Best Practices Snapshot: Learning from Donor Support Organizations’ Equity-Centered Shifts Post 2020

The Time to Act 2020 working group emerged from the Impact Driven Philanthropy Collaborative. From July 2020 to July 2021, the working group convened monthly to exchange reflections, lessons, and strategies for racially just donor education and advising in the era of COVID-19.

Following the murder of George Floyd and the nationwide reckoning with racial justice over the summer of 2020, the philanthropic sector saw a rapid rise in programming, funding, and other initiatives related to racial equity. Multiple donor-serving organizations (DSO’s) for high net wealth individuals introduced equity-themed statements, panels, book clubs, learning cohorts, pooled funds, and more. This paper seeks to reflect on the DSO sector’s response, share lessons learned, and explore the implications for the DSO ecosystem.

Principles and Practices of Impact-Driven Philanthropy

Impact-driven philanthropy is the practice of thoughtfully and intentionally using our time, talents, and resources to give in ways that advance equity, effectiveness, and systems change. These principles and practices are being developed, tested, and continually updated by the Impact-Driven Philanthropy Collaborative.

Donor Education and Organizing: A 2020 Snapshot

In the United States, nearly 80 percent of giving to nonprofits is directed by individuals. In recent decades, an ecosystem of organizations has made it their part of their missions to educate individual high-net-worth (HNW) donors on how to give their time, talents, and resources thoughtfully and intentionally to advance meaningful change on issues and in communities. In 2003, New Visions Philanthropic Research and Development conducted a landscape of donor education organizations that mapped the emergence of formal programs offered by organizations to help support donors along their philanthropic journeys and identified issues and trends in the field. In 2020, the IDPC launched an effort to update the field’s understanding of the donor support landscape. This resulting snapshot, based on data captured just before the COVID-19 pandemic, highlights what has changed since 2003 and how the donor support ecosystem is evolving.

The Landscape, Characteristics and Philanthropic Intent of the Wealthy in the US and the Top 30 Cities

The Collaborative funded market research, in partnership with WealthX, to help ground our work and to provide useful information to the many organizations seeking to find and engage high-capacity individuals in philanthropy. This research answers some key questions about the people with $30M+ net worth in the United States and shares key demographic and other information that can inform all of our work.