probably continue to work. But I think this is a definitely a robust discussion that’s a healthy one that we definitely want to be looking at so AI, super important, and now we want to look at something even more important, and that’s transparency. We’ve already brought it up a couple times, talked about it, looking at how things are navigating through for us, super important. But it’s not just a buzzword. What does it mean, and how should we be thinking about it? Transparency is really, really in the intersection between data and metrics, and so that means reporting out. And it’s not just the good news, it’s also the bad news. It’s how did you fail? Donors are okay with failure, as long as you can interpret what your next steps are, what did you learn? We hear that sometimes from tech fail, fail fast, right? And make a correction. What does that look like this? Transparency also goes deeper. When we have any type of data incursion, we might have internal theft. We might have something that is really an unsavory issue. It’s getting out ahead. It’s getting in front of the story, owning what the issue is, and then making a commitment to solutions and to protecting the organization right, and so offering those solutions becomes really important. And it’s really a fascinating thing to me to think about this, because transparency, if you think about it, it’s emotional for us when we’ve had an incursion, a cyber issue, we’ve had theft, we’ve lost a big donor, a contract, whatever. I could go on forever about the the ills that could befall our nonprofits. But what’s more powerful is to step in forward of the step and forward of the problem. Share about what the problem is, and then share your path forward. Share what you’re going to do for the solution. How are you going to protect yourself so that you don’t have this issue again, and that can become marketing genius, and it really builds credibility between you, your organization, those funders, donors, contractors, so that everybody knows. This is a tough lesson. This is a tough situation, but we can be in it together. So transparency again, not just a buzzword. I’m trying to give some real examples of how we need to maybe be rethinking transparency, because once we do that, they’re really not a lot of problems that we can’t face, right? And we have issues that come up, and if certainly those are the issues that what that we didn’t plan on. So really an interesting way to maybe rethink what transparency looks like, trust, philanthropy. I feel like this was really picking up speed before the pandemic, and then there was kind of a shift with it, and I think the shift was positive from big funders, and then we’ve kind of slipped. So given that kind of path, let’s get into what trust philanthropy is. It’s basically the notion that funders are going to trust their philanthropic partners, their nonprofits that they fund or they work with to say, look, we know that you know what the problems are, and you can be a better steward of this, as opposed to us telling you what to do and how to do it. We’re going to fund this. We’re going to give you some parameters, certainly, but we’re going to be a little bit less restrictive, and so we’re going to definitely want to have reporting, and we want you to connect with us and share with us what’s going on. But it’s kind of a solution to mission creep, because we see that a lot right now. I know probably. In your own community, you’re seeing pet shelters adding added to a lot of programming. It’s an interesting concept. There’s a lot of money there. And so we see organizations that maybe never had any pet basis in their philanthropy, all of a setting, all of a sudden, adding these pieces to to their programming. And again, there’s a lot of money there, so it’s it’s hard to step away from that, but you need to maybe go forward with that understanding where mission creep occurs and where trust philanthropy can occur. Trust, trust philanthropy takes a different mindset. It’s more based in, in a in a relationship, than you might ever know you’re not going to, just for the first time, apply for a grant or pick up the phone and and get, you know, a unrestricted funds. That probably isn’t going to happen if it does. Yay team, and we’re excited for you. But the reality is, this is something that kind of gets generated through relationships. And so we can talk a lot about how we have relationships with our funders, certainly when we’re doing contracting and grants, but this is kind of one of those trends we really need to keep an eye out on. And I think it’s exciting. I really, really do. I think it’s super, super exciting. Okay, let’s get on to number eight, because we have a lot of questions coming in, and we definitely want to use save time for that and understand what some of the pain points are that everybody has. This is kind of an interesting thing, and this is probably one of my own pet peeve trends that I’m a little concerned about. I don’t think that we’re talking about it enough, because it seems a little unpleasant to talk about. But I think we need to be thoughtful about how there can be mega donor backlash. Remember, we talked out the gate. Number one, the great wealth transfer. Well as part and parcel of that, we’re hearing about enormous, enormous funding benefaction that is jaw dropping. And every time that happens, it’s exciting and it’s great, but I’m asking the question, what does it do to the school teacher in middle America who says, shoot, I’ve been giving 25 bucks a month on a sustaining program to my local PBS station. Is that even going to do anything? And we need to make sure that we don’t lose sight of how incredibly vital those donor relationships are, even at that smaller, more sustainable level, mega donors, sometimes we call them unicorns. They’re expensive. They usually involve a lot of oversight. They involve attorneys. They involve a lot of fear, because we are afraid to damage the relationship with those funders. They’re not just as easy as it sounds of getting this huge amount. So we need to be thinking about that splashy, splashy gift. I’m not