Fundraising Update

Welcome to Fundraising Update. This week, we dig into how nonprofits are fundraising in the new environment of federal cuts. We also look at the giving strategies of mega-donors Steve and Connie Ballmer.

I’m Rasheeda Childress, senior editor for fundraising at the Chronicle of Philanthropy. If you have ideas, comments, or questions about this newsletter, please write me.

Thanks to our sponsor DonorPerfect for supporting Fundraising Update.

The Trump administration is fighting to rescind federal funds that have already been promised and vowing to reduce spending going forward, which has nonprofits reeling. Both organizations that receive federal funding and those that don’t are looking to firm up their fundraising to secure their missions, I reported recently.

“It’s a very scary, challenging time,” says Francys Crevier, CEO of the National Council of Urban Indian Health, an organization that helps Native Americans living in urban areas. The group gets 80 percent of its funding from the federal government. Leaders thought it was reliable funding, and now the nonprofit has to pivot to keep the doors open.

Mustafa Saeed / Save the Children

How organizations are changing their fundraising strategies depends on how much they’ve been affected by current federal freezes. Nonprofits that have seen major impacts are appealing to donors at all giving levels for stopgap funding. They’re being mindful to craft appeals that don’t alienate donors or the government — and considering if they need to make long-term changes to their operations to adapt to the cuts. Organizations that don’t receive government funds are trying to help those that do and looking to shore up their own funding streams.

Many of the organizations that do international work have put out emergency calls to donors.

The International Rescue Committee, an aid organization founded by Albert Einstein and others, took its message of need directly to the public. The group put a full-page advertisement in the New York Times on March 2 asking donors to step up and give so that people don’t die from lack of support.

“One of the goals of that ad was really to raise awareness,” says Matthew Collins-Gibson, IRC’s vice president of philanthropy. “We had quite a good response from many of our donors.” He says the media attention the ad received helped drive attention to the people the organization serves. “The goal is really to focus on the impacts that our clients are facing because of these cuts and suspension of payments.”

Save the Children, a nonprofit that focuses on ensuring children grow up healthy, educated, and safe, gets about 30 percent of its global funding from the U.S. federal government. Because of the federal funding issues, it eliminated 300 of 1,000 U.S. positions through voluntary resignations or layoffs and had to close offices in some countries. In light of this, the organization is asking major donors to help preserve crucial services for children.

“We are getting some early results from donors really increasing their funding, accelerating, and making it more flexible,” says Luciana Bonifacio, chief development officer. “We are seeing some gifts in the six, seven figures coming in. So that’s very good.”

For more on how organizations are coming together and raising funds, read the rest of my story.

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Exclusive DAF Insights. I had my final practice call for the Actionable Insights Into DAF Donorswebinar, which I’ll be hosting tomorrow. The two guest speakers are Dan Heist, a professor and founder of the DAF Research Collaborative, and Trish Davis, vice president of major gifts and planned giving at Susan G. Komen. During the session, Dan mentioned that in 65 percent of DAF donation systems, the default from the provider is that the donor’s name won’t be shared. Trish has some tips to help donors remember to toggle the switch to share their info. Dan will also discuss details from a soon-to-be-released study that asked DAF donors about their motivations and preferences. Once it’s released, I’ll also be writing about the report for the Chronicle. Learn more about the webinar here.

$767 million
— How much Steve and Connie Ballmer gave to charity in 2024

When Steve Ballmer stepped down as Microsoft’s CEO in 2014, with a $23 billion fortune at age 58, his top priority for a few months was to enjoy retirement. His wife, Connie, nudged him to think about philanthropy, but he was hesitant. And then one day, Steve Ballmer let it be known that he had just leased an entire floor of an office tower in Bellevue, Wash.

“I said, ‘What!?’ Connie Ballmer recalled in a recent interview. “‘Are you kidding me? What are we doing with a whole floor?’”

Today that 30th-floor office, with its stunning view of Mount Rainier, is the home ofa low-key philanthropic giant, reports my colleague George Anders. By the Ballmers’ own tally, they’ve given away more than $3 billion in the past five years, including $767 million in 2024. The Ballmers do their giving through a donor-advised fund and don’t disclose its annual funding levels, so their charitable activity isn’t tracked in the Chronicle of Philanthropy’s Philanthropy 50 rankings. But in sheer dollar terms, the Ballmers look to be among the nation’s top 10 individual givers during the past three years.

