Virko Kask

For the seventh year, Independent Sector partnered with Edelman Data & Intelligence to examine how the American public views nonprofit and philanthropic organizations. The 2026 study includes a nationally representative survey of 3,000 U.S. adults and politically representative online focus groups. This year’s findings show that nonprofits remain a rare point of common ground.

Post an opening for a development associate or a program coordinator and you will likely get hundreds of applications, and a growing share may be written by artificial intelligence (AI). For an executive director who is also writing a grant report, covering a program shift and preparing for a board meeting, that pile is not a luxury. It is another unpaid job. Good candidates get missed, and a mis-hire in a six-person organization is not one bad quarter — it is a program.

For the resumes that clear the first pass, score each against the same rubric rather than against each other. "Compared to the last one I read" is how bias and fatigue creep in around resume 80. A simple scorecard, even one to five per criterion, gives you a ranked shortlist you can defend to the partners and to yourself. You will see them: polished, confident and oddly generic. The tell is usually the absence of specifics.