The Philanthropic Giant Nobody Is Asking
The Culturenomics™ Brief · Villa Communications · April 15, 2026
Last week I was in Lafayette, California for the Somos El Poder “Fundraising con Ganas” summit. I attended as a board member of the Migrant Clinicians Network. More than twenty nonprofit organizations working to advance Latino causes across industries, sectors, and regions were in that room.
Latino giving is a powerful, largely untapped force. The biggest barrier is not capacity. It is the persistent misconception that Latinos don’t have money or don’t give, a cultural bias that has cost the philanthropic sector billions in unrealized potential.
According to research from Hispanics in Philanthropy and the Indiana University Lilly Family School of Philanthropy, when you combine informal giving with traditional charitable donations, Latino households give more generously than non‑Latino households relative to income, wealth, and education—what lead researcher Una Osili has described as “punching above their weight.”
Research shows that both Black and Latino families often devote a larger share of what they have to helping others than white families do, even in the face of the racial wealth gap.
Latino donors tend to be the youngest of all racial and ethnic groups, are especially interested in hearing more from nonprofits, and are more likely than other donors to give spontaneously, particularly in response to unexpected disasters or events.
And yet less than 1% of philanthropic support reaches Latino communities in the US and Latin America. While Latino communities have grown exponentially, this ratio has not budged in decades.
Read that again. Less than 1%. For a community that represents roughly 20% of the US population and would rank among the world’s largest economies if measured on its own.
This is not a capacity problem. This is an ask problem.
THE LATINO BIAS BLINDSPOT
Most organizations have not built a genuine strategy for Latino donors. They have not invested in the relationships, the messengers, or the cultural intelligence required to make a credible ask. So they don’t ask, and because they don’t ask, the data shows decline in formal giving rates, which they interpret as evidence that Latinos don’t give, which becomes the justification for not investing in the strategy.
It is a self-fulfilling prophecy built on a fundamental misreading of the community.
St. Jude Children’s Research Hospital is the most vivid proof point of what happens when an organization actually builds the strategy. Their partnership with Spanish-language media raises millions of dollars from Spanish-speaking communities every year and has added up to tens of millions over time. That number is not the result of a campaign. It is the result of a sustained, culturally intelligent commitment to showing up in the right places, through trusted voices, with a genuine ask.
Affluent Latinos are roughly six times more likely than their white counterparts to participate in or establish giving circles. That is not a community disengaged from philanthropy. That is a community engaging on its own terms, through its own networks, because the formal philanthropic sector has not met them where they are.
TO GIVE OR TO VOTE: THE ASKS LATINOS SELDOM GET
The same pattern plays out in political giving, and the implications are significant heading into the 2026 midterms.
In 2024, roughly half of Latino voters reported that no one from either party had contacted them about their vote, and millions of eligible Latino citizens remain unregistered. If campaigns are not making the ask to vote, they are certainly not making the ask to give.
Despite Latinos comprising about 20% of the general US population, they hold only a tiny 2% of elected offices nationwide.
The underrepresentation in giving and the underrepresentation in office are connected. Both trace back to the same gap: the absence of a genuine, sustained strategy for earning Latino engagement rather than assuming it will come on its own.
Latino giving, philanthropic and political, is not transactional. It is relational, community-rooted, and deeply tied to trust. The organizations and campaigns that understand this start with the ask, made by the right person, through the right channel, grounded in a genuine understanding of what this community values and how it makes decisions.
This is a community that doesn’t need nor value a translated version of the same message sent to everyone else. If you want their vote or their dollars you must build an ask designed from the ground up for this audience.
That is not complicated. But it does require intention, investment, and partnerships genuinely dedicated to connecting and engaging this community.
The giving giant is already in the room. Someone just needs to make the ask.
The Culturenomics™ Brief is published by Ruth Villalonga, Founder and CEO of Villa Communications and originator of Culturenomics™, the enterprise operating system for competing in the markets driving America’s growth. If this briefing sharpened your thinking, share it with someone who needs to hear it. And if you are not yet subscribed, this is the work we do here every week: the data, the intelligence, and the business case for culture as strategy.
— Ruth Villalonga, Villa Communications