What Next? Philanthropy Trends and Predictions for 2026

As the legendary baseball player Yogi Berra once said, “it is difficult to make predictions, especially about the future”. Yet despite being well aware of this fact I have, for some reason, taken it upon myself to offer up thoughts on what the coming year might hold for philanthropy and civil society on whatever podcast I happen to be hosting every year for the last eight years.

I must admit that I came perilously close to not bothering this year, thanks to a combination of being fairly overworked and a general sense that trying to guess what the next month, let alone the next year, might hold feels futile these days. However, the completists among you will be delighted to know that I got over myself in the end and have just put out a “2026 Trends and Predictions” episode of the Philanthropisms podcast. To accompany that, I thought I would also do a brief write up of some of the key ideas and questions for those who prefer reading to listening. (Although if this whets your appetite and you want the more in-depth version, then do check out the podcast).

What, if anything, you might ask, qualifies me to foist my speculative thoughts about the coming year? Well, in many ways, nothing – I don’t know anything with certainty about what is going to happen next (and I trust that you would all be rightly wary of me if I claimed that I did!) However, I am lucky enough to get to talk to lots of interesting people working in philanthropy and civil society around the world by virtue of my job, so I get to hear lots of insights and ideas. Added to which, the challenge of putting together a vastly over-long newsletter each month means that I read an enormous amount of content about philanthropy over the course of the year, so I feel like I’ve got a pretty decent handle on trends, key debates and weak signals. The other aspect to this is that I like to read ideas about what might be coming next in philanthropy, and it isn’t that easy to find good content about this (especially now that Lucy Bernholz is no longer doing the Blueprint), so I thought I would do my little bit to fill that gap.

So, with those caveats in place, here are some thoughts on what to look out for next year. (As in the podcast, I have split it into philanthropy and charities, broader societal trends and technology).

Philanthropy & Civil Society

2025 was a mixed bag for philanthropy and civil society, to say the least. The nonprofit sector in the US has had a torrid time under the new Trump Administration, and civil society organisations (CSOs) and charities in many other parts of the world has faced huge challenges in terms of funding shortages, increased demand, and political repression. But at the same time we have seen governmental support for philanthropy grow in a number of different countries around the world, as well as many examples of gifts at a previously-unseen scale, and the growth of new potential philanthropy powerhouses in Asia. So here are some things to look out for in 2026.

US

Ongoing challenges for philanthropy

(Particularly for nonprofits and foundations perceived to be working on ‘progressive’ issues). Further erosion of norms (e.g. will Trump succeed in turning the IRS into a political tool to attack those he doesn’t like?)

More big gifts

We have seen some enormous gifts this year – just this month we have had the Dell’s $6.25 bn potential gift, and Mackenzie Scott announcing $7bn of gifts this year. I suspect we will see many more big gifts next year – including a number of billion-plus donations. (Some of which might well be from donors most of us have never heard of before!)

Wealthy individuals signalling philanthropic intent

I thought at one point this year that the Giving Pledge was slightly on the wane, given that Bill Gates seems to be driving it on his own now that Melinda French Gates and Warren Buffet have both stepped away, and that this might spell the end of the current era of big philanthropic statements of intent. But then right at the end of the year, we had the news that both Sam Altman and Craig Newmark have joined the Giving Pledge, so maybe we’re not quite at the end of that era yet? I suspect we will see more wealthy people make big public commitments to philanthropy in 2026 (either through the Giving Pledge or in other ways), and that this will include a growing number of female donors. (Obviously this leaves aside the question of whether they make good on those pledges or not… but that’s one for another day).

Elon Musk will get richer, but he won’t give much more; Mackenzie Scott will get poorer, and will give away more

While we’re on the subject of elite philanthropy in the US, here’s a very specific prediction for you. I feel like I’m on pretty safe ground here, as Musk has shown no particular signs that he is interested in engaging in philanthropy in a meaningful way, whilst Scott has continued to show that giving away very large sums of money isn’t necessarily as hard as many like to claim (as long as you do it in the right way).

Donors aligning philanthropy with the Trump agenda

In 2026, I think we will see more donors align themselves in various ways with the Trump administration. In some cases this might be a pragmatic move: Michael and Susan Dell’s decision to channel their philanthropy through newly-created “Trump accounts” that will be given to all children in the US (and part-funded by the government in some cases) makes sense because it enables cash gifts to individuals at a scale that would otherwise be difficult to achieve. (They may of course also want to ingratiate themselves with Trump; I don’t know). In other cases, the decision of donors to reshape their philanthropy to fit the Trumpian worldview seems more like a reflection of genuine alignment: the zeal with which Mark Zuckerberg has jettisoned CZI’s commitment to social justice and equity, for instance, suggest that this is more than just political expediency. (I may well be wrong on that, and he is just a moral coward. Who can say?)

