Is It Really a Generosity Crisis—or Are We Facing a Crisis of Depth in Nonprofit?
We keep calling it a generosity crisis.
In Q1 of 2025, the Fundraising Effectiveness project reported that total dollars raised rose ~3.6% over Q1 2024, but the number of donors declined by ~1.3%
Not just last year, but for YEARS donation rates have been falling. And now even big funders are pulling out. Everyone’s nervous. The narrative floating around the nonprofit sector is that people just aren’t as generous as they used to be.
But I’ve been wondering—what if that’s not quite it?
What if we’re not facing a crisis of generosity at all…
What if we’re facing a crisis of depth?
A Different Kind of Problem
In my work building The Nonprofit Hive and supporting hundreds of nonprofit professionals in 1:1 connection, I keep hearing the same thing in different ways:
“Our donors feel far away.”
“We’ve lost the personal relationships.”
“People used to care more.”
But people DO still care. In fact, small moments of support and solidarity are happening everywhere—volunteers stepping up, monthly donors giving quietly, advocates sharing causes with their networks. Between September 2022 and September 2023, about 28.3% of U.S. adults (75.7 million people) volunteered formally through an organization. This is up from 23.2% in 2021 (!).
To me it’s clear that we can’t just say that it’s the giving that’s disappearing in this sector; the connective tissue that gets people to care in the first place has been eroding. And we might be to blame.
We’ve automated, optimized, and scaled our communications to the point that they often feel… hollow.
We’ve chased reach instead of resonance.
And when we lose the depth, we lose the glue that holds generosity together.
What a Crisis of Depth Looks Like
It looks like “performance” newsletters that no one opens. (and even if you did, you don’t feel “seen” by)
Donor events that are built to be exclusionary, isolating younger generations of donors and those without the $$ to be considered valuable.
Calls to action that always feel like an ad because they plan to “sell” you on donating.
Staff burnout because engagement feels transactional and thankless.
And board meetings where community insights are missing from strategy.
It looks like major gifts programs built on a few whales—with no relational web underneath to catch us when they leave.
This great article from the team at Candid with reflections on the FEP report stated that in Q4 of 2024, the number of total donors dropped ~4.5%, with a particularly steep 8.8% drop among micro donors ($1‑100).
Let’s call this what it is. It’s not just a lack of generosity.
It’s a lack of relationship infrastructure.
Why the Crisis of Depth is Happening
There are good reasons we’ve gotten here.
- Digital tools have made it easier to reach thousands of people at once—but harder to create the kind of intimacy that used to define nonprofit work.
- Funders demand metrics that are fast and scalable—not long-game community health.
- Too many teams are doing too much, with too little, too fast.
Having worked across marketing and tech in this sector the promise that tech would “free up time” for nonprofiteers to do the deep work of relationship building has been the biggest lie we continue to tell ourselves.
We KNOW what it takes to create community in our heart of hearts (nonprofit used to be better at it than anyone). But now Nike runs (intentional pun) around the majority of nonprofits with its own loyalty program and ecosystem.
Nike has built a loyalty membership ecosystem spanning several apps: the main Nike App, Nike Run Club, Nike Training Club, and SNKRS. Each caters to different athlete/sneaker‑lifestyle touchpoints…..and yet we have convinced ourselves that a thank you email is going to be enough to keep a donor for year two. That wealth screening alone will help us find our next major donor…
All this to be said, we are taking the “easy” road in nonprofit, heavily relying on a jumble of technical solutions that require human manpower to maintain because it gives us metrics that are easier to measure than the “vibe” of our donor base.
We are out there often rushing the ask.
And the anecdote I keep feeling from nonprofit professionals is that so much of it feels like busy work that isn’t building something REAL. And so they burn out.
What’s Working Instead
I’ve seen what happens when we build differently.
At The Nonprofit Hive, we’ve made one-to-one connection the center of the experience. It’s not always flashy. But it’s sticky. People return because they feel seen. They feel useful. They feel like part of something. They are getting depth by choosing to be an active participant in something meaningful.
Other organizations are leaning into this too:
- The Sydney Children’s Hospital Foundation saw a dramatic increase in campaign success by using storytelling and direct, community-rooted digital engagement.
- Patagonia has built fierce brand loyalty not with billboards, but with deep, grassroots relationships.
- Chive Charities implemented a donor retention strategy that connects donations directly to individual recipient stories and personal touches like texts, handwritten notes, and long-term loyalty recognition. Their monthly retention rate jumped from 93% in 2017 to over **98%, nearly unheard of in the sector. That depth of engagement—making donors feel seen and reminding them consistently of their impact—is what keeps them coming back.
Depth builds resilience.
Connection builds commitment.
What We Can Do
We can start small—but intentionally. Here are five things we can do right now to prioritize depth over reach:
1. Prioritize listening over broadcasting
Instead of pushing out more content or announcements, build in systems to receive feedback, questions, or stories from your community.
- Example: Launch a quarterly “Community Pulse” survey, not just to gather stats but to collect open-text responses. Then host a short Zoom recap session to share what you heard and what you’ll do with it.
2. Build systems that nurture mid-level and grassroots donors—not just top-tier funders
So many nonprofit CRM systems are optimized for major donors—but what if your $10/month giver stayed for 10 years? That’s deep value.
- Example: Create a monthly donor welcome journey that includes an intro video from staff or program participants, a surprise handwritten note at the 6-month mark, and a story-driven impact update at one year.
3. Make relational engagement part of your operations, not just your marketing
When connection lives solely with communications staff, it stays surface-level. Everyone—from program to finance—can help build belonging.
- Example: Train program staff to share short updates or personal reflections that can be used in donor storytelling, and invite a few donors into occasional “feedback huddles” with different teams.
4. Measure belonging. Measure participation. Measure stories—not just clicks
Clicks are easy to measure, but they don’t capture what’s resonating or how people feel. We need new engagement metrics that center on connection.
- Example: After events or campaigns, ask participants how they felt (e.g. seen, proud, informed), what they’d tell a friend, and if they’d return. Look for patterns that tell a deeper story than attendance alone.
5. Make time for the quiet work of connection
Relationships take time. Make space for rituals that are meaningful even if they aren’t scalable.
- Example: Build a monthly “Connection Hour” into your team calendar where staff do outreach: thank-you calls, personal check-ins, or spotlight a member story on social media written in first-person.
If we build communities where people are more than dollar signs, the generosity will follow.
The Heart of Nonprofit Work
Nonprofits were never meant to be marketing machines.
They’re meant to be ecosystems of care and action.
The roots of philanthropy go far deeper than fundraising strategy. The word itself comes from the Greek philanthrōpía—literally, “love of mankind.” In 1889 a famous philanthropist wrote, “the man who dies thus rich dies disgraced.” Giving wasn’t meant to be transactional; it was always intended to be transformational—for the giver, for the receiver, and for society at large.
Have we lost touch with that?
Now feels like the time to reclaim what giving was always meant to be: human, relational, and reciprocal.
So maybe it’s time we stopped asking: “How do we get people to give?”
And started asking: “How do we help people feel connected enough to care?”
Because when we bring depth back, generosity doesn’t have to be a crisis.
It becomes a natural outcome of belonging.
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Tasha Van Vlack is the co-founder of The Nonprofit Hive. Her happy place is building community, talking nonprofit work/marketing/parenting and meeting new people.
Being a cheerleader for nonprofiteers is where Tasha has found her niche – she hopes that by providing a space for connection, nonprofit work will become more collaborative and supportive.