Wealthy people are learning to give better. Here’s how.
These low-profile organizations are helping them develop the skills and build the community they need to become effective philanthropists.
By Maria Di Mento
Senior Editor
September 1, 2026 | Read Time: 12 minutes
Las Vegas philanthropist Dana Lee was always what she calls a “big tent” donor, giving to arts organizations, education, women’s rights, and groups that aid struggling families in southern Nevada. Along with her husband, hotel and casino executive Gregory Lee, she often gave to education-related groups that combat generational poverty. But about six years ago, Lee decided she wanted to support efforts to help people out of poverty more quickly. She just wasn’t sure how.
After reading Evicted: Poverty and Profit in the American City, a book that shows the links between mass evictions and poverty, particularly for single mothers, Lee was determined to support groups that help such women in southern Nevada. But she needed help finding the right nonprofits and learning more about the issue. She then discovered Women Moving Millions, a membership organization made up of wealthy women donors who pledge to give at least $1 million to nonprofits that help women and girls and fight for their rights globally.
She joined that group, and with its guidance, she became an early investor in the Las Vegas chapter of the Jeremiah Program, which aids single mothers. She has since brought in support from two other philanthropists.
“I’m a pretty seasoned philanthropist,” says Lee. “I was seeking a group that really thinks at that 10,000-foot level, that will sharpen my giving, sharpen my awareness, and introduce me to thought leaders, organizations, nonprofit leaders, just the whole range of access to different resources in gender equity.” Women Moving Millions fit the bill.
Women Moving Millions is one of a few nonprofit organizations that are helping wealthy people like Lee, who sits on the group’s board, to better engage with philanthropy and start giving more money. Others, including the Founders Pledge, Enough Project, Resource Generation, and the Charitable Commitment Campaign, are helping big donors have a greater impact on the causes they care about.
These organizations are more important to the health of nonprofits than ever. Last year nearly 80 percent of charitable donations came from major donors — those giving gifts of $5,000 or more — while only 6 percent of charitable donations came from those giving $500 or less, according to the Funding Effectiveness Project report. And even more of these wealthy individuals are potential donors. The number of U.S. individuals with a net worth of $30 million or more grew by 67 percent from 2020 to 2025, reaching 206,880, according to an Altrata report.
Participants explore why they may be holding on to more of their money than they need to and if they feel shame or guilt over their wealth.
Getting wealthy individuals to give at high levels and become committed, knowledgeable philanthropists is not always easy. Philanthropy can be complicated and hard to do well. Holding wealth as well as giving it away can be fraught with psychological barriers. Understanding the urgency to get more funding to nonprofits, leaders of these groups are taking varied approaches to getting rich donors to give more to charity and better engage with giving.
The services these groups provide are particularly attractive to those who are just starting to give big, says Adrienne Hart, the head of philanthropy at Rockefeller Capital Management, a financial firm that advises wealthy clients.
“Organizations like these can provide access to expertise, opportunities to engage with peers focused on the same issue areas, access to research in more formalized models, access to funds that are stood up by the organizations themselves that the donors can contribute to,” says Hart.
How much is enough?
How much money does a wealthy person truly need? It’s a question most people rarely consider but one that the Enough Project believes is core to philanthropy. The group was started about two years ago by Robert Boogaard, a serial entrepreneur and foundation leader, and Brent Kessel, co-founder of the financial advisory firm Abacus Wealth Partners. It helps the very wealthy gain a deeper understanding of their relationship to their fortunes so they can determine how much money is enough for them and their families to live as they want to — what Boogaard and Kessel call a person’s “enough number.” The rest — the “surplus” — can go to charity. The latter figure, the founders say, usually ends up being much more than their clients originally thought they could give.
“The type of people that are attracted to what we offer tend to know that they have enough but don’t really know what that number is and also feel a certain level of discomfort with the fact that they are part of the privileged few and are potentially not doing as much as possible in terms of the impact side of things,” says Boogaard, the organization’s CEO.
Much of the program centers on the psychology of wealth. Participants explore why they might be holding on to more of their money than they need to and identify whether they harbor shame or guilt about their wealth. They must be willing to speak openly — in group sessions with other wealthy participants or in one-on-one conversations with Kessel or another Enough Project adviser — about their net worth, how much they spend, and how much they have given to charity in the past.
“We want to help people get to the relationship to wealth that they really want and help the world dramatically more so,” says Kessel. “We’re trying not to be a fixed formula for everybody but rather a technology, if you will, that meets each individual where they are and helps move them along through their obstacles and opportunities.”
Along with the in-depth discussions, Boogaard and Kessel offer their clients a set of resources including a simulation tool that helps people calculate their “enough” and “surplus” figures and a tailored financial analysis of those figures. They also receive guidance from a financial planner, help designing their giving plans, and the steps to carry out those plans over time.
Kessel and his team of two advisers primarily work with people whose net worth is around $100 million or more and includes billionaires. Clients range in age from 20s to 70s. Thirity-three individuals or couples have completed the program, and Kessel and his team are currently working with 11 others. Program “graduates” have identified roughly $3 billion in surplus, and more than $75 million of that has gone to charity so far. Kessel and Boogaard plan to stay in touch with clients for about three years to track where and how they give and to offer further guidance when needed.
“Most people initially think it’s a blessing to have too much wealth, but they don’t realize everything over and above what they need for their lifetime is a burden,” says Boogaard. “Our mission is to get that wealth unstuck and wealth holders to deploy it in a way that gives purpose and meaning to their lives and to use that surplus wealth to make the world a better place.