Tech donors rejecting traditional giving

One thing we saw this year was the idea that technology is a replacement for traditional philanthropy continue to take hold in some quarters. Most notably, it should be said, among individuals whose wealth comes from technology; which may in part be because their worldview has been shaped by that experience, but may also be because they (unsurprisingly) find a lot to like about a narrative which argues that their continued development of technology is the best way to help humanity. (Whilst, at the same time, making them vast sums of money. Although that is entirely coincidently. Totally). I very much suspect we will hear more version of this idea in 2026.

Further growth in DAFs

The remarkable rise of DAFs will continue in 2026. As a result, more and more nonprofits will be trying to get their heads around how to fundraise effectively from DAF-holders. At the same time, concerns about lack of transparency and the use of DAFs to fund extremist political groups will also continue to rise.

Global

Finding a new normal in global civil society post USAID

The destruction of USAID by Elon Musk (on behalf of Donald Trump) earlier this year was an absolute travesty, which has already led to the collapse of many vital projects and organisations around the world and caused many needless deaths. But USAID is not coming back any time soon (and even if it did, that kind of damage tends to be very quick to do and very slow to repair), so 2026 is going to be a year in which global civil society as a whole continues to adjust to the realities of a post-USAID world, and tries to figure out what a new normal might look like. Will it just be a far less-well funded version of the same, or are there opportunities in this crisis to do things radically differently?

Space for civil society will close further

For pretty much the whole time I have been writing civil society predictions, one of the consistent trends has been that of the ‘closing space for civil society’ i.e. the curbing of the freedoms that make a healthy civil society possible (freedom of speech, the right to protest, freedom of association etc.) And sadly I don’t think 2026 is going to be any different. In an age of heightened political tensions, rising authoritarianism and right-wing populism, I very much suspect that we will see more governments around the world try to clamp down on civil society criticism and resistance. In particular, I would expect to see more countries introduce rules restricting funding from foreign sources. (Perhaps even the US, as this would definitely be the obvious next step in the authoritarian playbook…)

Asia will start to shape global philanthropy

The rise of Asia as a new global philanthropy powerhouse has been one of the key stories of the past few years, and that trend looks set to continue in 2026. If US philanthropic soft power wanes as a result of the challenges being felt over there, is there an opportunity for new philanthropy centres like Hong Kong and Singapore to start setting a new global philanthropy agenda?

UK

Increased political interest in philanthropy

2025 saw more clear signs emerge of interest in philanthropy from the Labour government, including the creation of a new “Office for the Impact Economy” in the Autumn. There is still plenty of detail to be filled on what this department will do (and how philanthropy will fit into the wider “impact economy” framing), but I am led to believe there is lots of work going on right now so 2026 should bring some real opportunities.

Increased demand for philanthropy

In a way this one is a given – there is always a need for more philanthropy, in the sense that there are always things that need funding However, right now, when everyday giving appears to be declining, government funding has been going down for years, and a growing number of grantmakers are struggling to cope with the level of demand they are seeing, more organisations that ever before are looking to philanthropy as a potential source of support. For those doing this from a standing start, the barriers can be high, but I expect to see many more organisations try to tap into philanthropy in 2026.

More US donors moving to the UK

Another big thing we saw in the UK this year was a marked rise in the number of wealthy Americans and philanthropic funders moving to these shores (along with their assets). Will this trend continue into 2026? I suspect it will, and it will be really interesting to see what kind of impact this has – both in terms of direct gifts these new donors and funders might make, and in terms of whether they have an impact on the wider culture of philanthropy in the UK.

Change and Challenges for the Charity Commission

The Charity Commission for England and Wales is going to have a new Chair from next year, Dame Julia Unwin. (Former CEO of the Joseph Rowntree Foundation and Chair of the Civil Society Futures inquiry). It will be interesting to see what, if any, changes in direction this brings. At the same time, the Commission has some major challenges to face in terms of supporting and regulating the charity sector: in particular, the rise this year in attacks on charities working with refugees and migrants as a result of right wing populism has been deeply worrying, and will need to be addressed. (Whilst, at the same time, continuing to champion the wider value of charities and civil society).

