The Week After: Three Takeaways from Giving USA 2026

I always wait about a week after Giving USA drops before I write anything about it.

Part of that is practical — the first wave of coverage is people racing to post the headline number, and I’d rather not add to the noise. But mostly it’s because the most valuable thing we can do as fundraisers with a report like this is slow down and think critically about what it actually means for our relationships with donors and our fundraising strategy. This year’s report has some really interesting things in it — some of which we’ve been predicting, and some surprises.  Here are the top three things I think fundraisers should take from last week’s release.

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1. The Great Wealth Transfer Is Here — and the Time Is Now to Talk With Families Who Have Generational Wealth

The massive increase in bequest giving this year — a 19.7% surge to boost the giving total of $62.19 billion, the most dramatic swing for in the entire report — shows us that something we’ve been talking about has arrived.

The Great Wealth Transfer — the movement of wealth from the remaining Baby Boomers and elder Gen X members to their Millennial and Gen Z children — is having a massive impact on generosity. Historically, around 6% of wealth has gone to charity as it changes hands, and I’m betting in this wave it will be more. As others have said, you should definitely invest significantly in planned giving outreach to your donors. But please don’t do this by just buying a canned solution to market bequests, or thinking that just hiring a planned giving officer is the answer.

Every member of your development team should be knowledgeable about planned giving — not necessarily an expert, but knowledgeable enough to have a conversation with donors. You should also be incorporating gift planning into any approach to a donor who is making a significant gift. In some cases, that comes in the form of what we call the “combo ask” — where the current gift and the future gift are part of the same conversation. An example of this is seeking a bequest endowment gift (maybe a scholarship), and asking the donor to also fund the first years with cash up front so they can see immediate impact while they are still here.

Beyond that: develop relationships not only with your donors, but with their adult children, their relatives, and the people involved in things like their family foundation. That includes their financial planners. 

Yep, I mean take meetings with financial planners as a fundraiser- get the donors, their children, and the planner on a Zoom as you close the gift. A bonus is that strong relationships with financial planners can open conversations with other clients in their portfolio who are thinking about generosity. You become part of the philanthropic ecosystem, not just an “asker” — and you’ll also gain fluency in the complex financial vehicles that high-net-worth, multi-generational wealth families use. That knowledge is good for you and for your donors.

Key strategy: Invest in planned giving, but don’t do it on autopilot.

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Estimated Giving in the US by source for 2025. You can download the full infographic from Giving USA and subscribe to full report at givingusa.org

2. Giving Is Purpose Driven and Strategic — and Donors Are More Than ATMs

The massive growth in strategic giving vehicles — donor-advised funds and family foundations — evident in this year’s data and continuing a decade-long trend, didn’t happen by accident.

The first reason we saw this growth is honestly that the financial companies involved just marketed the heck out of them. Fidelity, Vanguard, and prominent community foundations saw the opportunity and worked hard to get people signed up. In addition, it’s pretty clear from conversations I’ve had with financial planners that these vehicles gave them an inroad to talk with clients about generosity in a way that fits the financial planner mindset: strategically, with an eye toward preserving and growing wealth. The majority of high-net-worth, generational-wealth families now use some form of strategic giving vehicle.

I’ll say something that might be uncomfortable: I have to attribute at least some of this shift to the failure of the fundraising world to focus more on impact storytelling and purposeful, emotionally resonant approaches to donors. I could have done better at that as a gift officer. We helped create this problem. Donors moved toward strategic vehicles in part because we weren’t compelling enough in our asks — we didn’t meet their purpose, so they punted the money down the road. It’s time to fulfill our promise of a meaningful, joyful giving experience.

The good news is that you can meet those donors where they are now.  There is no evidence that a DAF donor wants to be anonymous at any higher rate than other donors — you should be tracking down DAF gifts and finding out who directed them so you can thank them. Remember: your stewardship program, as long as you’re not giving away anything tangible that messes with tax deductibility, is entirely up to you. You can credit, thank, and express gratitude in many ways, and you should do it well…a lot.