A close look at the Ballmers’ philanthropic coming of age isn’t just a story of grants, convenings, and mission statements. It’s also the saga of a mostly successful — but sometimes bumpy — journey from naïveté to mastery. The Ballmers and nearly two dozen of their grantees and advisers spoke to the Chronicle about the personalities, ideals, and frustrations that shaped the first 10 years of decisions.

At the moment, it is unclear whether the Ballmers’ top philanthropic priority — economic mobility — will be disrupted, aided, or left untouched by the Trump administration’s whirlwind of actions related to the nonprofit sector. The Ballmer Group’s second focus area, climate-related giving, led by the Ballmers’ oldest son, Sam, could make them a powerful funder and agenda-setter in areas such as rainforest protection and global methane-emissions tracking — although, likewise, it is unknown how this line of grant making would be affected by the Trump administration’s energy and environmental positions.

For now, Steve and Connie’s response is to wait and see.

“Who’s the biggest grant maker in the country?” Steve Ballmer asked in a mid-February interview. “It’s the U.S. government. You could say some of those grants are probably okay to go away. Some of them probably aren’t.”

Before he could finish the thought, Connie Ballmer interjected: “And philanthropy cannot fill the hole.”

For more on the Ballmers and their giving strategy, read the rest of George’s article.

• Declining federal funding voluntarily. While many nonprofits are reeling from federal funding cuts, at least one is telling the federal government to keep its money, reports my colleague Alex Daniels.

  Debra Hauser is president of Advocates for Youth, which receives less than 5 percent of its budget from the federal government, advocates for young LGBTQ people and works with school districts nationwide to provide health and sex education for all adolescents. The federal payment freeze targeting DEI and programs that promote “gender ideology” was temporarily blocked, but rather than waiting for final adjudication, Hauser declined the funding.

  “You can’t effectively advocate for young people without acknowledging how racism and homophobia create additional barriers to sexual health,” she said. “By turning down the federal funding, we are saying to the young people we serve across the country: ‘We see you. We are here for you. And we won’t abandon you.’”

  For more on Advocates for Youth’s decision, read the rest of Alex’s story.

Mario Giannini gave $10 million to California State University at Long Beach. The donation will establish and endow a Master of Arts degree program in translation and interpreting within the Clorinda Donato Center for Global Romance Languages and Translation Studies, and pay for scholarships for the center’s program, faculty and staff support, research, and other programs.

Giannini is CEO of Hamilton Lane, a private equity firm in Conshohocken, Pa. He earned a bachelor’s degree in English literature from California State University at Northridge and law degrees from University of Virginia and Boston College.

For other notable gifts this week, read my colleague Maria Di Mento’s Gifts Roundup column. To learn about other big donations, see our database of gifts of $1 million or more, which is updated regularly and has data going back to 2000.

6 Tips to Land a Nonprofit Job for the First Time. Recent layoffs in widely disparate fields where jobs once seemed stable — from the federal government to Walmart headquarters to tech — might be the catalyst for some people to head for the nonprofit world, where they can follow their heart as well as earn a paycheck.

Giving Circles, Mutual Aid: Cures for the Loneliness Crisis. (Opinion) With our logic models and impact measures, pursuit of charitable good is no longer a unifying force. Giving circles and mutual aid can restore our power to create belonging for all.

Rounding up for campus charity. Many organizations use charity checkout — where patrons round up their purchase to the nearest dollar, donating the difference to a charitable cause. The University of North Florida’s Athletics department announced it’s adopting a new round-up program aimed at getting unrestricted gifts from younger donors, according to the student-run newspaper, Spinnaker.

Nick Morrow, athletic director, told the paper, “We don’t have a lot of unrestricted money that I can take and deal with our biggest needs — whether that’s taking care of a student athlete scholarship that may need help, or ‘Hey, this facility project came up, we really want to get that done.’”

The “Pitching Change” campaign allows donors to round up at 15,000 businesses. To participate, donors enroll a credit card in the program and choose whether they’d like to round up their purchases to the nearest $1 or $5, and then all eligible purchases are rounded accordingly and the donations sent to the university. (So, a $3.30 purchase would lead to $0.70 from $1 rounders, and $1.70 from $5 rounders). Participants are encouraged to set a monthly goal for giving via the rounding up program, according to the campaign FAQ section.

Morrow said the donation style would be particularly helpful for young alumni because they could “give back without being a heavy lift or burden on them.” (Spinnaker)