Donors bet on multifaceted solutions to the world’s great challenges

1. Donors consistently identify basic human needs as their greatest concern for the future—while year-over-year shifts in their priorities reflect the events of 2020.

Donors prioritize a variety of challenges they would like to see addressed by society in the future. Hunger and access to basic health services—both in the spotlight in 2020 due to the COVID-19 pandemic—are donors’ top concerns for the future.

While donors considered hunger our greatest challenge before the pandemic, widespread food insecurity caused by the crisis made it an even greater concern. Similarly, as the pandemic caused many businesses to shutter, donors voiced greater concern for economic development than they did before the crisis began. In addition to the COVID-19 crisis, racial injustice was brought violently to the forefront of the public consciousness in 2020. This renewed attention and awareness influenced donors to place greater importance on addressing racial discrimination.

The only two issues that saw a significant drop in importance from the previous year were developing treatments and cures for diseases and access to clean water and sanitation.

It is too early to determine whether these changes represent a long-term shift in donor priorities. Because events in the news have a significant effect on donor thinking, it’s possible that these shifts could be short-term reactions to donors’ most recent experiences.

2. Deep dive: Where Millennial and Boomer concerns intersect and diverge

While the generations’ top concerns are generally aligned, Millennials report significant concern across a wider variety of issues. Social media and other media sources provide on-demand information about events happening around the world—and as a generation that’s constantly plugged in, Millennials may take a broader view of the problems facing the world and how they’re interconnected.

Millennials are more likely than Baby Boomers to express concern about access to higher education, economic development, preservation of arts and cultural institutions and gender inequality. While hunger is tied for Millennials’ top concern, it receives stronger emphasis from Boomer donors. Promoting religion and developing treatment and cures for diseases is also of greater concern to the older generation.

3. As a trusted institution, the nonprofit sector could play a unique role in solving the world’s greatest challenges.

Forty percent of donors would prefer to give money to nonprofit organizations over other institutions, such as government or business—reflecting a strong degree of trust in the philanthropic sector. In fact, nearly 60 percent of the United States public trusts the nonprofit sector to do what’s right.¹ But donors are split on the institution they believe has the most potential to successfully develop solutions to society’s greatest challenges, which could indicate that a collaborative approach is needed to solve these systemic problems.

4. Donors overall report only cautious optimism, but Millennials show more confidence.

Because solutions to these problems are so complex, it’s no wonder donors show only tepid optimism that they can be solved. Many donors are only moderately optimistic that the biggest challenges facing the world can be solved. One in five donors is strongly optimistic that we can make progress on the causes that they prioritize—but a similar number say they are not at all optimistic. This lack of conviction may stem from the intractability of these problems. However, there is a stronger concentration of optimism among younger donors.