Nonprofit Leadership

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Does the Giving Match the Moment?

August 18, 2026


There is a particular kind of caution that presents itself as prudence but functions as abandonment. It shows up in grant cycles designed around measurable outcomes rather than uncertain bets. In climate philanthropy that teaches frontline organizers to perform for funders rather than fixing who controls the room. In tech philanthropy that frames extraction as a prelude to generosity. In the assumption that women of color holding the line on democracy will absorb risk on behalf of everyone else—and that no infrastructure is needed to catch them when they fall.


This issue asks whether the sector’s giving matches the scale of what this moment demands.


The Fight for $15 ([link removed]) offers a case study: it succeeded because the Service Employees International Union made a $50 million annual bet on fast food workers at a moment when no one gave them a shot—and held it for years. That magnitude of investment should cause every philanthropic donor to ask whether their current giving matches the scale of the change they seek.


Consider the fact that youth-led climate justice groups ([link removed]) received under one percent of major foundation grants between 2022 and 2024—not because they lack talent, but because access runs on relationships the field has never made room for. NPQ’s partnership with Counterstream Media ([link removed]) continues to amplify exactly those voices: the latest issue of Peace & Riot centers climate leadership from the frontlines, in communities, and in the culture—the people the funding ecosystem most needs to hear and least often funds.


The tech industry’s “third wave” of giving is already taking shape, and a sector that cannot see its own complicity in extraction ([link removed]) cannot advocate clearly against it. And the women of color—state senators, county commissioners, school board members ([link removed]) —who are doxed, censured, investigated, and stripped of resources for standing on the right side of history are too often left to figure it out themselves.


The question is not whether philanthropy cares about these fights. The question is whether it’s willing to fund them at the scale, the risk, and the trust that actually winning requires.

In solidarity,


Coty Poynter

Senior Editor

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Can Tech Philanthropy Solve What Tech Extraction Creates?

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“By the time people are asking hard questions about water tables and electric bills, the story about visionary philanthropists has already been established in the cultural milieu.”
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Climate Philanthropy Doesn’t Have a Talent Problem, it Has an Access Problem

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“The question stops being ‘how do we get young people ready for the room’ and becomes ‘why was the room built without them, and are we willing to rebuild it?’”
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Lessons from the Fight For $15 Movement for Philanthropic Donors

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“One of the overlooked lessons of the movement is that organizing is expensive. Without the extraordinary financial commitment and risks taken by the union I once led, one of the most successful social movements of the last 50 years would not have gotten off the ground.”
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Political Prosecution of Movement-Aligned Elected Officials

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“We have built movements around the assumption that certain people—especially Black women—will continue absorbing extraordinary risk on behalf of everyone else. That assumption is unsustainable.”
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