The donor nobody owns, the meeting you are not in, and the robot that read your 990
Five things that happened in fundraising this month, and what a small shop does about each one by Friday.
The only donor tier that grew this year is the one nobody is assigned to
RKD Group's 2026 mid-year benchmark, covering 219 nonprofits through June 30 and reported in the Chronicle of Philanthropy on September 22, has two numbers that do not belong in the same sentence. Active donor counts are at their lowest since 2019. Revenue per donor is at a ten-year high. Fewer people are giving, and the ones who stay are giving more.
The tier doing the work is the middle: gifts between $1,000 and $10,000, up 10 percent year over year. In most organizations under $5 million, nobody owns that tier. It is too big for the mail program and too small for whoever handles major gifts, so the $1,000 donor gets the $25 donor's newsletter and none of the $10,000 donor's phone calls.
The move
Pull every donor who gave between $1,000 and $10,000 in the last 18 months. Give the list to one person, by name. One call each before Thanksgiving, no ask, just what the money did. That is the whole program, and it costs nothing.
Source: RKD Group 2026 mid-year benchmark, as reported by the Chronicle of Philanthropy, September 22, 2026.
Gates closed a half-billion-dollar program. The grantees found out afterward.
Alex Daniels at the Chronicle reports that the Gates Foundation has shut its Economic Mobility and Opportunity program, roughly $500 million in grants since 2016, and is moving about $1 billion, with other funders, into AI tools through a new vehicle called NextLadder Ventures. The grantees learned about it the way grantees usually learn about strategy changes: after the decision.
This is not a story about Gates. Every funder you have runs a strategy cycle in a room you are not in, and the small shop with one dominant funder is one meeting away from a very bad year.
The move
One question on every funder call this fall: "What is changing for you next year?" Write the answer down in the funder's own words, in the same place every time. A page of those answers is the cheapest risk register a nonprofit can own.
Source: Chronicle of Philanthropy, Alex Daniels, September 2026.
A donor asked an AI about your nonprofit. It read your 990.
Candid's September 23 piece, drawing on a Blue State analysis, puts organic search traffic to nonprofit websites down 35 percent between January and October 2025 against the year before. Donors are asking AI tools about charities before they visit. Those tools read plain text. They skip the annual report because it is a PDF and the hero image because it is a picture, and they summarize the 990 instead, because the 990 is text.
The move
Three plain sentences on the homepage, not in a PDF: what you do, what $100 does, who is in charge. The robot will quote them. The donor will read the robot.
Source: Candid, September 23, 2026, citing a Blue State analysis of nonprofit website traffic.
The number one reason nonprofit staff leave is not pay
Candid revisited three years of its Social Impact Staff Retention survey on September 21. In the fall 2024 wave, 59 percent of respondents named excessive workload and insufficient support as their reason for leaving or wanting to, ahead of pay at 50 percent, and 67 percent were job-hunting or planning to within a year.
The number one thing boards ask of staff is to do more with less. Those are the same sentence, read from two chairs.
The move
Before the next board meeting, list the three tasks that ate the most staff hours last month. Ask the board which one it would fund a fix for. Retention is subtraction, not a raise.
Source: Candid, Social Impact Staff Retention survey, revisited September 21, 2026.
California: security money made permanent, the prompt-payment bill still on the desk
Governor Newsom signed AB 1836, extending the State Nonprofit Security Grant Program to offsite events such as festivals, parades and religious observances, and AB 2664, creating buffer zones around houses of worship. AB 880, the bill requiring the state to pay its nonprofit contractors promptly, was still awaiting his signature as this issue went out, with the September 30 deadline days away.
Any California nonprofit with a state contract knows the shape of the problem: payroll is on the 15th, the reimbursement arrives in 90 days, and the gap is paid out of reserves or a line of credit the board is too proud to open. The Chronicle's September 8 playbook on borrowing (DAF loans, impact investments, credit lines) is worth the read for anyone living that calendar.
The move
Open the line of credit before you need it. Borrowing against a signed contract is not failure. Missing payroll on principle is.
Sources: California legislative record for AB 1836, AB 2664 and AB 880, September 2026; Chronicle of Philanthropy, September 8, 2026.
One date
DAF Day is Thursday, October 8. Candid reported on September 16 that donor-advised fund gifts are the fastest-growing form of giving in the country. You do not need a campaign. You need one sentence on the donate page: "Giving from a donor-advised fund? Our legal name is ____ and our EIN is __-_______. Tell your sponsor." Four minutes.
Next issue
The first Pasadena Gives showcase: one organization in greater Pasadena, what it raises, how, and one thing it does after the gift that most nonprofits do not. If you run one and want to be considered, the About page says how.