I mean it’s not like I’m holding a can on the side of the road, but….fundraising definitely feels like that. Especially when trying to raise money with rich people they make it seem like you’re asking for an investment to a business pitch, and it’s like no we’re trying to feed some kids starving on section 8 in Detroit and actually develop proper structures. At the end of the day I never feel a way or take it to heart because you work hard for your money decide what you would like to do with it the only thing that really tipped over the scale for me was this one rich guy proposed he’ll give me a big donation I just have to send half of it back so he can still cover his own rear with his taxes and im like no you’re literally sitting on millions and you’re still greedy enough to try to be shiesty. But yeah that’s all I had to say it’s definitely energy draining.

I’ve been supporting a couple of men doing mission work in rural Kenya for a while now, and before that I gave the usual way, through larger organisations. The difference in what I hear back has taught me more about the donor side of this than anything I read.

The common assumption when a small field worker goes quiet is that the work stalled or the money drifted. In my experience it is almost never that. It is usually one of four things.

The first is cost. In a lot of rural areas, sending photos and video eats mobile data, and data is paid for out of the same small budget as everything else. A supporter asking for “more updates” is, without realising it, asking for a line item nobody funded.

The second is fear of the boring report. Field workers learn quickly that donors respond to breakthroughs and crises. So in a normal week, when the work is just steady (the same people meeting, the same repairs, the same visits) they send nothing, because nothing feels worth reporting. Those normal weeks are exactly the ones a supporter needs to see to trust the work.

The third is format mismatch. Many of the people doing the most practical work are not writers. A monthly newsletter is a real burden. A voice note or one photo with a sentence is not.

The fourth is reporting load that does not match the gift. Restricting a small gift to one narrow use, then asking for receipts for every item, can cost the worker more hours than the gift was worth.

What changed things for me was agreeing on the update before giving, not after. One photo and one sentence, roughly weekly, in whatever app they already use. Covering the data cost outright. Giving more of it unrestricted once trust was built. And telling them plainly that the ordinary weeks are the ones I want to hear about.

The updates I value most now are fairly dull. The same faces a few months apart, a roof that was half done and then finished, a meeting that kept happening. That steady record has told me more about whether the money is working than any polished annual report did.

Most of the silence people complain about in giving is designed into the arrangement from the start. It can usually be designed out just as easily.

From October 2025:

Over the years, a genteel nonprofit organization called the Trust for the National Mall has raised money to help care for the cherry trees dotting the Tidal Basin. It upgraded the U.S. Park Police stables on the National Mall and hosted pickleball games on the grassy expanse between American monuments.

Now it has a new assignment: handling the millions of dollars pouring in for President Donald Trump’s gilded White House ballroom.

The nonpartisan group is serving as the steward for what Trump has said is more than $350 million in private donations from individuals, foundations and corporations to remake part of the old East Wing into a 90,000-square-foot ballroom.

More from NBC News.

The nonprofit organization collecting and managing private donations for the White House East Wing ballroom project is the Trust for the National Mall.

From the HIll (links are the Hill's)

Major donors to President Trump’s White House ballroom project were revealed in a new list obtained by The Washington Post on Thursday.

According to the Post, the list reveals more than $330 million in private donations to fund the ballroom effort, most of which was donated prior to the demolition of the East Wing in October 2025.

The top donors include the Adelson Family Foundation, a pro-Israel nonprofit, as well as major tech companies Apple and Nvidia, all of which gave $25 million each.

Lockheed Martin, Microsoft and Palantir donated $10 million each, Google gave $22 million through a lawsuit settlement with Trump, and Meta and Amazon each gave $5 million.

The Washington Post noted that Trump himself was not listed as a donor to the ballroom despite past statements that he would partially fund the project.

“The White House Ballroom is being privately funded by many generous Patriots, Great American Companies, and, yours truly,” Trump wrote on Truth Social at the time of the demolition. 

Trump had hoped to raise $400 million to fund the ballroom, and the Post’s list shows he is short of that.

To help protect charitable nonprofits and the generous donors who support them, the National Council of Nonprofits and its network of state and regional associations of nonprofits have published four principles for ethical online fundraising platforms:

https://councilofnonprofits.org/articles/protecting-donors-nonprofits-and-communities-unethical-online-fundraising-platforms

Phil Buchanan sits down with Bryan Stevenson, founder and executive director of the Equal Justice Initiative, for a wide-ranging conversation on what this moment of backlash demands of individual and institutional donors. Stevenson places the current retreat from racial equity commitments within a much longer arc: the recurring pattern stretching from Reconstruction through Jim Crow to today, in which periods of racial justice progress in America are met by a deliberate counter-narrative, and progress stalls until a new narrative takes hold.

Drawing on his own personal history, Stevenson makes the case that philanthropy's work on racial equity has too often been reactive rather than grounded in real historical learning, and argues that donors who invest in understanding this history will be far better positioned to fund effective, defensible strategies, from addressing the legacy of Black displacement during the Great Migration to reframing what accountability should have looked like after the Voting Rights Act passed. He also responds directly to donors who worry that a racial equity focus alienates potential allies, distinguishing the problems of poverty from the problems of racial bias while insisting the two shouldn't be conflated.

Stevenson reflects on his years serving on the board of the Ford Foundation, and what he learned about the gap between funders and grantees, and why he believes that foundation boards need more representation from people with direct nonprofit experience.

Really new to the philanthropy world as a donor, but spent plenty of time running a microscopic arts nonprofit (city and state grant funded, mostly).

I’m seeing posts that it is hard for small nonprofits to handle donations from a DAF? Could someone help me understand?

Also, after administering teeny grants for 10 years, as a donor I’m also really attracted to direct giving to unofficial causes that don’t have the official nonprofit structure (lots of art events don’t though they provide the same community benefit that they would if they did have all the paperworkey things). Because just the idea of making an artist provide me a rubric to prove people gain something from art, like I just can’t be down with that.

My ideal target is $100k giving per year, through DAF and small non-nonprofit gifts. So, what is the DAF best for? Is it easy? Or do you wish you’d chosen something different?