When technology stands between the giver and the gift: Rethinking intermediaries in the age of digital generosity

When a major platform recently created donation pages for over a million nonprofits without explicit consent, the public reaction was swift. Individuals inside the company listened to community feedback and moved quickly to take the pages down. The surface conversation focused on who made the mistake.

But the more meaningful question isn’t who did it,  it’s what it reveals about how giving now works.

This moment isn’t about a single platform. 

Charity Navigator, Facebook, and dozens of other intermediaries do something similar every day: they create donation channels on behalf of organizations using publicly available data that may not always be current. They advertise directly to donors, ask for tips or donations for themselves, and have varying processes for data accuracy. For many nonprofits, that means a donor might give through an outdated profile, complete with retired leaders, old addresses, or even incorrect financial information.

The problem is deeper than a single data error, it’s about the growing distance between the giver, the gift, and the good that’s done.

The disintermediation of giving

Researchers at Rogare: The Fundraising Think Tank, call this the disintermediation of giving (MacQuillin, Kottasz, Locilento, & Gallaiford, 2024). It’s a big word for a simple idea: the layers between a person who wants to help and the people or causes they want to support are shrinking and sometimes shifting in unexpected ways.

Before nonprofits existed, generosity flowed person to person. Eventually, institutions emerged to solve a logistical challenge: how to channel individual compassion into organized impact. Giving evolved from individual → institution → community. Donors entrusted organizations to translate their resources into meals, scholarships, and care.

Now, as trust in institutions declines, crowdfunding and peer-to-peer giving have made generosity feel personal again. But ironically, these gifts are still mediated. Only this time, by a digital intermediary. The nonprofit is no longer the bridge; the platform is.

We call this “disintermediation,” but really it’s re-intermediation: one middle layer has been replaced by another.

Platform power and nonprofit control

Traditionally, nonprofits owned their brand, data, and donor relationships. That’s no longer entirely true.

Some control has been willingly delegated: organizations choose to use third-party processors, payment gateways, and social campaigns. But some control has simply drifted away. Algorithms determine visibility. Platform policies define fees. Donation pages can appear without approval.

This shift raises serious governance and risk questions. Nonprofits must now think not only about what they do but about who represents them digitally and under what terms. The old assumption, that your brand lives wherever you publish it,  no longer holds. In many ways, it lives wherever the internet decides it does.

Donor trust in a fragmented giving world

This is the heart of the matter.

Donors are navigating an increasingly crowded giving landscape, one filled with different sites, fees, and forms. Most can’t tell which platforms are official, which take a cut, or which actually send funds efficiently. In an age of online scams and identity theft, that confusion creates hesitation.

Behavioral science shows that even minor uncertainty activates the brain’s risk-avoidance network, dampening the warm, rewarding glow of generosity. Donors begin to ask, “Is this safe? Is this real? Will my money actually reach anyone?”

When that cognitive friction arises, giving pauses and often never resumes. In short: the more complex the giving experience, the less generous people feel.

The hidden cost of stale data

One of the most revealing aspects of the recent controversy was the use of the IRS Master File, a database that is often incomplete or outdated. It contains everything from active charities to dissolved entities and organizations that were never intended to receive donations, such as homeowners’ associations.

But elsewhere when donors encounter old addresses, inactive leadership, or “website not found” warnings, their trust erodes. Even if the nonprofit is thriving, the digital representation says otherwise.

From a behavioral standpoint, those inconsistencies create cognitive dissonance. The brain interprets it as risk, and risk interrupts generosity. Data errors aren’t just clerical, they’re emotional. They change how generosity feels.

And these intermediated systems often optimize for only one kind of trust,  the kind that secures the transaction. They’re not designed to support the relational kind of trust: the reassurance that gifts are used as intended, gratitude is expressed, and promises are fulfilled. When funds are delivered months later, donor data is fragmented, or acknowledgment loops disappear entirely, we’ve optimized for the wrong kind of trust.

The economics of intermediation

The recent spotlight on platform “tips” revealed a deeper tension. Donors felt misled; nonprofits felt commodified. This reflects a broader tipping-culture fatigue across the economy: the sense that every interaction now demands an extra contribution. When giving feels like one more payment prompt, the emotional satisfaction that neuroscience associates with generosity begins to fade.

Every added layer of monetization turns generosity into a transaction and the brain knows the difference.

Relationships in the New Era

Perhaps the most important question is relational: Who owns the donor relationship?

Platforms often assume that all money is good money. But nonprofits know that what sustains them isn’t the one-time gift, it’s the long-term relationship.

When a donor gives through a platform and never hears from the organization again, the relationship belongs to the intermediary, not the mission. From a neuroscience lens, that’s a serious loss: enduring generosity depends on memory, recognition, and emotional reinforcement. When those feedback loops break, giving becomes a fleeting impulse rather than a lasting identity.

A better path forward

We don’t need fewer intermediaries; we need better ones: tools that amplify trust rather than absorb it, that offer clarity instead of confusion, and that allow organizations to control their data, story, and stewardship.

That means:

• Building digital tools that strengthen direct connection between givers and the people or programs they support.
• Keeping donor data current, transparent, and governed by clear consent.
• Designing experiences that activate empathy and reinforce shared agency:  the “we did this together” feeling that neuroscience proves sustains generosity.
• Auditing online presence regularly, not from fear of rogue pages but to ensure the story the internet tells about an organization is accurate, credible, and human.
  

A call to conversation

This isn’t merely a single platform issue, it’s a cultural one.

As technology continues to reshape generosity, the sector must ask harder questions:

• How do we preserve authentic connection in a digital world?
• What responsibilities do intermediaries, from platforms to evaluators, have for data accuracy and ethical transparency?
• How can nonprofits, funders, and technologists work together to narrow the distance between generosity and impact?

The disintermediation of giving isn’t a passing buzzword. It’s a lens for understanding what happens when technology, trust, and human empathy intersect and sometimes collide.

The real story isn’t about pages being created or deleted. It’s about how we ensure that, no matter the medium, the giver, the gift, and the good remain connected.

References:
MacQuillin, I., Kottasz, R., Locilento, J., & Gallaiford, N. (2024). A typology of disintermediated giving and asking in the nonprofit sector. Journal of Philanthropy and Marketing. Advance online publication. https://doi.org/10.1002/nvsm.1820
See also Rogare’s overview: https://www.rogare.net/disintermediation

Cherian Koshy

Cherian Koshy, CFRE, CAP® is Vice President at Kindsight and has spent over two decades helping nonprofits build sustainable fundraising practices. He serves on the AFP Global Board and regularly speaks about fundraising innovation and donor engagement.

linkedin