UK government authoritarianism towards civil society

As well as the challenges presented by right wing populism, some UK CSOs are also having to deal with challenges created by the UK government. Despite what has already been said about the government’s seeming enthusiasm for civil society, there are concerns in some quarters that this isn’t entirely matched by its actions when it comes to the approach taken towards protest and campaigning groups. The criminalisation of Palestine Action earlier this year brought some of these issues to a head, with critics raising concerns that the government’s decision to proscribe this group could be the start of a slippery slope when it comes to limiting the freedoms on which civil society rests.

Renewed focus on locality/place and the value of associational life

It is not yet clear exactly what the Labour government’s positive narrative about philanthropy is going to be, but one thing that does seem certain is that a focus on place will be a big part of it. They have already announced that they will be introducing a place-based philanthropy strategy next year, and a lot of the mentions we have seen of philanthropy this year have been framed in terms of place, so I expect this to continue. I also think that an additional angle will emerge more clearly, which is a focus on the role that philanthropy and CSOs play in providing opportunities for association and coming together. This has always been part of the value of CSOs, but often it seems to have been viewed as an externality or an “added extra”, whereas now – when concerns about polarisation and the rise of the far right loom large – the role that CSOs play in bringing people together and providing opportunities to forge bonding social capital may end up being seen as their greatest asset. I also wonder if this will result in the ‘rediscovery’ of some things that might have been seen as old-fashioned not long ago, but may now come to be seen as vital and cutting edge: e.g. youth centres, which the UK government recently announced would be a key part of its new £500m Youth Matters programme.

Societal Trends

In addition to specific trends within the world of philanthropy and civil society, there are plenty of wider societal trends to look out for in 2026 that might also have relevance for funders and CSOs. Here are just a few ideas, based on some of the trends and predictions reports I have been reading from other sectors.

Desire for comfort/escapism

One of the big trends for 2026 (according to multiple sources) is going to be a growing desire among consumers to find moments of comfort and opportunities for escapism. I don’t think we’re going full Ready Player One just yet, but it is certainly true from my experience that the world feels… well, just a bit much a lot of the time right now. The temptation therefore, when faced with the nightly choice of whether to engage with the news or play The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom, is to turn off the TV and spend some quality time meandering around Hyrule practising your Ultrahand skills instead. I’m obviously being slightly flippant here, as I know that not everyone has the luxury of switching off from what is going on in the world (and it is important that even those of us who can afford to switch off don’t for too long), but it is definitely true that moments of respite are quite welcome. This desire for escapism is also evident in the rise of various forms of nostalgia, which hark back to simpler or more fun times (which seem to have appeal whether or not you were actually alive the first time round, based on the enthusiasm for 90s and early 00s nostalgia among my kid’s friends).

I guess the question for CSOs is what they do with this. There might be something about emphasising the joyful aspects of giving and volunteering, rather than hammering people with gloom about the problems, but this won’t necessarily be appropriate for all organisations or cause areas (some of which just are, unavoidably, not much fun). But I do think CSOs can play an important role in countering one of the other trends that seems to be going along with this comfort/escapism trend, which is…

Individualism

The idea that society is becoming more individualistic and atomised is far from new (Robert Puttnam wrote Bowling Alone 25 years ago, and it’s analysis of the decline of American associational life is still being widely cited to explain many of the US’s current challenges). However, it is possible that the move towards seeking comfort and escapism may exacerbate some of the challenges, because many of the solutions that are often proposed are individual ones: prioritising you own wellbeing, finding time for yourself, putting yourself first etc. And this makes me think; do CSOs need to see part of their role in 2026 as making the case for collective forms of wellbeing? If consumers are being sold the idea that they can find comfort and happiness by disengaging and focussing only on themselves, not only does this have the potentially to further undermine associational life; it probably won’t even work. Most of the evidence suggests that genuine happiness and wellbeing comes from things like human connection and getting involved in collective endeavours; and no amount of solo Friends marathons or parasocial relationships on social media can replace that. It would seem to me that many CSOs are in a brilliant position not only to highlight the benefits of getting involves in collective activities, but to offer people the opportunities to do so; and that feels like it is going to be important in 2026.

Authenticity & Influence

Another interesting trend is that consumers increasingly want things to be “authentic”, and they judge that authenticity based on what is being said and who is saying it. In terms of ‘what’, the desire for authenticity means, according to Euromonitor, that:

“Overly curated perfection and the status quo are no longer compelling… Instead, unapologetic assertion and genuine connection are valued, even when that comes with provocation or polarisation.”

