Nonprofits Don’t Deserve Trust, They Earn It |
As 2025 ends, a season traditionally reserved for reflection, generosity, and year end giving, Americans have watched a familiar story unfold across the nonprofit world: leadership turmoil, internal governance disputes, and uncomfortable questions about transparency and accountability. These episodes spanning charities of all sizes and missions have captured public attention not because they are sensational, but because they strike at the heart of what makes nonprofit institutions different from every other sector.
Nonprofits should not operate on profit margins or political power. They should operate on trust.
Recent events underscore this sad reality. The Sierra Club, one of the nation’s most recognizable charities, was forced into leadership upheaval after prolonged internal conflict and governance breakdowns. In Minnesota, the Feeding Our Future case exposed how weak oversight and lax controls allowed a nonprofit to become the center of one of the largest public funds fraud schemes in recent history. And nationally, the Black Lives Matter Global Network Foundation has faced sustained scrutiny over financial transparency, governance practices, and donor stewardship.
These organizations differ vastly in mission and ideology, but they share a common lesson: when accountability fails, trust evaporates, and the entire nonprofit sector pays the price.
That trust is granted by donors who give with purpose, by volunteers who give their time, and by communities that believe a charitable organization will honor its mission faithfully. Nowhere is that trust more visible than........