March 2026 | Thought Leadership Articles

A New Generation of Giving: Five Philanthropic Trends We Are Watching in 2026

Funding for the social sector is clearly shrinking, and current philanthropic models cannot fill the gap. Globally, official development assistance fell to 0.21% of Gross National Income in 2025, with projections suggesting a 40-60% decrease over the next 5 years.[1] In the United States, federal cuts eliminated over 22,000 non-profit jobs in the first half of 2025, threatening programming across health, education, and employment.[2] While philanthropy cannot fill the gap left by these cuts (if all private and community foundation assets were liquidated, they would cover only 79 days of the federal budget), its role in seeding innovation, strengthening systems, and supporting those who are often left out is more important than ever.[3] Yet philanthropic institutions today, by and large, are not structured to meet the challenges at hand. $251.5B sits idle in donor advised funds, and less than half of the 40 largest US foundations meet the 5% annual payout minimum, while the rest sits in endowments that often aren’t aligned to impact goals.[4]

However, new actors, with appetite for a new kind of giving, are poised to shift the landscape. Family offices are expanding their grantmaking capacity, with the share distributing over $1 million annually increasing from 23% to 36% over the past decade. Additionally, 71% of family foundations spend above the mandatory 5% minimum, signaling both scale and desire for impact.[5] At the same time, USD $124T is expected to flow to the next generation of potential donors by 2048.[6] These donors ground their giving in personal values and a belief they can spark social change, rather than personal alignment with individual organizations, which guided prior generations.[7] Women, who are poised to control a greater proportion of this wealth transfer, have also been shown to both give greater shares of their assets, and to a broader set of organizations, than men.[8]

At the same time, we’re seeing structural shifts in giving that, if adopted more widely among the next generation of philanthropists, have the potential to redefine how philanthropy operates, and the impact it can have. Five trends—flexibility, proximity, leverage, durability, and breadth—are already starting to transform how people give. As the next generation of philanthropists shape their plans, accelerating these approaches has the potential to transform philanthropy to be more fit-for-purpose for today’s, and tomorrow’s, social challenges.

Flexibility: Shifting to more unrestricted, flexible, multi-year funding practices

The shift: Social sector leaders have long called for more unrestricted, multi-year, flexible funding, with lower application and reporting requirements on grantees. While progress has been slow, the recent crises facing the social sector seem to have catalyzed a shift: 38% of philanthropic funding went to general operating support in 2025, after staying flat around 20% for nearly two decades.[9] At the same time, funders like MacKenzie Scott are demonstrating the potential for “windfall grants” that provide no-strings-attached support without a lengthy application process.[10]
Why it matters: Flexible funding allows organizations to adapt quickly while building organizational capacity for the long-term, and to focus on their mission and communities rather than meeting donor requirements. In one analysis, 69% of MacKenzie Scott grantees reported significantly increased ability to pursue opportunities that were not possible with prior funding.[11]
What’s next: Despite some progress, many donors still harbor concerns about accountability and measurability of impact with unrestricted grants. 75% of funders surveyed expressed hesitation about nonprofits’ ability to manage large unrestricted funds—despite this not being reflected in nonprofits’ self-reporting—and one-third noted concerns about learning and accountability without clear reporting requirements.[12] As new donors emerge, they can continue to re-shape the narrative of accountability (i.e., accountability to whom?) and experiment with new ways of working with grantees to measure outcomes that do not rely on prescriptive, programmatic grants or heavy, unfunded reporting requirements.

Proximity: Moving decision-making closer to communities

The shift: Philanthropy is beginning to move from top-down grantmaking to community-led decision-making. 83% of large US foundations now report some direct stakeholder participation; however only 10% have fully transferred decision making power to grantees or community members.[13] New participatory grantmaking models facilitate this shift: for example, the Women Donors Network’s Abortion Bridge Collaborative fund has channeled over $10M to frontline reproductive justice organizations, guided by an Advisory Council of movement leaders.[14]
Why it matters: Evidence shows that proximity is a consistent predictor of trust and impact, with community-led models producing better and more sustainable outcomes because of local partners’ deeper knowledge of community needs and solutions.[15]
What’s next: Redistributing power requires existing funders to re-think embedded norms around control and expertise and establish trust with communities, both of which take time.[16] As new donors come onto the scene, they can invest intentionally in participatory and community-driven grantmaking practices from Day 1—designing these structures early to avoid the need for costly culture change or dismantling entrenched power dynamics later.