An early commitment to give
While the Enough Project works with people who are already wealthy, the Founders Pledge targets wealth when it is created. The group asks new and soon-to-be-wealthy tech leaders to donate at least 5 percent of their personal proceeds to charity when they exit their businesses, take their company public, sell their shares, or raise late-stage venture capital.
The point of the pledge, says founder and president David Goldberg, is to get people to start thinking sooner about what causes and charities they want to support and how they want to carry out their giving. And they do get them early. Founders Pledge clients — 2,250 people have signed the pledge — are on average in their mid-30s. Once they have a windfall, they will be ready to give big.
Part of the allure of many of these groups is the sense of fellowship they build and the educational opportunities they provide.
“The idea is to get people to commit to give really early,” says Goldberg. “Over time we can start to talk about what good philanthropy looks like, what are the tools at one’s disposal, and the mindsets one can approach it with
Because the pledge is based on a person’s business rather than net worth, Goldberg and his team can easily track when a pledger sells a company or shares or goes through an initial public offering. Those events trigger financial disclosures that prompt the team to follow up and make sure the money is going to charity.
The Founders Pledge provides individualized services, helping donors set giving goals and timelines, build grant-making portfolios, or consider charities that have been vetted by its research team. It also offers five pooled funds that support causes like fighting climate change and reducing global catastrophic risks such as pandemics and nuclear war, as well as an in-house donor-advised fund.
While such support can be helpful, donors should view any outside organization, network, or adviser as a resource and not a substitute for a donor’s own judgment, says Hart at Rockefeller Capital Management.
“The most effective philanthropic strategies are typically rooted in a donor’s values and priorities, and so external perspectives, however they’re organized, can be tremendously helpful,” she says. “But ultimately donors need to determine for themselves what they care about and what success looks like.
Goldberg says most people join the Founders Pledge because they lack time and expertise to conduct their own research and develop a giving plan. His 90-person staff of analysts and researchers delve into charities’ financials, operations, and program outcomes to help pledgers be sure they are giving effectively.
Proceeds from members’ companies have ranged from under $1 million up to the billions, Goldberg says. While pledgers are asked to give at least 5 percent of what they make once the money comes in, the average pledge is just over 14 percent, says Goldberg. So far, pledge members have given away a total of $1.9 billion
Barriers for fundraisers
While these groups unlock wealth, they can also create challenges for nonprofits hoping to land big gifts. In their efforts to guide giving, they also create another layer between nonprofits and potential donors and a new kind of intermediary fundraisers need to get in front of or around.
Nonprofits work hard to cultivate relationships with donors and make them feel engaged with their work, says Laura MacDonald, who founded the fundraising consultancy Benefactor Group. “One of the concerns with these kinds of intermediaries is they put themselves in between that relationship between the nonprofit and donor,” she says. “That can make the whole journey more of a transaction and less of a relationship.”
Boogaard, of the Enough Project, says such concerns are valid, but he says a good organization or adviser should have the opposite effect by introducing philanthropists to charities they may not have known about and then getting out of the way. He says his team might introduce a donor to a charity but will then step aside so the donor can develop a direct relationship with the nonprofit.
However, some donors want an intermediary to operate between them and a charity they might be considering supporting or one that has come calling.
A recent Women Moving Millions survey found that 84 percent of its members collaborated with at least one other member last year to support each other’s programs.
“In our experience, many donors don’t want to manage relationships with grantees and are happy to have someone filtering requests and helping them navigate this world,” says Founders Pledge’s Goldberg. “This is particularly true for newly liquid founders who are experiencing major life changes and finding many relationships in flux due to new wealth.”
Another pitfall, say big-giving experts, is that members of these groups could succumb to groupthink about their giving.
“Depending on how many different perspectives are involved in the organization, there’s a potential for donors to drift from their mission if they are not using these organizations primarily as a resource and a learning opportunity,” says Hart, the wealth and philanthropy adviser.
Collaborative giving models and organizations that focus on specific causes are particularly vulnerable. She advises her clients to vet any collective giving models before engaging with them to make sure their strategy is aligned with the donor’s goals and risk tolerance.
That said, these groups do offer a benefit over financial advisory firms, says MacDonald. Advisory firms have a built-in conflict of interest because they earn fees on the assets they manage, she says.
“These other groups, which are more independent of the whole investing angle, can help high-net-worth and ultra-high-net-worth individuals deploy their money more quickly and more effectively, and that’s a positive,” she said.
Relationships and community boost giving
Part of the allure of many of these groups is the sense of fellowship they build and the educational opportunities they provide through gatherings, retreats, workshops, and salons with guest speakers. Wealthy donors can hear from subject-matter experts about the causes that interest them and learn how to give big both from and alongside their peers.
“They’re looking to build new relationships, build their knowledge base, and have access to this extraordinary community of women who have vetted organizations and opportunities for them to invest,” says Women Moving Millions CEO Sarah Haacke Byrd. “Learning and experiential programming is huge because it’s how people build relationships with one another.”
Those relationships can result in collaboration. A recent Women Moving Millions survey found that of the organization’s 425 members, 84 percent collaborated with at least one other member last year to support each other’s programs, exchange data and insights, or partner on a project.
Haacke Byrd says she has seen collaboration among her group’s members deepen in recent years in reaction to threats to gender equity and increasing needs among nonprofits that work on women’s reproductive health and efforts to improve the lives of women and girls. Members are sharing their networks with each other, working together to develop giving strategies, and pooling resources more than ever.
“Through collaboration, we can make impact and make it immediately as opposed to doing it solo,” says Lee, the Las Vegas philanthropist. “We don’t necessarily have to do things together, but it’s nice because then you can see that the goal for whatever that initiative is will be obtained much sooner.”
