We fundraise in a way that makes systemic change structurally impossible. CCF is the way out.

By Maria Rio, CEO of Further Together Fundraising

Donor-centric fundraising — the model where donors and their comfort come first, above everything else — has been the foundation of our “best practices.” And it is the single biggest reason the sector largely addresses symptoms rather than systems.

When I was nine years old, my mother, my sibling, and I arrived in Canada as refugee claimants from Mexico. We lived in a World Vision shelter for six months. When I was in high school, I skipped school to go to the food bank; they were only open during school hours when my mom was at work. My family had to choose: I could go to class, or we could all eat.

The organizations that served my family kept us safe. I will never forget that.

But here’s what they didn’t do: they never fought the systems that made us need charity in the first place. They fed us, but they didn’t fight for living wages or immigration reform. They gave us Christmas presents, but they didn’t advocate for affordable housing. Had my mom been paid fairly — had rent not taken most of what she earned — we would not have needed any of it.

They treated the symptoms of poverty. They never touched the root causes.

I went on to become a fundraiser. And for years, I did exactly what I had been taught: I kept donors comfortable, softened the truth, protected the gift. It wasn’t until I learned about Community-Centric Fundraising that I could name what had been wrong the whole time.

Not just ethically. Strategically, too.

The Model We Were Taught Is Keeping Us Stuck

Donor-centric fundraising — the model where donors and their comfort come first, above everything else — has been the foundation of our “best practices.” And it is the single biggest reason the sector largely addresses symptoms rather than systems.

Here’s what it looks like in action:

• We don’t cut ties with the corporate donor contributing to the problems our organization exists to solve. We accept their money, put their logo on our materials, and tell ourselves it’s pragmatic. 
• We don’t speak publicly on issues that matter to us because we worry donors may leave. 
• We show service users at their worst because desperation sells. 
• We don’t name the systems — racism, wealth hoarding, tax avoidance, white supremacy — because our largest donors benefit from them, and we’ve convinced ourselves it isn’t our place to say so.

We make compromise after compromise, each one small enough to rationalize, until we look up one day and realize we’ve become part of the problem.

And here’s what our silence costs the people we serve: 

• When we don’t name the systems, donors fill that gap with individualistic explanations: poor choices, lack of effort, moral failing. 
• When we don’t connect policy decisions to human suffering, people conclude the problems we address are inevitable rather than manufactured. 
• Our silence doesn’t protect donors from difficult truths. It robs them of the chance to understand reality and robs them of the chance to meaningfully contribute to changing it.

When we only talk about symptoms, donors can only fund symptom management. We trap everyone — ourselves, our communities, our donors — in an endless cycle of charitable giving that never resolves anything. Because it was never designed to.

Honesty As the Mechanism

Community-Centric Fundraising puts community needs and dignity first, rather than centering donors. It treats donors as partners instead of heroes. And it requires organizations to be clear about what they are trying to change: publicly, consistently, even when that’s uncomfortable.

That honesty is the mechanism. It’s not a values statement. It’s a practical shift in what you say and to whom, and it changes what donors are able to understand, commit to, and fund.

For example, in my last in-house role as a Director of Development at a food security organization, I had a conversation with donors that went something like this:

“Many of our community members are on social assistance — government income support that hasn’t kept up with the cost of living. The ones who aren’t are working, many experiencing racism at their jobs, unable to move forward. Rent takes more than half their income. These are capable people facing barriers that have nothing to do with capability and everything to do with systems. So, while we hand out food hampers, what we really need to be doing is advocacy — around living wages and income supports— advocacy that solves the actual problem, so our service users don’t have to rely on us in the first place.”

That was my way of starting conversations with donors about tax avoidance, wealth hoarding, white supremacy, and more. They could see the inequity and feel their role in the nonprofit industrial complex.

Here’s what donors said:

“I never thought about it that way. I wish I had talked to you before doing my taxes.”

“No one’s ever been that honest with me before. Where can I learn more about CCF?”

“What can I do to help fight for policy change?”

One foundation that hadn’t given in two years came back, asked more questions about CCF, and gave $50,000. A donor who had been asked to put her name on a plaque told me: “I didn’t like it. It felt like my name was looking down on people.” A third donor went on to write a public post reckoning with the origins of her family’s wealth and then talked her family into closing their donor-advised fund. She said it wasn’t aligned with their values. They wanted the money dispersed now. 

These donors had been uncomfortable for years. No one had ever had a conversation with them that let them act on that discomfort.

That’s what happens when you center justice instead of organizational survival. Donors don’t just write bigger checks. They start thinking differently about wealth, about systems, about their own role. They become partners in the work rather than funders of symptom management.

Donors Can Handle The Truth

At that same organization, we stopped telling stories that showed people at their lowest. We talked about community, joy, and dignity. We named systemic barriers. We cancelled our successful gala. I wrote an op-ed for a major national newspaper arguing that food banks should not exist.

My board worried donors would leave.

Instead, end-of-year campaign revenue went up 55% compared to the year before. Total revenue increased by $400,000. We secured the organization’s first-ever million-dollar gift.

Since then, I have found that these results are repeatable. In just 12 months of CCF implementation: Coastal Jazz saw 100% increases in both gifts and donors. Growing Up Green Charter School saw a 163% increase in donors. The Prosperity Project saw a 91% increase in major gifts received. A 2025 national study surveying 283 different nonprofit organizations found that over 90% of those nonprofits are familiar with CCF, and 76% have already started changing their practices. Most have seen their revenue line stay the same or increase after the change.

The sector has spent decades believing that telling the truth would cost us donors, but evidence says otherwise. What CCF does cost us are donors who were never going to help us change the system and donors who only wanted logo recognition.

And now we know, for sure, that we don’t need them.