The Donor Support Ecosystem: A Sketch

During winter of 2020, the author worked with the Effective Philanthropy Learning Initiative at the Stanford Center on Philanthropy and Civil Society to interview fifteen professionals from fifteen unique organizations in the donor support ecosystem. The research sought insight into the philanthropic behaviors of donors and high capacity donors from the philanthropic advisers, consultants, and support professionals who directly work with them, and to better understand the role these donor support professionals themselves play in shaping not only the giving practices of their clients but also the trajectory of philanthropy broadly. Despite the breadth of observations from a diverse set of professionals, the consistency of observations and challenges they shared proved remarkable. This report tries to articulate what we learned and sketch the conditions of a growing donor support ecosystem.

This report is preliminary and not an official publication of the Stanford Center on Philanthropy and Civil Society. The lab does plan to deepen the investigation to expand our findings in the coming months.