Then, follow up with those strategic donors through impact-driven communications about why their gift matters. Tell the story. Tug the heartstrings. But when we see the majority of major givers essentially forming strategic alliances to be generous, we should follow that energy and build upon it. 

Key strategy: Make it easy for donors to give via DAFs and family foundations — and thank donors who use strategic giving vehicles directly and creatively.

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Estimated giving destination by cause area for 2025, from Giving USA

3. Education Is the Big Winner — and Every Nonprofit Should Pay Attention

Education giving reached $92 billion in 2025 — the highest inflation-adjusted level ever recorded. Higher education and private schools are setting records for fundraising. We have seen more billion-dollar-plus campaigns in higher education, and there are institutions seriously considering a future where tuition is no longer part of their balance sheet. Generosity is going to change education in the US – permanently.

Even as the country grows increasingly skeptical of higher education — asking for reform, questioning the return on investment — major donors are not walking away. If anything, they’re leaning in. A significant part of what drove education’s 11.7% growth this year was transformational mega-gifts: donors like MacKenzie Scott – who is supporting HBCUs, Ruth Gottesman — whose $1 billion gift made the Albert Einstein College of Medicine in the Bronx tuition-free for all students — and Phil and Penny Knight’s investment at Oregon are reshaping what’s possible at the top end of educational philanthropy. Their gifts signal something important: major donors believe in education as the primary vehicle for making the world better.

Higher education fundraisers: you should not be sitting on your hands right now. I’ve had numerous conversations with clients over the past six months where they are “waiting to get some stuff in order” before launching a campaign or expanding major gift conversations. That has to stop. Yes, you need a quality CRM. Yes, you need a functioning fundraising team and the infrastructure to run a campaign. But there is nothing stopping your senior leaders — even if the team is short-staffed and the systems aren’t perfect — from reaching out right now to your highest-net-worth families and having a real conversation about strategic partnership. The culmination on the gift may come years down the road. But the relationship has to start somewhere. The biggest risk in higher education fundraising today is focusing on fundraiser-facing internal issues while donors who are ready to talk wait for someone to call.

And for organizations outside of higher education: think about the educational components of your mission. Donors want to make the world a better place, and education has always been the key driver of that goal. Take a look at what organizations like Sim 4 STEM are doing — using racing simulators and the Indianapolis Motor Speedway to spark girls’ interest in STEM fields and motorsports careers. Donors respond to that kind of creative, mission-adjacent education work. Whatever your sector, talk about what you’re doing to educate people around your cause — in the community, in schools, with national partners.

Key strategy: Over $1 trillion is projected to be given to education in the next 15 years. It’s time to get in front of education-focused donors with meaningful, purposeful, and bold opportunities to make a difference. Dream with your donors and the gifts will follow.

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Focus on Partnerships, Not Platitudes With Your Donors

The wrap-up here is something you’ve heard from me before: we should be thinking about our donors as collaborative partners, not transactional givers.

The key shift the data is showing us — in Giving USA 2026, in the 2025 Bank of America Study of Philanthropy, in everything I see in client work — is that the road to massively increasing your fundraising results runs through purpose and meaning. The biggest gifts today come when we lock in on the multi-generational values of a family and find where those values and our mission genuinely intersect. That means reducing friction so it’s easy to give in whatever form a donor prefers. It means marketing in smart, data-driven ways that cut through the noise. And it means doing those things in a way that frees up your time for the one thing only you can do: building real personal relationships with individual donors and families — at scale.

We’ve been given a gift here. The rise of AI and marketing automation creates a tremendous opportunity to reach donors in meaningful, data-driven and efficient ways. We are in a tech revolution in fundraising. The time and energy that these new tools free up should go directly into personal relationships with donors. That’s where the next billion for your cause comes from.