Now, Euromonitor are talking here about consumer brands, but to me this reads as incredibly pertinent for CSOs. If people increasingly do want this kind of “authenticity”, does that mean CSOs should take stronger positions on issues and make less effort to avoid provoking those who don’t agree with them? According to the Euromonitor report this is the right way to go, and organisations should “prioritise niche communities over broad appeal [to] create stronger, lasting loyalty… [because] people demand authenticity – even if that risks alienation.” But can (or should) CSOs simply accept the idea that deliberately polarising people is an acceptable strategy (even if it works)?

The other aspect of authenticity is about who is talking; and here we come back to individualism again, as there is a clear sense in which people are more likely to trust individuals and to believe in their authenticity. A growing number of young people, for instance, look to influencers of various sorts as their primary sources of information about the world. Brands have already woken up to this (as, to some extent, have news media organisations and governments) and are now forging partnerships with influencers as a core part of their strategy. The announcement recently of the Rockefeller Foundation’s new partnership with MrBeast was the highest-profile example so far of a nonprofit organisation teaming up with an influencer, but others have done similar things at a lower level, and I expect that we will see a lot more of this in 2026. (And if you want more thoughts on MrBeast and philanthropy, reminder that you can find them in this journal article or this WPM long read).

It is worth saying that we tend to assume these days that “influencer” means “someone on YouTube or TikTok”, but there was a useful reminder in a Nieman Labs essay collection about journalism trends for 2026 that this isn’t always the case, and that real influence is often to be found at a grassroots level in communities:

“If you want a glimpse of the future of news, don’t look at dashboards or innovation labs. Look at the barbershop, the church hall, the group chat, the neighbor who becomes a newsroom by necessity. That’s where the future is already taking shape. In 2026, the rest of the industry will finally notice.”

Population Debates

On a bit of a different note, I have been saying for the last couple of years that I think debates about population and declining birth rates are going to be a big deal for philanthropy and civil society. That maybe hasn’t quite happened yet (although arguably current debates about migration, which many nonprofits are feeling the sharp end of, are part of the same continuum); however, this year has definitely seen concerns about falling birth rates move out of the fringes of political debate and into the mainstream, and at the same time evolve from the concerns of a fringe minority on the right of politics into an issue that is being taken seriously across the political spectrum. I suspect, therefore, that we will hear a lot more about this in 2026. And this has obvious implications for civil society – not least because philanthropy has a long (and fairly problematic) relationship with debates about population issues (as explained in more detail in this previous WPM article).

Technology

In addition to the philanthropy-specific and wider societal trends, there are a few potentially relevant tech trends for 2026 that it is worth noting. (Well, there are clearly a lot more than “a few”, but these are the ones I chose to pick out):

The Platformisation and Enshittification of giving?

I have been talking for a good few years now about the platformisation of giving (i.e. the fact that more and more giving is taking place via digital platforms of one sort or another), and the opportunities and challenges this will bring. (Listen to this episode of the Philanthropisms podcast for more). In particular I have speculated at length about how AI may be applied to shape the choices people make when it comes to giving (e.g. in this book chapter). This is already happening to some extent: just this month in an interview with the Financial Times, the CEO of GoFundMe talked about how they are “using generative AI to remove friction in both asking and giving – suggesting titles and social copy and tailoring suggested donation amounts to each donor’s behaviour.” But I expect to see a lot more of this kind of thing come to light in 2026.

The other thing I am interested to keep an eye out for is signs of the “enshittification” of giving via platforms. Enshittification, for those who don’t know, is a term coined by the Canadian writer Cory Doctorow to describe what he claims is a recurring pattern in the way that 2-sided digital platforms evolve over time and decline in quality. According to Doctorow:
“It’s a three-stage process: first, platforms are good to their users. Then they abuse their users to make things better for their business customers. Finally, they abuse those business customers to claw back all the value for themselves. Then, there is a fourth stage: they die.”

I’m not sure we have reached the latter stages of enshittification for most giving platforms, but it feels like there are occasional warning signs – such as the story from a few months ago about GoFundMe creating fundraising pages for more than 1 million nonprofits; who hadn’t asked for them, weren’t consulted, and then found that GoFundMe was paying for those fundraising pages to appear above the nonprofits own webpages in Google searches. (It may feel like I am picking on GoFundMe here, but that isn’t deliberate – they just happen to have been in the news recently). I wonder if we will see any platforms make similar mist-steps this year, or if any of them will make changes that see the experience for donors and nonprofits go downhill significantly.

