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50 Reasons Why It Is Hard to Run a Nonprofit — Challenge 35: Funding Unpopular Causes
Two nonprofits in the same city apply for the same community foundation grant. Both serve 200 people. Both have strong outcomes data. Both are well-managed organizations with experienced leadership.
One runs an after-school program for elementary school kids. The other runs a reentry program for people leaving prison.
The after-school program gets funded. The reentry program doesn't.
This isn't a story about one program being better than the other. It's a story about which populations the public considers worth helping.
Most donors don't think of themselves as choosing between "deserving" and "undeserving" recipients. But the research says that's exactly what's happening — often unconsciously.
Research from the University of Connecticut found that perceived responsibility for one's circumstances directly affects charitable giving. When donors believe a population is responsible for its own plight — people experiencing addiction, people who have been incarcerated, people living on the street — giving drops. Even when charities don't emphasize personal responsibility, donors assign their own assumptions.
The bias runs deeper than individual judgment. The Nonprofit Quarterly and legal scholars at Boston University have documented how the "deserving poor" has historically been imagined as white, while the "undeserving poor" has been imagined as people of color. This framing persists in public discourse and in giving patterns, whether donors are conscious of it or not.
The numbers reflect the bias. According to Giving USA 2025, human services — the category that includes most organizations serving the hardest populations — receives just 14% of total charitable giving. Religion receives 23%. Education receives 14%. The causes that serve people the public finds sympathetic attract more money. The causes that serve people the public would rather not think about get less.
The previous post in this series addressed the measurement problem — the difficulty of demonstrating success with populations where outcomes are hard to define and take years to materialize. Challenge 34 was about your ability to prove results.
Challenge 35 is different. This is about the public's willingness to care — regardless of your results.
A reentry program with perfect outcomes data still faces the deservingness bias. The measurement is fine. The audience isn't.
If you run an organization serving an unpopular population, you face a fundraising challenge that no amount of operational excellence can solve on its own.
You can't make your population more sympathetic. Trying to do so — telling "redemption stories" or cherry-picking the most relatable clients for your marketing — risks exploiting the very people you serve. And it doesn't work at scale. One compelling story might open a checkbook. It doesn't change the underlying bias that keeps your cause underfunded relative to causes the public finds easier to support.
You can't ignore the bias, either. Pretending that excellent work will eventually speak for itself is a strategy that works for after-school programs but not for organizations serving people with felony records.
So what do you do?
The organizations I've seen succeed at funding unpopular causes don't try to make their population likable. They make the economic case.
The median cost of incarcerating one person now exceeds $65,000 per year, with states like California topping $125,000. A reentry program that reduces recidivism costs a fraction of that. The argument isn't "these people deserve a second chance." The argument is "funding reentry saves taxpayers money and reduces crime." Different audience. Different frame. Different result.
Housing-first programs make the same case. The cost of chronic homelessness — emergency room visits, police interactions, shelter cycling — far exceeds the cost of providing permanent supportive housing. The economic argument doesn't require the donor to feel sympathetic toward people experiencing homelessness. It requires them to understand math.
This isn't cynical. It's strategic. The sympathy argument reaches a ceiling quickly with unpopular populations. The economic argument reaches a much larger audience — including government funders, corporate partners, and institutional donors — because it reframes the cause from charity to investment.
One complication that the economic argument can't fully address: the political climate.
Nonprofits serving immigrants have faced acute fundraising challenges in periods of heightened anti-immigrant sentiment. Organizations serving people with substance use disorders see funding fluctuate with public attitudes about addiction — compassion in one decade, criminalization in the next.
Your organization can't control the political weather. But you can build a funding base that's diversified enough to survive shifts in public sentiment. If your revenue depends heavily on individual donors whose giving is influenced by the political climate, you're vulnerable. Government contracts, earned revenue, institutional partnerships, and foundation grants can provide stability that individual giving cannot.
This is one of the areas I address regularly in Nonprofit Good News Premium — how to build funding resilience when your cause is one political cycle away from being popular or toxic.
Look at your case for support — the document or pitch you use to ask for money. Does it lead with the population's story, or with the cost comparison?
If you're leading with stories about your clients' hardships, you may be activating the exact bias that makes funding harder. Try rewriting your opening around the economics: what does it cost to NOT fund this work? What's the public expense of the problem your organization addresses? What's the return on investment?
The people you serve deserve better than a system that funds them only when the public finds them sympathetic. Make the case that funding your work is good policy, not just good charity.
This is part of an ongoing series exploring the 50 challenges outlined in Managing Your Nonprofit for Resilience (Wiley, 2023). Subscribe to Nonprofit Good News Premium for implementation tools and deeper analysis.