Are Latino Donors Missing from Your Fundraising Pipeline?

It’s National Hispanic Heritage Month, which is when most organizations conduct meaningful outreach to this community for the first time all year. So, let's spend it on a question that matters long after this month ends: Why aren’t more Latino and Hispanic donors in your fundraising pipeline?

This week, a family may collect money to help a cousin graduate from college. A congregation may rally around a member launching a small business. A group of friends may contribute to a neighborhood cause, while parents teach their children why giving back matters.

The generosity is already there. The question is whether your organization sees it and whether your communications are regularly giving Latino and Hispanic donors a reason to see themselves in your work.

Latinos are 19.5% of the country, and the 2025 U.S. Latino GDP Report puts Latino economic output at $4 trillion — fifth-largest economy in the world if it stood alone. Meanwhile, the Latino Community Foundation estimates that under 2% of philanthropic dollars nationally reach Latino- and Latina-led organizations.

Those statistics reflect different parts of the philanthropic system, but together they point to an opportunity nonprofit leaders should not ignore. Latino communities represent significant economic influence and a deeply rooted culture of generosity, yet they are often missing from the audiences nonprofit organizations intentionally cultivate as donors.  

That isn’t a generosity problem; it’s a communications problem.  

If people encounter your organization only as a service provider, never see themselves represented among its donors and leaders, and rarely hear from you through sources they know and trust, the strongest solicitation in the world will have to overcome years of missed opportunities. Before you strengthen the ask, you must build the awareness, understanding, relevance and trust that make an ask possible.

Understand How Generosity Already Shows Up

No community is a monolith. Latino and Hispanic donors differ across national origin, generation, geography, language, income, faith, political perspective and personal experience. But research reveals giving patterns that can help organizations reconsider the assumptions built into their communications:

• Giving often happens informally. Research conducted by Hispanics in Philanthropy and the Indiana University Lilly Family School of Philanthropy found Latino households give informally — crowdfunding a neighbor's medical bills, covering a relative's tuition, sending money home — at higher rates than other households: 16% compared with 12.6%. Una Osili, who worked on the study, noted that once you combine informal and traditional giving, Latinos appear to give disproportionately more than non-Latinos, punching above their weight given income, wealth and education. The challenge is that generosity shared by families, congregations and personal networks often remains invisible to institutions that count philanthropy only when it enters a donor database.

• Family and faith shape giving. As Paola Cabero-Ireta and Gerry Pantoja lay out in their overview of Latino donor motivations, family here routinely includes grandparents, cousins and godparents; giving to a church isn't experienced as charity but as obligation; and children who watch a parent serve tend to become givers themselves.  

• Relationships matter more than your cause. Trust in the person introducing them to the organization and making the ask is stronger than the appeal itself. Board members, program alumni, faith leaders, volunteers, local business owners and other respected community voices can help an unfamiliar organization become relevant.  

• Generosity goes beyond monetary donations. In the Latino Giving Circle Network's "Philanthropy with Purpose" study reported 46% of survey participants had served on boards or advisory bodies and 51% had helped with fundraising, including making donor introductions.  

These insights shouldn’t be turned into stereotypes or a checklist for “reaching Latinos.” They should cause nonprofit leaders to ask a harder question: Does our communications strategy recognize how generosity already operates in this community, or are we waiting for people to find their way into systems built without them in mind?

Build Awareness Before You Ask for Support

Many prospective donors meet your organization long before a development officer meets them. Each interaction can move someone closer to your organization or reinforce the idea that its work is meant for somebody else.

That is why communications must play a role well before an organization develops a solicitation. If Latino and Hispanic communities are absent from your visibility strategy, they will probably be absent from your fundraising pipeline, too.

Start by asking:

• Where are people hearing about our organization?

• Whose voices are explaining our work?

• What role do Latino and Hispanic community members play in our stories?

• Do our messages assume familiarity with institutional philanthropy?

• Are we communicating only when we need something?

• Have we explained how someone can move from awareness to participation, and eventually to giving?

The objective is not a one-month outreach campaign. It is sustained familiarity that gives relationships time to grow.

Communicate in Both Languages—But Don’t Just Translate

Pew's survey of more than 5,000 Hispanic adults found 54% get their news mostly in English, 21% mostly in Spanish, and 23% in both about equally. The divide runs along nativity: U.S.-born Latinos overwhelmingly prefer English, while 41% of immigrants get news mostly in Spanish.  

So, you need both — just not the way most of us do it, which is to write the appeal in English, send it to a translator, and call that bilingual outreach. A translation carries over every assumption baked into the original about family, obligation and what makes a gift feel meaningful. It reads as borrowed. Write the Spanish appeal for a Spanish-dominant household and the English one for a second-generation reader and let them differ. If you don't have capacity for two, one strong English piece with Spanish where it carries real weight will serve a mixed household better than a flat translation of either.

Show the Community on Both Sides of Philanthropy

Representation matters, but so does the role in which someone is represented.

Latino donors want to see their people helped — that's the whole motivation, and photos of families served are proof you're reaching them. The problem is when that's the only role they play in your materials. If Latinos appear in your content exclusively as recipients, and never as donors, volunteers, board members or the people running programs, nothing you've published suggests you think of them as funders. Then the ask arrives with no groundwork behind it. Go through your last year of content and count the roles. Both sides should be there.

Use Trusted Channels to Reach New Audiences

Local Spanish-language radio, parish bulletins, neighborhood Facebook groups, WhatsApp chains and community papers reach the households you want, and their endorsement transfers. This is the trusted-messenger principle from the asks above, applied to earned media.

Treat these relationships with the same care you would give any important media or community partner. Learn what their audiences care about. Offer useful stories and knowledgeable sources. Be present throughout the year, not only during Hispanic Heritage Month or when a fundraising deadline approaches.

Let Community Voices Carry the Story

A creator, a promotora, a coach or a beloved local business owner talking about your work will do more than a polished institutional video. Give trusted messengers real access to your organization. Help them understand the need, the work, the results and the challenges. Invite their questions. Listen when they tell you which parts of your message will or will not connect. Then, let them speak in their own voices. The goal is not to make someone sound like your organization. It is to equip people who believe in your work to explain why others might believe in it, too.

Report Back Publicly and Specifically

Trust doesn’t end when a gift is made. Neither should communications.

Show where the money went and what it made possible. Name the program, the number of people reached, the progress achieved and what remains to be done. Use clear language rather than expecting donors to interpret an annual report or financial statement on their own.

Just as importantly, make that information easy to find and share through the channels your audiences actually use.

Reporting back is more than stewardship. It gives current donors evidence that their participation mattered and gives prospective donors a picture of what joining the effort could accomplish.

It is a retention strategy, an awareness strategy and a trust-building strategy at the same time.

One More Thing About Your House

Candid's 2024 report on sector diversity found that people identifying as Hispanic or Latino make up 19% of nonprofit workers but just 6% of executives. Donors notice who's in the room. The ask lands differently when the person making it, and the people behind them, reflect the community being asked.  

Communications cannot manufacture a sense of belonging that people do not experience when they engage with your organization. If your external message says Latino donors are valued but your leadership, advisory groups and community relationships tell a different story, the disconnect will be obvious.

Bottom Line

The envelope is already going around the table. Money is already moving — through families, parishes, group chats and giving circles — usually outside the systems we track, and often toward work our institutions never invited anyone into.

The opportunity for nonprofits is not simply to make a better ask. It is to build the awareness, understanding, representation and trust that allow more people to find their way into the organization’s work.

Learn how the giving already happens, then build the ask to match it. The generosity was never the missing piece. The invitation was.