The participation payoff

After relaunching its 3% by ‘33 social good initiative as the sector-wide goal of increasing charitable giving from 2.5% to 3% of US GDP, Bonterra wanted to deepen the narrative around this seven-year ambition with a complementary resource that would highlight key insights from the nonprofit technology company’s annual flagship impact report. Rather than restate the mission, we built an argument for achieving results by shifting from donation-first fundraising to a conceptualized participation economy as a means of treating time, skills, advocacy, and trust as measurable forms of value. Grounded in third-party data from the Fundraising Effectiveness Project, Pew, the Generosity Commission, and Independent Sector, then structured around a five-stage engagement model with actionable steps for scaling participation, the whitepaper positions engagement not as a precursor to giving, but as a leading indicator of sustained support—reframing the sector’s growth problem as one of design, not collective willingness.