Fundraising Update

Welcome to Fundraising Update. This week, we look at the provisions in the new tax bill that will affect fundraising. Plus, we dig into new research that shows donors who were encouraged to switch their giving method from a check or credit card to a donor-advised fund, on average, gave gifts twice as big as their previous donations.

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 domestic-policy bill that President Trump signed on Friday will add new stresses to nonprofits already reeling from executive orders in the first five months of his presidency, reports my colleague Ben Gose.

The bill will cut nearly $1 trillion from Medicaid over 10 years and slash billions from food-assistance programs — hurting the poorest Americans who many charities serve — while revamping giving incentives in ways that could make fundraising less predictable.

Architect of the Capitol

Even though nonprofit advocates ultimately won on the item they had invested in the most — a charitable incentive for everyday donors — that victory seemed hollow in the face of a lot of bad news. Akilah Watkins, Independent Sector’s CEO, didn’t get around to celebrating the deduction for individual givers until the fourth paragraph of her statement about the legislation.

Instead, she acknowledged upfront that the bill would “hurt the work of our sector and make it harder to meet the needs of those we serve.”

Here are some of the major provisions affecting charities and foundations in what was originally called the Big Beautiful Bill. It will:

Enable everyone to take a charitable deduction. Only about 10 percent of taxpayers itemize their taxes — which means most of the remaining 90 percent get no tax benefit from their giving. The law will fix that by allowing all taxpayers to deduct a portion of their charitable giving — up to $1,000 for individuals and $2,000 for married couples.

Limit the value of tax write-offs for the wealthiest donors. The legislation will help pay for the deduction for people who don’t itemize by reducing giving incentives for the wealthy people who do itemize. The itemizers will receive no tax benefit until their gifts exceed 0.5 percent of adjusted gross income. And the wealthiest donors — who pay tax at the top marginal rate of 37 percent — will be limited to a deduction of just 35 percent, meaning that a $100,000 gift will yield a deduction of just $35,000, down from $37,000 under current law.

Add a new hurdle for corporate giving tax breaks. Companies will have to give at least 1 percent of their taxable income to charity before they can begin taking any deduction for charitable giving. Some giving experts have speculated that this provision would encourage large, visible corporations to give more — but it could just as likely prompt smaller companies, with slimmer profit margins, to give up charitable giving altogether. The median company gave under 1 percent of pre-tax profits in 2023, according to Chief Executives for Corporate Purpose.

For more on the bill, read all of Ben’s story. If you want to go deeper, read Ben’s reporting on independent analyses of two provisionsthat made the final bill and how they would negatively impact giving.

100%
— The percentage increase in gift size by the median donor who converted from giving by check to giving via a donor-advised fund

The Public Theater in New York had gotten gifts from donor-advised funds before, but it hadn’t prioritized appealing for DAF gifts, says Shayla Titley, director of patron programs and services

“There have always been people who have been giving contributions through donor-advised funds, but that was just really of their own volition,” Titley told me. “We weren’t actively talking about it in any of our communications.We decided to put more intention behind our donor-advised funds promotion and marketing.”

Fundraisers tweaked a direct-mail campaign, specifically asking for DAF contributions, which resulted in 23 of the 91 gifts made coming from DAFs.

“For a quarter of the gifts that came in to be from donor-advised funds — that was significant,” Titley says. “And then 11 of those 23 were people who had never given higher than three figures. Some had only given $100. But because they used their DAF, they were able to jump up and say, ‘Yes, I can give you $5,000.’”

The Public Theater is one of 32 nonprofits whose giving was analyzed in the “DAF Fundraising Report 2025,” produced by the DAF payment tool company Chariot and the fundraising consulting firm K2D Strategies. Across the research, like at the Public Theater, most donors gave more when using their DAF.

“The median change in someone’s giving once they started using a DAF was 100 percent, meaning half of your converted DAF donors are doubling their support to your organization,” says Mitch Stein, head of strategy at Chariot.

For more on this research, read my entire story.

• Stepping up to fund DEI, women. Women funders focused on equity are revamping their giving strategies, as financially imperiled nonprofits face a series of federal policy changes that attempt to defund and ban DEI programs. In some cases, the women funders are increasing their giving to existing grantees and expanding the causes they support, reports my colleague Stephanie Beasley.

  Women Moving Millions, a New York City-based funders group, is the latest to take the temperature of philanthropists. In an internal survey of 40 of its 125 active members, the majority said they were “deeply worried” about the impacts of the current political environment on their grantees and were changing their philanthropy to help organizations fill funding gaps.

  “We were hearing from our membership that they were increasing their gifts — that they were working in support of their grantee partners, that they were investing more locally,” said CEO Sarah Haacke Byrd. “We wanted to do the survey so that we could understand the full scope of response.” For more on how these funders are giving differently, read the rest of Stephanie’s article.

Helen and Arthur Spurr Jr. left $15 million to the Virginia-Maryland College of Veterinary Medicine to establish the Helen Dessin Spurr and Frank Arthur Spurr Jr. Endowed Research Fund for Domestic Canine and Feline Pets. The fund will support clinical trials and the development of new treatments and diagnostic procedures for dogs and cats.

Helen Dessin Spurr worked as a systems engineer for IBM for 38 years before retiring in 1984. She died in 2023 at 98. Her husband, Arthur Spurr Jr., was a telecommunications executive. He worked for AT&T in New York and for the C&P Telephone Companies. He died in 2011 at 87.

For other notable gifts, 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.

How Small Nonprofits Can Run a Strong Capital Campaign: 8 Tips. Nowadays groups of all sizes are pulling off multiyear drives. Here’s what you need to know to succeed and how to get started.

Our Funding Was Frozen by the Trump Administration. Here’s How We’re Fighting Back. (Opinion) We learned that staying silent amid baseless lies and attacks only makes matters worse.

Ford revamps its corporate philanthropy. At a time when corporate philanthropy feels precarious thanks to new tax legislation and an uncertain economy, the Ford Motor Co., has announced it’s revamping its corporate philanthropy, according to the Detroit Free Press.

The new Ford Building Together philanthropy program gives employees more paid time off to volunteer (increasing from 16 hours to 56 hours), gets its national dealership network more involved, and loans company vehicles to nonprofits in need.

“We know if we brought the whole power of the organization together we can have a better impact,” Mary Culler, president of Ford Philanthropy, told the Detroit Free Press. “The goal here is to think about disaster relief and community building. Imagine when you have a disaster and you’re trying to build resilience in a community and every dealer in the country did a blood drive? What an impact that would have! So this is about networking.” (Detroit Free Press)