Center for Social Innovation

With a title like The End of Fundraising, Jason Saul’s book is not intended to be a balanced, nuanced treatment of the economics that underpin today’s nonprofit ecosystem. Rather, it’s a quasi-polemical indictment of the current modus operandi among funding sources and nonprofit “supplicants.” It’s also a much needed, critical look at the inherent—and very significant— drawbacks to how nonprofits support their work. Any nonprofit executive seriously interested in extricating his organization, even if only partly, from the current unbalanced and inefficient system would be well served to read this textbook-like study and seek to apply some of its practical advice.

Under the current system, argues Saul, are donors who, largely motivated by emotion and the “pleasure associated with giving,” write checks without any real understanding of the impact of their support. “Only 3 percent make donations based on relative performance,” he writes, referencing the May 2010 Read more