saying walk away from it, absolutely not. But I think we need to be a little bit more thoughtful about how we mitigate the management of that mega donor with the management of our regular donor, because there’s a place for both, and they’re really, really important. Now, one of the caveats to this is that this is not a popular thing to say, especially with boards, because a lot of boards will be just like, Come on, get out there. Make that call. Call the wealthy people in your community, get that mega donor to respond to us. So what happens the fundraiser a lot of times, can chase that shiny object, and that’s when we have even more problems, because then we step away from that more secure, sustainable, lower level donor that can be moved up, that can be moved into even more exciting things. So we want to make sure that we are not looking away and understanding what that mega donor backlash can be, and again, maybe not super powerful to say, but I just have to call that out as one of my trends for 2026
donor engagement shoot, we talk about this all the time, but donor engagement, it’s changed a lot over the years, especially during The pandemic, we had to do different things, and so we need to re evaluate what our nonprofits are doing. Engagement we’re in through volunteering is huge. Even now in the American school system, private versus public, we have certain curriculum and days that. Side for volunteering. Volunteering is become a major cultural point. It’s not just going through our churches, temples and synagogues, or maybe youth oriented groups like Girl Scouts and Boy Scouts of America, scouting America, if you will. We need to be understanding what this looks like, and this is somewhat controversial, because there are a lot of folks in volunteer services, volunteer management, who do not want to have this be a gateway to donors. They want to keep their volunteers separate from donors, and they get a little torqued out if the fundraising team comes in and says, Hey, can we make a pitch, or can we pass out information or connect with some of these volunteers to navigate them towards donor opportunities? And so my answer to that is, no, this is a gateway that’s positive and exciting. And when you get people into your organization, whether it be remotely, physically for any type of outreach, you can create loyalists, and we all want that, so make sure that you don’t separate that volunteerism versus the donor aspect, because I think when You put them together, they’re super and powerful community events, walks, runs, things that include pets, things that include multi generations. We’re talking from stroller to Walker, right? How do you get the babies involved with the same thing with the grandparents? And how do you put those together walks and runs that are out in the community, that might be held at a park or closed off section of the city, picking up steam, picking up big steam that’s super and powerful. So the other piece of that that we’re seeing is that our corporate partners want their employees to have these volunteer opportunities, right and and community things where they’re all what, wearing their matching T shirts, or they’re engaging in a different way. This is becoming a really strong aspect of employee retention in the for profit world. We spend a lot of time talking about this, so don’t look away from those opportunities, because that can build deeper funding relationships, for sure, with your corporate partners. And then, last but not least, nobody’s probably going to be boo hooing about this and saying, Julia, but why Black Tie galas? They’re really kind of sunsetting. Certainly we are seeing them, of course, and they’re not going to go away 100% but the the trend started slipping during the pandemic, when physically, organizations had to let go of their black tie galas and had to do different things. And I think that we’re going to see that continue to kind of change and navigate. So for those of you that have always been thinking about that time to rethink, okay, this is another one that I think maybe we know about, or we sense, but we’re a little afraid to talk about it, and that is the mixture of political issues framing our missions. So so many of us in the nonprofit sector have been very aware of the frailty of losing our 501, status if we engage in any type of political posturing. And that’s real. It’s not as stringent as it used to be, but it’s still there, and so we never want to navigate towards something that could impinge or or really put our standing in jeopardy. That’s a basic concept. But what is not basic, and what is certainly new is that in the polarization of our communities and a political time and of and change in civil and civic discourse, we’re seeing organizations being confronted by donors and other organizations to clarify where they stand on a political issue or political alignment, and these are things that we never had to do before, and so I’m challenging our nonprofit sector to be thinking about this now. This does not mean that you need to have a policy that states our organization does not believe in whatever issue, right? But I do think that you need to chat with your board, your team and your funders about how you’re going to respond to certain things if you’re being pushed and this is going to be escalating. As we move into midterms, as we look at the changing structure of American politics, it’s a tough thing to be concerned about, but it is tougher if you have a problem and that you hadn’t thought about it, right? And so there again. There’s no shame, and there’s no harm in saying, you know, we don’t come we’re apolitical. We don’t come down on one side of or of the other of the aisle, but we believe in whatever our mission is. So tighten up that mission statement. Understand what that mission statement is your teams should be able to recite that by heart. Your board members, they need to be able to recite that because I do believe that this is going to be one of those little kind of sticking points that that kind of jump up and bite us when we haven’t really had to deal with that. Maybe we do