What Yale Got Right That Other Nonprofits Keep Getting Wrong
The nonprofit sector's instinct when public trust declines is to improve its messaging. Yale tried something harder and more honest — self-examination.
By Greg Berman
Contributor
May 6, 2026 | Read Time: 6 minutes
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Last month, Yale University did something that doesn’t come naturally to elite institutions: It engaged in rigorous self-reflection and then actually shared the results with the world.
The “Report of the Committee on Trust in Higher Education,” which was commissioned by Yale President Maurie McInnis and produced by a 10-member faculty committee, didn’t emerge out of nowhere. In recent years, Yale has repeatedly found itself on the front lines of the American culture wars.
Here are just a few examples: In 2015, a Yale faculty member became the target of protests when she sent an email questioning a university directive asking students to avoid culturally insensitive Halloween costumes. She ultimately resigned.In 2021, a conservative Yale Law School student was the subject of multiple complaints, and an official inquiry, for a party invitation he sent out referencing a “trap house.” (Cue social media firestorm.)
Yale has also been the subject of a Department of Justice suit over alleged discrimination of Asian Americans in admissions and enmeshed in national controversies over pro-Gaza student demonstrations and widespread grade inflation. Given this level of negative press, almost any institution would see its approval ratings go down.
When confronted with bad news, there is an enormous temptation for institutional leaders, including those heading nonprofits, to engage in hand-waving and deflection. To its credit, Yale chose a different path.
The “Report of the Committee on Trust in Higher Education” is a good-faith effort at earnest public accounting. It begins with a clear framing of the problem, arguing that the decline in public confidence in universities is “real, urgent, and must be addressed.” It presents uncomfortable data without flinching, including a survey finding that nearly a third of Yale undergraduates don’t feel free to express their political views on campus.
While the committee identified a number of problems that have contributed to declining trust, including outlandish tuition prices, at the heart of its analysis are the intersecting issues of ideological conformity and self-censorship. It offered commonsense recommendations to improve the intellectual climate on campus, including the creation of a universitywide mission statement and the reaffirmation of the university’s commitment to free speech.
Lessons for the Sector
If you’re not in higher education, you might be tempted to file all of this in a large bin labeled “not my problem.” That would be a mistake. The Yale report should be a template not just for other universities but for the entire ecosystem of civil society organizations that are facing a similar crisis of legitimacy and haven’t yet mustered the nerve to confront it.
A March 2025 survey by the Dorothy A. Johnson Center for Philanthropy found that only 42 percent of respondents expressed strong trust in nonprofits. While better than many institutions — Congress and the national media, for example — it’s hardly cause for a ticker tape parade. Indeed, when the Johnson Center repeated the survey six months later, public support for nonprofits had declined further. The trajectory is not encouraging.
The nonprofit sector has largely responded with a shrug. Many have simply ignored the problem or attributed it to communications challenges. If only the public really understood what we do, the thinking goes, then they would definitely love us! This is the instinct that animates Independent Sector’s plan to provide nonprofits with “tested messaging and narrative guidance” to help them better demonstrate their value to their communities.
More Than a Messaging Problem
Good messaging definitely beats bad messaging, but it won’t fix the problem. What Yale understood, and what the nonprofit sector has yet to fully reckon with, is that declining confidence often reflects real failures, not just PR deficits. What makes the Yale report notable is not that its findings are particularly surprising or that its recommendations are especially innovative but that it exists at all. It’s worth noting here that the Democratic Party has scrapped plans to release a post-mortem analyzing why it lost the 2024 presidential election.
The Yale committee was blunt: Too often, academics, who, let’s remember, are supposed to be devoted to honest inquiry and introspection, have “resisted calls to critically examine our own institutions, professions, and modes of thought.” Going forward, “we must be willing to admit where we have been wrong.” This is no small rhetorical gesture given our current heated political environment. Humility and self-correction are in short supply these days.
One core problem identified by the Yale committee was a “diffusion of purpose.” That admission should land with a jolt of recognition for anyone who has spent time in the nonprofit sector. Diffusion of purpose is endemic in nonprofits, often for understandable reasons, including an impulse toward innovation and the need to attract new funders. But plenty of nonprofits have lost their way in recent years — see, for example, the ACLU, Sierra Club, and Planned Parenthood — as mission creep and groupthink have spread unchecked.
Stop Performing Success Theater
The nonprofit sector already has an array of mechanisms for demonstrating accountability, including websites, annual reports, program evaluations, and 990s. But a lot of this apparatus tends to migrate toward success theater. Self-congratulation is meaningless if it isn’t leavened by self-criticism.
The Yale report is not a perfect example of public accountability, but even an imperfect model can offer valuable lessons. Imagine a major nonprofit commissioning something analogous: tasking a committee that is deeply committed to the institution’s success with honestly examining why public trust has declined and how it might be rebuilt. Imagine those findings being published in the New York Times instead of buried in board minutes.
This is hardly an outlandish fantasy. The nonprofit world has shown it can perform this kind of self-scrutiny in the past, including its efforts to address racial disparities within the sector. Now is the time to bring that same level of effort to the problem of declining public trust. Many nonprofit organizations feel under attack by the Trump administration and want to stay beneath the radar. Others will resist the idea of doing anything that might provide ammunition to their enemies. But that is no excuse for inaction. Avoiding problems does not make them go away.
The Yale report is one university’s attempt to respond to its critics. The rest of the nonprofit sector should follow suit. Trust is not built through better branding or narrative change. It’s built through competence, integrity, and responsiveness. That includes being willing to look honestly at one’s own organization — and then tell the world what you found.
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