Should Your Nonprofit Take a Stand? What the Research Says About Values-Driven Fundraising

Executive Summary

Nonprofit leaders often frame values as a choice between being political or apolitical, but that framing misses the mark, because every organization already has values whether it states them or not, and the only real choice is whether those values are clear or vague. 

Current donor research reinforces this directly: 68% of affluent donors say personal values or beliefs are the single biggest reason they choose to support a cause, which means values clarity tends to drive giving rather than threaten it. At the same time, nonprofits across the sector are responding to this tension in sharply different ways, with most organizations pulling back from public advocacy even as some of the largest foundations in the country have concluded that silence is no longer safe either. 

This piece examines what the donor research shows, how real organizations are navigating the decision right now, and what that means for how your own organization should think about its values.

Your nonprofit will realize that staying silent on a hard issue starts to feel like its own statement, and that moment isn't tied to a single news cycle or election year, it usually recurs predictably when difficult social issues arise.

The instinct in that moment is usually to ask whether your organization should be political or apolitical, but assuming neutrality has costs that must be considered. 

Every Nonprofit has Values

There is no such thing as a value-free nonprofit because every organization already has values, and those values are visible in your budget: who gets hired, and which programs get funded or cut. The real choice isn’t whether to have values; it’s whether to be clear about them.

That choice carries measurable consequences. According to the 2025 Bank of America Study of Philanthropy, the single most common reason affluent donors choose a cause to support is personal values or beliefs, cited by 68% of donors and ranking ahead of interest in the issue area (57%), firsthand experience with the organization (50%), and even the organization’s reputation (48%). Values aren’t a fundraising liability to be managed around; for most donors, they’re the entire reason the gift happens in the first place.

Vagueness doesn’t protect your organization from controversy because it simply trades one risk for another: donors who disagree with a clear position are traded for donors who never feel strongly enough about an unclear one to give at all.

What’s Actually Happening in the Sector Right Now

This isn’t a theoretical debate, because it’s playing out across the nonprofit sector in real time, and current data shows organizations pulling in two different directions at once.

On one side, caution is winning. Research from Independent Sector, based on its 2023 Public Engagement Nonprofit Survey, and a follow-up set of in-depth interviews with 40 nonprofit leaders, found that only 31% of nonprofits reported engaging in political advocacy or lobbying over the past five years, which is less than half the 74% that reported doing so in 2000. 

When researchers asked leaders why, the answer wasn’t apathy but strategy; leaders described making a deliberate choice to maintain a nonpartisan or bipartisan posture as a calculated response to the current political climate, even though many of them said they still believed strongly in giving voice to the people their organizations serve.

On the other side, some of the largest and most established institutions in philanthropy have concluded that silence is no longer an option, because their missions themselves have become the target. In 2025, a series of executive orders directly targeted some of philanthropy’s most prominent issue areas, including racial and gender equity, climate change, and immigration, and named organizations including the Ford Foundation and Open Society Foundations specifically. These aren’t fringe issue-advocacy groups but two of the largest, most institutionally established foundations in the country, and they were directly named in federal action over the causes they fund.

The response from the broader field has been organized rather than individual. In September 2025, a coalition called Unite In Advance, comprising nearly 200 foundations and funds, released a joint statement asserting that organizations should not be attacked for carrying out their missions or expressing their values in support of the communities they serve, and rejecting attempts to exploit political tension to restrict philanthropy’s freedom of speech and freedom to give.

Put these two findings side-by-side, and a real picture emerges: most nonprofits are getting quieter, while the organizations facing the most direct pressure are concluding that quiet is no longer safe either. There’s no universal right answer here, because a small regional nonprofit and a national foundation are not weighing identical risks, but every organization is now making this calculation in a sharper, more consequential environment than it was even five years ago, and pretending otherwise is its own kind of decision.

The Higher Ground

English poet William Blake (1757–1827) wrote that if the doors of perception were cleansed, everything would appear to us as it is: infinite.

I like that line because it inspired me to say that the nonprofit sector should aspire to higher ground, and the data above suggests something practical sits underneath the poetry. 

When you share your vision of the higher ground that your nonprofit aims for, and connect it clearly to your fundraising needs, you tend to raise more revenue rather than less, because donors who say values are their top reason for giving are telling you, directly, that clarity is what they’re listening for. See me post about how to craft the best vision statements. 

It’s About Your Organization’s Values

My direct counsel about being political, or not, comes down to your values, and it unfolds like this.

Be clear about your organization’s values, and stand up for them, but make sure those values are informed by data, research, and evidence rather than simply what you think or believe. 

Your values are communicated by your organization’s actions, not by what it says, so look at where your resources actually go and what impact you’ve made in your field, because that is where your values live. Your values also show up in how your organization spends its time and budget, both in the small daily routines and in the big, audacious goal that contributes to lasting positive change.

There are moments in organizational life when you realize that what you thought were your values may not actually be your values, and when that uncomfortable awareness arrives, the right response is to take stock, be honest, and admit to the compromise rather than look away from it.

Values are what matters most, and what last the longest.

The Cost of Staying Vague

There’s a version of this conversation that treats neutrality as the safe choice, but the donor research doesn’t support that framing.

As noted, eighty-seven percent of affluent households report that their giving brings them personal fulfillment, and half give to organizations where they know someone who has directly benefited. Among affluent households that don’t give at all, the top reason cited is a lack of personal connection to an organization, not disagreement with a position and not fear of controversy, but simply the absence of a real connection to hold onto.

Vagueness is what prevents that connection from forming, because an organization that won’t say clearly what it stands for, in an effort to avoid offending anyone, ends up failing to resonate with anyone either. 

The specificity donors are actually responding to, a real position grounded in real evidence and backed by real budget and action, is the same specificity that vague, vision-by-committee messaging strips away in the name of safety.

Where does your organization’s silence end and your values begin, and is that line where you actually want it to be?

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This post is offered freely for educational purposes. Please share it with colleagues in the development field — provided the author’s byline remains intact: By Laurence A. Pagnoni, MPA. Reproduction in publications, training programs, or institutional materials requires attribution.