personally and we do it at home, around the dinner table. Yeah, absolutely. But how we look at this is going to be one of those things that becomes, I think, more uncomfortable. And so my advice here is take some quiet time. Think about where your community, your donors might push you might want to know where you stand on certain issues. You might be surprised. In my community and my state, I’m located in Arizona, we have really an interesting program with customized license plates where nonprofits can apply to the Department of Highway and basically sell a license plate structure artwork, and they’re usually just beautiful, and a certain part of the registration goes towards that nonprofit. It might be an association. It might be something that’s navigating an issue in our community, I think that we are exceeding, if I’m not mistaken, 50 different license plates. So they’re very interesting. And when you drive throughout the West, you tend to see this. I was working with some CEOs that are oriented in the autism education space, and when they went before the committees at the legislature to talk about and reveal the fabulous artwork that was designed by somebody with autism and how the funds were going to support their work Across the state, they actually had people that came to voice opposition, and you would think, wow, who would ever be against this? This is something that is purely elective. You You can choose to buy this license plate registration or not. It supports a great cause causes. It was an association. But yet, it’s just this political climate. And so I bring this up because I do believe that this is one of those things that’s a negative issue and a force that we need to be thinking about. So we’ve talked about so much at a really rapid pace. We definitely have a lot of question questions coming in, we have a lot of concerns about where we need to be thinking about for our organizations, and how we can build the strongest organizations. So we’ve gone from everything from like what we’re talking about right now, political framing to next gen interests to the great wealth transfer, all sorts of issues in between, cyber, intellectual property, gifts, all sorts of things. But I want to kind of navigate
one more thing as we leave this part of this issue of of talking about trends for 2026 and I do believe that this is an exciting time. I don’t want to leave anybody thinking that this is a time of negativity. I think opportunity exists in this space for our sector. Is it challenging? Oh, yeah, it’s challenging. But I think there’s so much opportunity. We need to be thinking about things differently. We kind of touched on this. And I’m going to call this the bonus, the rise of the sustaining donors. This is what I like to call the netflixing mindset, and basically it’s a subscription model. This subscription model might look kind of small, but it’s an easy decision to make. Who can’t see their way around an extra $10 to an organization they support every month, 1520, 25 maybe it’s 100 maybe it’s 250 maybe it’s 500 maybe it’s 1000 or more. But I think what’s really interesting about this. Us is that this is giving a segment of our population an opportunity to become engaged monthly with our organizations. Think about your own family budget. If I came to you and I said, I have the best nonprofit mission on the planet, and I know you believe in what I’m doing. Okay, great. Is it easier for you to write me a check or send me a draft, an ACH, a debit card, even give me part of your DAF for $1,200 or is it easier for me to count $100 from you on every month, on the first, on the 15th, whatever date works, right? And so I think that’s kind of one of those opportunities. Now this coincides with what we were talking about, those unicorn donors. And so sometimes you can be like, Oh man, I’m putting so much effort into a lower level donor when I just need to go after that unicorn. And while that might sound great, it’s not so easy, but these sustaining donors will become loyal. They will stay with you, and it’s digital. You have opportunities. DonorPerfect has a part of this within their platform, where you can set up a system and make it really frictionless for your donors. And I think this is the number one opportunity. It’s a slow and go kind of thing, but the growth is phenomenal. We as a society are very comfortable with this. We have a low level of risk or concern about giving access to our financial accounts for that monthly draw, if you will. Now what does this mean? The future these people can be moved up just because you sign somebody up for a $10 a month opportunity doesn’t mean after a while, you can’t try and escalate them up to another level. You can, and it’s exciting. And most people, as they have a journey of their own and their own financial health and their own loyalty to your organization, probably will become more interested in that, right? And so this isn’t like a one and done. You sign somebody up for 25 bucks a month and you’re never going to get any more. Oh, you have the opportunity to steward that relationship. You want strong communications. You want to be able to engage them in other ways, other than just taking their money, but showing them impact, talking to them about where other opportunities lie, where they can engage in maybe a physical activity or a learning session, where they might be able to come to your campus for a tour, maybe even an event. But there are ways, I think, for us to be really thoughtful about our sustaining donors. This is one of those things that is easy to kind of slip aside, but for me, I really believe that this is kind of that bonus piece where we need to be. And it’s one of those things that is definitely technology related, technology adjacent. And remember when we were talking about platforms and cyber security, when you’re initiating this type of program, you want to ask those tough questions, how is your donor data being protected? How is it secure if you’re navigating towards a platform that is engaging in this process. You want to have confidence, and you want to be able to have