Misinformation and the ethics of AI slop

AI is obviously everywhere right now, and I probably could have filled an entire 5,000 word article just pondering on AI implications for philanthropy and civil society next year. (In fact, scratch the “probably” – I definitely could have done that…) But I will limit myself to just a couple, the first of which is that the easy availability of GenAI tools that we are now seeing is going to present challenges for charities in 2026 (as well as, of course, plenty of opportunities). One of those challenges will be combatting misinformation produced by GenAI; which in some cases might be deliberate and malicious, but in many cases will just be a by-product of AI’s tendency to make credible-sounding nonsense up. (According to some experts, we should think of these falsehoods as “bullshit”. In a technical sociological sense, of course…) The added challenge is that AI-generated misinformation of this kind is now so rife on the internet, it can be hard to know when you are looking at it. In a recent Facebook post, for instance, the walking organisation WalkHighlands warned users about taking advice posted on its message boards at face value because there had been a number of instances of posts made by AI bots providing plausible-sounding advice about certain walking routes that would, in reality, have been actively dangerous to follow.

The other big challenge I can see coming to the fore in 2026 is around the ethics of CSOs using GenAI tools. Plenty of people have bemoaned the proliferation of “AI slop” across the internet at this point, and CSOs may want to question whether they are in danger of adding to that slop-pile. And not just that, but are there also dangers that in using these tools too liberally, CSOs could risk undermining their authenticity and the trust the public has in them? Likewise, what if there are concerns that GenAI has the propensity to churn out content that perpetuates problematic tropes and ideas? (As was the case when a number of international NGOs were accused earlier this year of using GenAI images that amounted to “poverty porn”).

No-one is coming to your website anymore

One of the biggest impacts of AI so far (apart from all the slop) has been on the way we search for information on the internet. Increasingly, people are not using traditional search engines which generate ranked pages of results, but instead are getting answers to specific questions from ChatGPT and other AI tools. Even users of traditional search can find it hard to escape this, ever since Google forced its AI summaries upon all of us. (Something the EU is now investigating them for). One of the knock-on effects of this is that many organisations are seeing traffic to their websites drop sharply, since people no longer need to bother visiting if they can get all of the information they need (or at least, think they can) via an AI summary. As a result, many organisations in the commercial world have moved on from thinking about Search Engine Optimisation to thinking about AI Search Optimisation – i.e. how do you ensure that your organisation (or the information it produces) has a better chance of turning up in an answer generated by an LLM? For CSOs, this might require a radical think about the purpose and structure of their websites, as well as the content they put on it. And at a sectoral level, it might require more working with tech companies to ensure that information about nonprofits and charities is at least accurate. (It was interesting to see the news recently, for instance, that Candid has entered into a new partnership with Anthropic AI to use its data on US nonprofits in Anthropic’s Claude AI tool).

Cognitive Offloading & Unhealthy relationships with AI agents

Two other linked areas of debate about AI for CSOs and philanthropy organisations to keep an eye on in 2026 are around “cognitive offloading” and the growing number of people developing unhealthy relationships with AI tools. AI Cognitive offloading is when people delegate thinking, memory and problem-solving tasks to AI tools, and a growing number of people who study AI are warning about the potentially disastrous long-term consequences for our cognitive capabilities if we do this as a matter of course. This is something that all CSOs will need to factor into their considerations about their own use of AI, but some CSOs will also need to deal with the wider consequences (especially those that work around education issues).

In the 3 years since ChatGPT was launched, the idea of humans developing romantic relationships with AI has gone from science fiction to societal fact – a survey in the US this year found that 28% of people claimed to have had at least one intimate or romantic relationship with an AI (which sounds very high to me, but maybe I’m just hideously out of touch). This is a real concern for some, who worry that it will lead to further atomisation and erosion of the skills needed for genuinely human interaction. (After all, why bother hanging out with real people – who might be really annoying or disagree with you – when you can just hang out with your sycophantic little AI friend who laughs at all your jokes and never calls you out on anything?) Again, for CSOs – which are fundamentally about association and coming together to address challenges – this might pose new challenges.

Other tech trends come to maturity?

And then finally, is this the year that a number of technologies that we have been saying are the Next Big Thing actually go fully mainstream? E.g. autonomous vehicles, smart home appliances, Augmented & Virtual reality (and smart glasses) and quantum computing? I don’t know, but I thought I would mention it, since I’ve written various things pondering about the implications of some of these technologies for philanthropy and civil society over the years, so if they do go big in 2026 I can at last claim to be prescient. (You can read thoughts about AR and VR in this WPM article, and thoughts about quantum technology in this one).

I don’t know, of course what 2026 will actually hold, and if it is anything like 2025 there are probably some massive surprises in store that I (and everyone else) has failed to foresee. But hopefully these musings will have sparked some thoughts among those of you reading that might just help you get ahead of at least some of what is to come.