Leverage: Increasing collective giving

The shift: Aggregating capital through giving circles, pooled funds, or donor networks is becoming a popular way for donors to increase impact. Participation has grown rapidly, with the number of collective giving circles tripling between 2016 and 2023.[17] These models are often used to bring in new donors, offering community-building, education, and an easy vehicle for channeling funding, including to grassroots organizations that may be harder to identify. For example, Adeso’s Proximate Fund, launching in 2026 in partnership with African Philanthropy Forum and NEAR, will channel capital to African-led civil society and social entrepreneurs through country-level hubs, while strengthening philanthropic infrastructure on the continent.[18]
Why it matters: Collective models allow donors to achieve scale and impact that would be difficult individually, without needing to build the infrastructure to source and manage individual grants. Grantees rank collaborative funds in the top 15% of funders for impact.[19]
What’s next: Collaboratives can be a powerful funding channel, if they are manageable for grantees to navigate. Today, grantees rank collaboratives lower than other funders for clarity about application steps, eligibility, and timelines.[20] The next generation of donors should back collaboratives with clear governance, streamlined grant processes, and shared infrastructure that reduces friction for grantees.

Durability: Funding fields, not just projects

The shift: Donors are moving beyond filling immediate gaps and supporting specific projects to fund field-building. This includes deliberate investment in the relational, operational, and financial infrastructure needed for multiple organizations in a space to drive collective impact. For example, as part of its planned 2030 spend down, Tara Health has invested both funding and staff capacity in four anchor organizations that focus on strengthening ecosystems: for birth justice, reproductive justice, workplace equity, and corporate engagement. [21]
Why it matters: Many challenges—policies, incentives, and resource control—sit above and across individual organizational mandates, but collective action cannot happen without intentional investment and support. Field-level architecture that fosters connectivity across organizations working towards shared goals can build stability, resilience, and collective power, which are even more critical in uncertain environments.[22]
What’s next? Donors can experiment with new ways to resource field-level change, including through intermediaries that are building shared infrastructure. New donors can also consider how they structure their own incentives towards durability. Spend-down models, for example, which have risen in popularity (from 9 to 13% of family foundations over the past 5 years), can encourage larger, more catalytic ‘bets’ on field-building, prompting donors to think about how to frontload investments in structures that will have lasting impact, without needing to set up foundations that operate in perpetuity.[23]

Breadth: Combining investment tools

The shift: Donors are increasingly combining philanthropic dollars with tools such as impact investing, C4 funding, and mission-aligned endowment investments to pursue their mission across multiple levers. For example, Pivotal deploys grantmaking, investments, and advocacy funding in concert to advance gender equity.[24] 26% of endowments, foundations, and charities use impact investing to align their portfolio with their missions.[25]
Why it matters: Multiple tools enable funders to pursue mission-related outcomes alongside financial returns and expand options to influence policy.[26]
What’s next: Donors raise concerns about impact on returns and limited familiarity with legal structures of multi-entity work, leading to risk-aversion.[27] Overcoming this will require upfront investment in legal and operational education needed to confidently deploy capital beyond traditional grantmaking.

Next generation donors have an opportunity to seize this moment to adopt more inclusive, accelerated giving models that are suited to today’s realities. These shifts are powerful individually, but even more so when they are adopted in tandem—and new donors have the opportunity to design their giving to be fit-for-purpose from Day 1—both for their individual giving goals and for the needs of the field. By leaning into flexible giving, community-led decisions, collective giving, field-building, or diverse funding tools, they can ensure their resources build systems that deliver lasting impact.

[1] Dalberg Analysis, 2025; Global Policy Journal, 2025; OEDC, 2025

[2] The Chronicle of Philanthropy, 2025; Grant Station, 2025

[3] Dorothy A. Johnson Center for Philanthropy, 2025; Giving USA, 2025; NPR, 2026

[4] Charity Watch, 2024; National Philanthropic Trust, 2024; Inside Philanthropy, 2024

[5] The NonProfit Times, 2024

[6] Fortune, 2025

[7] Fidelity Charitable, 2025

[8] Stanford Social Innovation Review, 2025

[9] Grantmakers for Effective Organizations, 2025

[10] Devex, 2022

[11] The Center for Effective Philanthropy, 2023

[12] The Center for Effective Philanthropy, 2023