confidence, definitely for your donors. So that becomes a really, really important aspect of it. Okay, we’ve talked about so much. We’ve gone so fast. If you want me to send you the notes on this. Email me at JCP, at American nonprofit academy.com and I will be more than happy to send you a PDF of all the the slide deck, and you’ll be able to see that I know that DonorPerfect has been recording this. This will be accessible at the end of the week, and then ultimately it will live on their resource page, on their DonorPerfect website, and you’ll be able to access or share it, because it’s really, really important to be able to get back through this information. We’ve gone through so much in a short period of time. I’m often asked to speak on each one of these topics, and I do for upwards of two hours per topic. So you can imagine there’s a lot more to investigate and to understand. And but I really wanted to give you a kind of a cursory overview of of the whole ecosystem for how this works and how we should be thinking about it. Again. I’m a big believer and that no trend stands alone. They all really are kind of intermeshed with one another, and one thing happens, and it causes another to react. And so I think when we can get our head around how these things flow together, then it makes them a lot more sense of how we should be looking at things. Now, do we have to do all of these things at once and get our hair on fire? No, that’s not what this is about. But if you are armed with the information about what goes on, I think it can really, really help you. So wow, it’s been great. Thank you so much for having me and sharing this time. I think let’s take some time to answer questions and and get to it. So Lori, can I go ahead and just start answering these questions? I think so. Okay, this is really interesting. Nobody has ever asked this question, and the question goes like this, has cyber security been a challenge for grant application platforms? Wow, okay, great, great question that came in from Lauren. This is one of those conversations that we need to have, because in the grant application and the platforms most funders are have all navigated towards platforms. They’re not going to be able in the old days, where you’d have to, you know, make these reports, print them off, have them bound, have a physical set sent to each board member trustee of these foundations. No, they’re all been put into portals. So really interesting question. And I think that because you are uploading financial information and things that are, you know, there’s they need to be secured, that’s okay to ask that question. My personal opinion is, Lauren, if you ask that question, that that goes, I’m always trying to protect my organization and be very thoughtful about the health of our organization and our cyber security issues. Have you seen any issues with with other applications uploading sensitive information? Do I need to be concerned about that? I think it demonstrates that you’re thoughtful about your organization and about this topic, right? And so I kind of love that you asked that question. I mean, I love, I think that’s like one of the more, more interesting questions that we’ve been asked. So thank you very, very much.
I’ve had a couple people ask this. This is great information. Thank you. Where is your data coming from? In terms of next gen interests, this comes from a lot of places. This comes from all of the different nonprofits that we talk with as the host of the nonprofit show, we connect with 2000 people a day throughout about 27 platforms and channels, and they’re talking to us about what they’re seeing and where their concerns lie. There’s also a tremendous amount of scholarly research on this, because let’s face it, if you’re selling music or clothing or furniture cars. You want to know what next gen, what the next gen demographic, is looking at, right? So there’s so much information out there, and I think that we have gleaned a lot of that from there, and it continues to change, because think about your own lives. You know where you were at the age of 20, versus 40, versus 5060, it changes right your your issues change. So this is not a one and done, but where we are right now with that great wealth transfer, is where we are right. And so we need to be thinking about that certainly, certainly it will change. Um, okay, let’s see what else we have come up.
Oh. Amy, writes in, this is good, good, good, good question. Amy, I would be interested in seeing a sample. AI policy, if anyone has a resource. Amy, if you email me directly, JCP at American nonprofit Academy com, I will pull up one that a cybersecurity organization sent me, and I will send that to you and or anyone who’s interested. And this is the thing that’s really interesting. I. When, when it was shared with me, because we did an episode on the nonprofit show about this, the policy kind of got into why it’s important to report it wasn’t necessarily punitive. It was punitive if you didn’t report it. And one of the things with cybersecurity, a lot of experts will say that big issues actually take months and months and months to ferment, that someone will get access into your system, and they don’t just take your credit card information from your donors or attack your your bank accounts overnight. No, they learn your system. They watch, they see what’s going on. They they learn what the trends are, where your cash flow is, that it’s strongest, where it peaks, where it drops. And so understanding that really kind of changes the game. And if your teams understand how vital it is to speak up and to say, Hey, I might have clicked on this, or I might have given this information, I’m concerned. That’s where you want to start again. That accounting term tone at the top. We need our leaders, our C suite, our CEO, not to say that’s an IT problem. Talk to the guys in the back end of the building. No, we need to be leading out front, talking about that, so that we’re protecting our organization. So yeah, email me and I’ll pull that up, because it’s a really, really interesting question, and thank you for asking that. Okay.
