Visionary Voices is philanthropy.org’s editorial forum for serious ideas, hard-earned lessons, and informed perspectives shaping the future of philanthropy. It is a place for practitioners, leaders, and thinkers to examine what works, what doesn’t, and why.
Contributions explore strategy, governance, donor engagement, ethics, and the structural forces influencing philanthropy today. Articles are grounded in experience, analysis, and reflection—not promotion.
If you’ve developed insight through practice, research, or leadership, we welcome thoughtful submissions that advance credible dialogue and long-term thinking in the field.
GIVING Magazine
For those who drive change — not watch it. Join the top 1%.
Harold left $2 million for nursing scholarships. You renamed his fund and found other uses for it. He’s dead, so he can’t complain. Except he just did. Meanwhile, Margaret is alive, watching, and calling her attorney. This letter from the afterlife explains why breaking promises to dead donors can cost you the living ones and the millions still sitting in their wills.
A board member wants an endowment, or a donor offers a big gift to start one. Before saying yes, ask whether your organization is truly ready for a long-term financial commitment that trades immediate flexibility for future sustainability. Check out eCIO’s five-point self-check to evaluate your readiness, key signals to watch for, and flexible alternatives to consider first.
A donor went looking for a respected nonprofit’s Form 990 and found nothing. Cliff Thomas on why an exemption from filing should never become an exemption from transparency, and how exempt organizations can turn it into an advantage with major donors.
Only 1 in 10 established nonprofits reports an endowment. The other 90% fund the future one year at a time. New Form 990 data from 990 Scout shows which sectors are building permanent funding, which are falling behind, and why the organizations communities lean on most are among the least likely to have one. The median endowment is $1.45 million. That isn’t Harvard money. So what’s stopping yours? See how your sector compares.
Some of America’s richest people just found a new way to give, and it skips nonprofits entirely. Michael and Susan Dell, Elon Musk and Ray Dalio are putting money straight into children’s Trump Accounts, invested and growing until age 18. No grant application. No gala. No nonprofit. The reason is growing cynicism about whether charities are built to last. Your Form 990 answers that question publicly, whether you like it or not. Here’s what the billionaires’ new giving model reveals about reserves, endowments, gifts of stock and the great wealth transfer… and what your organization should do about it this week.
Successful nonprofits often stall during growth because funding rarely covers the infrastructure needed to expand. While philanthropy eagerly funds new initiatives and crisis responses, it often neglects the “middle” stage, when organizations need stronger systems, staff, technology, and reserves.
Nonprofits keep telling us their Form 990 should be private. It isn’t, and it hasn’t been for decades. Here are our answers to the 12 objections we hear most, from donor privacy and staff home addresses to legal risk, opting out and burglars. Then the bigger question: is disclosure an intrusion, or the best research tool the profession has ever had?
2026 is the first year for several major changes to the charitable deduction, and the rules are different from last year’s. Non-itemizers can now deduct cash gifts, itemizers face a new 0.5% floor, and top-bracket donors see a 35% cap. Here are the year-end deadlines for every gift type, from stock and wires to QCDs and donor-advised funds, plus the planning moves that matter most before December 31. Miss a deadline, and you may miss a deduction for 2026.
Most donors spend more time researching a refrigerator than the nonprofit they’re about to hand $50,000. Cliff Thomas built StewardOS to fix that: a four-stage process that turns hope into due diligence, using evidence already sitting in every Form 990. The answer isn’t just give or don’t give. It’s how.