02/08/2023

The Future of Giving

Reviewing positive trends and concerns

We suspect no one will ever look back on the 2020s as boring. This decade started with a tectonic reckoning sparked by a global pandemic that revealed the deep inequities in the United States. This was followed by the police murder of George Floyd, a tipping point that revitalized the racial justice movement.

Meanwhile, in the same year, an unprecedented number of billion-dollar natural disasters (22) struck the United States, while climate change and political instability continued to wreak havoc worldwide. These events affected every part of society—including how Americans give. As a result, donors have been compelled to revisit and revise some long-standing practices that have kept philanthropy from delivering on its full promise to people and communities.

Change efforts already underway in 2020 accelerated and spread. New questions and provocations pushed us all to reconsider the role of giving. While there had been a meaningful but relatively small movement toward equity in philanthropy, many more were convinced through the larger racial justice movement to consider equity—or the lack thereof—in every aspect of the sector.

Please select this link to continue reading this article from the Stanford Social Innovation Review