Okay, got a question that it’s more of a statement trust philanthropy is an interesting concept, especially given the current national environment where major players are attempting to dismiss the good work of many nonprofits, especially those in the education and health arenas. So I love that you brought that up, and this is where I think you have more of a communications issue. And so we talk about impact, we talk about sharing data, we talk about our metrics and what we understand to be true, and how it moves our mission, and how we move our mission through this information. I believe that this is why we need to have more of a scholarly approach. We need to have partnerships with higher education. Universities across this country, really, across this world, are always looking for projects where they can investigate in a scientific and scholarly manner things and topics, and that gives you a lot of credibility. When you partner with an institute coming out of a university, it gives great practical work for those students and those professors and those colleges. So absolutely, we need to be advocating for ourselves. We advocate for our clients. I think that’s easy. We do that a lot in the nonprofit sector, but we need to advocate for ourselves. And this goes down to that labor issue. If you are working for a nonprofit and you’re facing burnout or you need more support, it goes all the way down to that level trust. Philanthropy is really about looking at things in that transparent through that transparent lens, if you will, and then pushing that information back out. Now I gotta say, sometimes we have to educate our funders to where we stand on this, and it could be a little rough, but remember we talked about this. This is the importance of having a strong relationship and understanding you know who we can talk to and how we can be honest. And so this is really interesting. Sarah writes in, do you think the new tax laws about donation deductions might help with Trend number eight, if you would have asked me this question, years ago, decades ago, I would have said, Yes, philanthropy in America is directed through the financial lens, and indeed it is. I mean, we as a sector, we gain our certification, if you will, of being an organized and accepted nonprofit through the IRS the Internal Revenue Service, don’t we? So yes, and we are different. We’re a different structure than anyone anywhere else. But I have sat across the table from incredibly wealthy donors, not as a professional fundraiser, but as a community fundraiser, boards that I’ve sat on, organizations I believed in, when I’ve looked into the eyes and asked for a multi million dollar gift, it’s from the heart. I feel like most of these donors make decisions based on their heart, and I think especially with this great wealth. Inference when you’re a younger person, you your value system, maybe might be a little different when you’re coming to the end of your journey. And not to get too heavy, you want to say, what’s your legacy, what’s your gift, what’s the import of your time on this planet? I think this is kind of where it falls. I really do, and maybe that’s just me, but I think there’s still a great emotional appeal to building that donor loyalty. And yeah, is the tax issue great, sure, but there are a lot of tax issues out there, a lot of tax benefits to doing all different things. And so for me, I believe that it’s much more of a personal issue than it is a tax issue. So that’s my opinion, and I really appreciate that you asked that another really interesting question, and we’ve only got about 10 minutes left. Somebody writes in, does volunteering as a gateway to donors? Have a specific generation or age group that engages this way more than others? Wow, what a great question. And I would say you got to back up and say, what is the activity? So for example, if you have an older demographic that doesn’t have to worry about getting up early for work the next day, doesn’t have to worry about babysitting or who’s watching the kids. They might be more interested in an evening event or black tie gala when they’re not worried about getting home. Now, if they’re super older, they’re worried about staying up late, but that’s another issue, right? So if you are looking at a demographic that has a younger interest children’s health issues that affect younger families, they’re going to be thinking about that. Where can i What can I do that I can take a stroller. What can I do where I can maybe take my dog, which is for a lot of families, is like having another sibling, right? What can I do? That’s multi generational. What can I do that, where we can bring the babies and the parents and the grandparents, and that’s why I love the community. Walk the park walk. Kind of concept you’re seeing more and more multi generational issues our families. And you know what? This is a really important thing for the older folks involved in wealth transference, because they want to to teach philanthropy to their children and their grandchildren, especially their grandchildren. And so if that is a, you know, baby, toddler, teens, tweens, college kids, you can see that’s that’s quite a gap right of interest. But I believe if you can kind of start to think and think about that, you’re going to have more opportunity to develop deeper relationships with with those types of donors, and multi generational donors, I think, are super powerful. And those funders, wealthy families that understand that and want to kind of control that through their estates, they will want to work more with organizations where they can navigate in those next generations, whether it be committee work, sometimes board work, but just actually participation. I think that’s really, really important.
