Some of the best lessons come from the most unexpected places.

Tomorrow, Saturday, June 20, is International Surfing Day – a global celebration of surfing and the coastlines we love, now in its 21st year. I'll come back to the day, and the charity behind it, at the end. But in the spirit of cultivating an outside mindset – of learning from outside our sector – I want to reshare one of our reader favorites: four lessons from the world of surfing that apply directly to leading innovation and growth in our organizations.

 In sustainable giving, the constraint is rarely a lack of ideas. It's a lack of clarity about which of those ideas will actually move the needle right now — and in what sequence to pursue them.

Over the past two-plus decades, I’ve picked up some life lessons, so today, I thought I would share some of those with you.

This month marks five years since I first discovered a tool that has changed the way I lead.

It's called The Six Types of Working Genius, or just Working Genius, for short.

May is truly for Monthly Giving.

Want to know why else May should be a time to recognize, celebrate, and lean into the opportunities surrounding sustainable giving?

Because May 24, 1815 was the foundation of the first one-to-one-style sponsorship recurring giving in U.S. history. 

In many ways, May 24 is the birthday of recurring giving in the United States. 🥳🎂🎉

When I first started speaking about the opportunity for charities to grow recurring giving, I focused most of my time on helping nonprofits see that this was a trend for them, not just for someone else. 

Today, I’m seeing more and more leaders not only recognize the trend but also believe it could be for them. They want to grow recurring giving. They're ready.

The question has shifted from "should we?" to "how do we?"

And increasingly, the answer to that question depends on the providers they partner with.

In 2000, 67% of households in the U.S. gave a gift to charity.

By 2020, that figure had fallen to 47%, and there is reason to believe it has slid further since then. 

The generosity crisis is real. 

Today is a big day.

We're announcing something we've been quietly building toward for a long time, and as a reader of The Wave Report, I want you to be among the first to know.

Today, we're announcing the launch of The Center for Sustainable Giving.

Sustainable recurring giving is growth is real, and it's why the question I get often keeps coming up.

How do you get donors to actually make the leap to becoming sustainers?

In honor of the Masters, let's look at two lessons that you and I can learn from the world of golf to apply to our leadership today.

The "One Big Beautiful Bill" (OBBB) is a comprehensive 2025 law that introduced major tax policy changes, including several changes around charitable contributions that will likely reshape generosity in the United States for years to come.

It is estimated that the tax law changes will increase the number of Americans giving to charity by 6.0 to 8.7 million new households in the coming years.

In January, one of the “Waves to Ride” I identified for 2026 was the rise of Donor-Advised Funds, or DAFs, as they are more commonly referred to:

Donor-Advised Funds have been growing at an accelerating pace for more than a decade. In 2024, contributions to DAFs exceeded $89 billion, total assets surpassed $326 billion, and grants from DAFs to charities reached an all-time high of $65 billion—more than double what donors were granting just six years earlier (per the DAF Research Collaborative). – Waves to Ride in 2026

The beauty of a Donor-Advised Fund is that the dollars are pre-committed by donors and cannot be used for any other purpose than distributions to charities.

There are nearly 3.6 million donor-directed DAFs out there, representing $326 billion ready to be given, with $65+ billion given annually. 

When I was early in my career, I took an assessment that promised to help identify my strengths, motivations, and interests. As a fan of most assessments like this, I wondered what it would say – what core part of my make-up it might illuminate to help me better understand myself.

As I flipped through the report, my attention was naturally drawn towards a section labeled “interests.” Intrigued, I read on.

My top interests, according to the report, were:

• Literary – appreciation for language (92%) 

• Administrative – systems, order, and reliability (88%)

• Artistic – creation, appreciation for arts, aesthetics (78%)

• Numerical - working with numbers and data (72%)

Those all made sense. As I looked down the list to the very bottom of my apparent “interests,” I had a chuckle.

• Outdoor - work in an outdoor environment (5%)

Ouch! 

A series of misfortunate events forced me to bring in someone who knew exactly what they were doing – and likely saved us from far bigger damage down the line.

Can you remember a time when you had to bring your A-game?

The Rise of Sustainable Giving was delayed three times. Took three years to research and write. And it was a longer road than I could have imagined. 

But this past year, more than 25,000 leaders have been exposed to the message of Sustainable Giving, through the book, the Sustainable Giving Podcast, workshops, Wave Report articles, and speaking at events.