by Kevin Bailey
Vice President, Impact & Nonprofit Center
At the Idaho Community Foundation, our north star is growing a culture of philanthropy and elevating nonprofit impact across Idaho. New national data from Giving USA shows that charitable giving continues to grow, with total giving rising 3.1% in 2025 when adjusted for inflation. This is great news nationally, but we still have a long way to go here in the Gem state as we play catch up to rising community needs due in large part to the rapid growth Idaho has experienced.
One of the ways we can help nonprofits in our state raise more money is by training the next generation of fundraising staff at nonprofits across Idaho. Our Nonprofit Center has a fundraising training program called “Essentials of Development” which was developed in partnership with the MJ Murdock Charitable Trust. We recently took a look back at IRS 990 data for organizations that participated in this program to see how they fared in growing their operating budgets through fundraising. On average, participating organizations grew their revenue 36% post-participation and over 90% of organizations saw positive revenue growth overall.
This success gives us the signal to keep moving forward. We are working to train even more nonprofits across the state to be the most effective fundraising organizations they can be because our communities’ success is dependent on the nonprofit sector’s success.
Building up that community of effective nonprofits is part of that north star and we’ll have our next chance to do that on August 25th and 26th at our Statewide Nonprofit Conference in Boise. Whether you’re a nonprofit staffer, volunteer, board member, or donor, we hope to see you in Boise at the end of August for two days of learning and community building so that we can keep the positive momentum going on building a culture of philanthropy in the Gem state!