Okay. Could you share more data about traditional galas sunsetting? I love that word. I have felt. I felt that for the past few years, we’ve been pushing that and pushing back away from that, but having data to back it up to my board would be fantastic. So this is one of those things, depending on where you are and what part of the country, I would reach out to those other fundraisers or leaders in your sector. If you are a member of AFP, you have an AFP chapter in your organ, in your state or your community, ask around, see what people are saying. I mean, you might have organizations that could be like, Oh my gosh. You know, our attendance is down, our donors are down, but we have done online options in addition to the live and you might find that they’re doing things differently to kind of mitigate some of those things. If your organization is frightened and justifiably so. Shifting. You also need to have something that’s going to replace it. So to go before your board or your C suite and say, Look, we want to pull back from the gala or having two galas of fall in the spring or whatever. We want to supplement it with. This call to action, or this event in case we see a drop or a leg. I think that’s healthy. I think that’s a healthy mentality anyway. But it’s not just about lopping something out, lopping something off. It’s about having another you know, Avenue so that you can navigate, you know, more opportunity. And so I think that’s really, really important.
What is the best way to go about tracking donor ages generations in order to gear the correct marketing strategies towards them? Yay, team. Great question. We could be talking about this for the next three days. And as a sector we are this has a lot to do with connecting your donors, understanding what they who they are. So many platforms right now, DonorPerfect, you can talk with them about this as well, they have data and metrics about their donors, just like what we used to call, you know, the wealth discovery that we would do about our donors, understanding who they are, where they live, where they work, and how they behave. It’s really an important strategy, and so it’s not, it’s not a one button fix. It’s really, I believe, an approach to how we’re going to think about our donors, how we’re going to put our donors into buckets. And I know sometimes we don’t like to use that, but it’s there’s no shame. And I believe it’s actually a superpower to put your to segment your donors and understand who they are and what they what they’re doing. I know some organizations that come up with what they call donor profiles, and they kind of create an avatar, if you will. I wouldn’t do more than four to seven, because it can get really cumbersome, because remember, we are a changing society. We age and so how are donors in that 2030 group. They’re going to be different when they’re in 40s and 50s, right? But as we can start to amalgamate some of those things, I think that’s really, really important. This is interesting. I see I keep seeing appeals for $19 a month. Is there a research that backs up $19 specifically? You know, I can’t name any specific research, but if I am not mistaken, I believe it was the American Cancer Society that really started pushing this $19 and I could be wrong. I’ll have to research that it sticks in the back of my mind, but basically it’s less than $2.02 $10 bills or $20 bill. And a lot of folks will say, you know, it’s, it’s less than going out to lunch on your own. And it just seems like not a lot of money. You see 1999 pricing structures, a lot of places, from going on Amazon to walking into a big box store, there’s a reason because psychologically, it comes back. So oh my gosh, you guys have been great. I so appreciate you. Know how you can probably tell how passionate I am about this. And so there’s always a lot to say. We didn’t get through all the questions, but definitely reach out. Go ahead and check out the nonprofit show. We are a daily Monday through Fridays, 930 to 10. We’re live Pacific Standard Time, and we have almost 1500 shows on our archives, so I think I’m getting the hook.
Yeah, I was kind of, I apologize for earlier you had asked if it was okay to answer questions. I’m like, I can’t find my mic to unmute myself. I did crazy, you know, I didn’t
have a problem talking. You got that?
Well, you know, in the chat, the connections that were happening. They were absolutely amazing. Because as you were covering these topics, they were sharing email addresses, because people were talking about what they do, and they’re like, what is that? How do I tell me more? So they’ve made some, some great connections in there. So, yeah, yeah, it was great. It was great. And I apologize for some that ended up coming in late, because we did take capacity. So we ran into a few people that had wait. They had to wait to get in anyway. Julia, thank you so much for this was so timely and a thoughtful presentation, you really connected the big picture trends with practical takeaways in a way that the fundraisers can really use. And we’re just grateful for your time and your expertise. And thank you to everybody else who attended too. Um, you know, I know it’s hard to take time out of your day to spend with us, but I would say that this is time well spent. So I hope you all have a wonderful afternoon or morning again, wherever you are, and we hope to see you in some future webinars. All right, thanks so much. Bye, bye, bye, bye.