Generosity Is Not Declining. The Infrastructure Around It Is Exhausting.

Every year, Giving Tuesday arrives, and giving season ramps up to eleven. 

The beauty of this season is being able to pause, turn toward one another, and remember that generosity is one of the few things that actually feels good to give away. I saw this firsthand for a decade running a small charity—incredible acts of selfless generosity from unexpected places. I had to work hard to remember it really was a miracle.

But if we're honest, the pace we've set for generosity is getting harder to keep up with.

Not because people are less generous. Eighty-nine percent of affluent donors still trust charities to do good work. But because the infrastructure hasn't been built to align with the needs of today.

The Infrastructure Question

This is complicated. Multifaceted. It’s social, technological, financial and more. 

Charities spend enormous resources on fundraising - a staggering amount we don't fully understand - because there's no shared infrastructure or CRA-compliant due diligence system connecting them to aligned donors. They build awareness from scratch, not because they want to, but because the rhythms that used to drive giving (religion and community participation) no longer provide the same foundation.

Meanwhile, donors face 85,000 Canadian charities with no standardized way to find best-fit matches. Eighty-four percent of gifts happen without systematic validation, not because donors are careless, but because professional due diligence takes weeks and costs thousands per organization.

And wealth advisors? Almost every one of their philanthropy conversations (87%) isn't resonating with clients. That gap matters when the next generation will take over.

Everyone is working hard. No one has the tools they need.

What Giving Tuesday Reveals

Giving Tuesday taps into something beautiful - it reminds us that generosity is a shared human impulse, not a transaction.

But it also reveals the limits of infrastructure built on urgency instead of sustainable infrastructure like modern grant management systems and common application platforms that reduce repetitive work for everyone involved.

Questions Worth Asking

What does infrastructure look like as we live in a post-religious world? Where are the on-ramps to generosity now?

What if generosity could feel less like a sprint and more like a rhythm?

What if donors could discover aligned charities in minutes instead of months?

What if donors could see that their peers are actively giving too? 

How might we reimagine the infrastructure in an era of highly capable AI?

An Invitation

Giving Tuesday asks us to step into generosity for a moment.

The harder work is helping people stay there and building the infrastructure to carry us into the future.

To make strategic philanthropy feel less like managing noise and more like making meaning.
To give advisors and DAF providers the software, due diligence infrastructure, and charity intelligence platform they need to guide confident giving.
To help charities spend less time applying and more time creating impact.

Generosity isn't declining. It deserves infrastructure that matches its potential. With the right infrastructure, cultural, technical and societal and more, we can be reminded again that generosity is a shared human impulse, not a once a year transaction.