guest post // How to Align Fundraising with Organizational Values
By Allison Gannon, BWF
People trust nonprofit organizations, and that trust has remained steady for many years. Independent Sectors’ 2025 Trust in Civil Society report found that “57% of Americans report high trust in nonprofit organizations, which is unchanged from 2024.” Nonprofits beat all other sectors in trust, including small businesses, the military, philanthropy, government, and the media.
But that trust isn’t given freely—it’s earned, and it can erode if your organization’s operations, including your fundraising efforts, fall out of step with your guiding values. According to the 2025 Edelman Trust Barometer, nonprofits score highly on ethical conduct but perform poorly on competence. The public frequently views the sector as being “in the red” regarding its ability to execute and deliver impact efficiently.
This guide is designed to help your nonprofit realign its fundraising efforts with its founding values while still making a tangible impact, providing strategies and habits for development teams to reaffirm donor trust.
1. Start with an ethical audit.
Conduct a values-based audit of your nonprofit’s past fundraising campaigns to understand whether they were aligned with your organization’s values or missed the mark. Aggressive fundraising tactics or misaligned partnerships that contradict your nonprofit's values are barriers to long-term success.
For example, to fund a new state-of-the-art pediatric oncology wing, a hospital foundation could enter into a $15 million corporate partnership with a commercial health-tech and wearable data corporation. As part of the sponsorship package, the hospital agrees to integrate the company’s digital wellness app into its patient discharge process. But behind the scenes, the agreement allows the company to access aggregated sensitive patient data to train its commercial AI algorithms.
Even if a data-sharing deal is legally on the right side of HIPAA, it can still feel like a betrayal of patient privacy. In this scenario, the hospital is essentially trading its patients' trust and vulnerability for a payout, turning their sensitive information into a commodity for a commercial data pipeline.
For organizations that care for sensitive populations, such as hospitals and nonprofits, the fallout from these ethical missteps can be devastating, damaging community trust and leading to major funding losses. To avoid making similar mistakes, follow these steps to audit your past fundraising efforts:
Refamiliarize yourself with your organization’s list of core or foundational values. If the list hasn’t been updated in a while, create a plan for meeting with key internal stakeholders to refresh the language as needed. Your organization’s mission and goals likely evolve over time, so it’s not unusual to need to reframe your values.
Review the core values of your past corporate sponsors and partners. Determine whether any partners display characteristics of being misaligned with your mission or values, such as problematic public statements they’ve released or actions they’ve taken that negatively impacted your community. If you find any instances of this, consider removing them from your outreach list for future campaigns.
Critically evaluate past fundraising and stewardship efforts. Campaigns that prioritize quick, transactional wins over long-term relationship building can inadvertently burn out your most loyal donors and leave your community feeling manipulated. There’s a big difference in a donor’s experience and retention when they receive a quick automated thank-you email after a donation versus a personal phone call from a senior member of your organization.
When your fundraising tactics contradict your everyday values, you might win a quick financial spike, but you lose the long-term trust of the very community keeping your mission alive. A thorough audit will help you identify the gaps between your ideals and the realities of fundraising on the ground.
2. Align across multiple teams.
Fundraising alignment requires your development department to be in lockstep with all other operations teams, including programmatic, academic, or clinical leadership. Working together, all departments must build a people-centric roadmap that ensures internal policies, talent management, and board development accurately reflect your organization’s culture and values.
For example, let’s say one of your organization’s core values is putting community changemakers at the center of your storytelling. Your marketing department may work with your grant-making team to create a plan for spotlighting grantee voices in your blog content. Additionally, your event committee could create a plan to host a new, annual supporter-appreciation luncheon with special awards to recognize long-time, loyal donors and volunteers.
To make following your values an organizational priority, have your values guide your all-team meetings. You could have team leaders provide an update on how their teams are working toward one of your organization’s key values and share advice with other teams that need guidance. This insight provides an opportunity to create accountability and transparency across your teams.
3. Implement stringent due diligence and ethical safeguards.
Your organization should be diligent about only stewarding donors whose gifts do not constitute a conflict of interest or contradict your organization’s values.
BWF Zuri’s prospect development guide recommends creating an ethical policy for your website that explains your ethical commitments and the types of gifts you are and are not willing to accept. For example, an environmental sustainability nonprofit might decline gifts from businesses in the oil industry.
Furthermore, aligning with values means prioritizing data governance, especially when it comes to using AI fundraising solutions. Only partner with AI software providers or tools that actively mitigate algorithmic bias to promote inclusion. Additionally, secure informed consent from your donors to use their information in your AI fundraising processes, and respect their wishes if they revoke that consent.
4. Exercise radical transparency with donors.
Your organization’s ethical stances, values, and impact should never be a secret from donors. Give donors detailed visibility into how their dollars are spent and provide specific updates on the impact of their gifts.
For example, energize your peer-to-peer fundraising volunteers by hosting a campaign wrap-up event, sharing how much their efforts raised for your cause and what your organization will accomplish with that funding. Let them know that the $10,000 they raised for your hunger-relief nonprofit will allow you to expand to an additional three acres of farmland.
Also, be transparent about the challenges and roadblocks your organization faces. For instance, if a recent giving day event didn’t reach its goal, let your supporters know why you think it missed the mark and how you’ll adjust your strategies next time. By not sugarcoating difficulties, you’ll demonstrate authenticity and respect for your donors, which are key values that foster long-term loyalty.
Aligning your fundraising strategy with your deeply held values allows you to build stronger audience relationships, raise more for your cause, and build a sustainable future for your organization. Begin by conducting a values-based audit and getting all internal teams on board with your efforts. Ask donors for feedback along the way to see if your efforts are leading to a greater public understanding of your values.
This guest post was written by Allison Gannon.
Allison Gannon, BWF’s Head of Revenue Operations, is inspired by the fact that billions of dollars are raised annually in the U.S. because people rally around an important mission to create action and change. Using her 8+ years of experience, Allison engages with current and prospective clients to identify the best solution to achieve their goals, empowers the BWF team to ensure they are successful in all their endeavors, and coordinates with industry partners to develop the best services for our clients and the sector. With innovative vision and passion, Allison leads a team focused on client experience, marketing, business development, and strategic partnerships.