Foundation Source's 93% Figure Measures Intent Rather Than Recovery

Foundation Source released its 2026 donor survey on February 26, 2026, and the headline number reads like a recovery. Ninety-three percent of the high-net-worth donors it surveyed, 256 private foundations and 94 donor-advised fund account holders, say they plan to maintain or increase their charitable giving this year, with 49 percent planning to give more and 46 percent holding steady. The sector will be tempted to read this as the decline in donor counts ending. It is the top of the donor pyramid confirming that the top of the donor pyramid is fine.

The number matters because of what it quietly leaves out. The survey covers high-net-worth donors, and those planning to give more say, in their own words, that strong portfolio performance and increased need in their local community are the primary drivers. The first of those drivers tracks the market by definition, and the survey itself names economic conditions (54%) and stock market performance (40%) among the top factors shaping respondents' outlook. Meanwhile the smallest donor cohort, donors giving $100 or less, shrank 7.9 percent in 2025 after an 8.8 percent drop in 2024 in the Fundraising Effectiveness Project's unadjusted counts, while major and supersize donor counts rose in both years, and a survey of private foundations and donor-advised fund holders will not detect that, because the two groups have moved in opposite directions for two years running. As of October 16, 2026, FEP's Q1 2026 release, built on a revised methodology, shows the $1 to $100 group as the only donor-size group still declining, down 2.5 percent from a year earlier. A 93 percent figure at the top is evidence of bifurcation rather than recovery, the slow splitting of one donor base into two that no longer rise and fall as one.

For nonprofit and foundation professionals, the risk is using the 93 percent number to reassure a board. An organization that leans on major donors can post a strong year on this statistic while its participation base erodes underneath it, and the statistic will hide the erosion until the major-donor cycle turns.

For digital and crypto-native giving leaders, the bifurcation story is the exact condition your infrastructure was built for, because the giving rails that make a twenty-dollar gift as frictionless as a twenty-thousand-dollar one are designed for the donor the 93 percent survey never counted. The high-net-worth signal is useful as a market temperature read. The more consequential design question is whether you are building for the donor the top-of-pyramid survey leaves invisible.

For donors and family-office advisors, the survey is useful as a planning input and misleading as a sector read. A client should know that peers are giving confidently. A client should also know that the health of the broad donor base is a separate question this survey does not touch, which means an advisor who presents the 93 percent number as sector health rather than as cohort health is telling half a story.

For corporate giving and CSR leaders, the bifurcation has a direct workforce implication, because a workforce giving program that tracks participation rates will be measuring the broader donor base your high-net-worth survey does not reach. If employee participation in giving programs is declining, the 93 percent number from the Foundation Source survey will not explain why, because it was never designed to. The relevant metric for a corporate program is what employees at every income level actually do when given an easy, matched opportunity, rather than what wealthy individuals intend to do.

For NGOs and international organizations, meaning nonprofits that work outside government, many of them across country borders, the bifurcation carries a specific risk for organizations whose funding skews toward major donors in high-income markets. A base that is growing more concentrated at the top is a base that is growing more fragile at the same time, which means the NGO that reports strong major-donor retention while losing its mid-level and small-dollar constituency is building toward a funding cliff it will not see coming until the large donors' portfolio performance reverses.

The diagnostic question for any organization is whether it tracks the health of its smallest donors with the same care it tracks its largest. If the answer is no, the 93 percent number is comfort rather than information.

"A ninety-three percent number at the top of the pyramid means almost nothing if the bottom of the pyramid is leaving in proportions that go unnamed."EILEEN HERNANDEZ, THE STRATEGIC STEWARD

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This is the bifurcation the Strategic Steward framework was built to name, and it connects directly to Participatory Ownership, the second pillar of the DIA Protocol, because a giving system that only registers the confident and the wealthy is not a system that owns its own future.