In the weeks after Oct. 7, 2023, something rare happened in Israel: philanthropic money moved faster than the state. While government systems were still locating themselves, billions of shekels reached the ground — donations for equipment for soldiers, housing for evacuated families, trauma care, support for the families of hostages, help for farmers along the Gaza border. In a special report published on June 30, 2026, Israel’s State Comptroller, the country’s independent public auditor, put the value of donation and volunteer activity in the first three months of the war alone at roughly 14.78 billion shekels, or about $4 billion at the exchange rate of the time, spread across more than 1,000 civilian initiatives that reached over 2 million people. It was, without exaggeration, one of the largest waves of giving in Israel’s history.

Then 2026 arrived. A survey by Civic Leadership, an umbrella organization of the third sector in Israel, found that more than 70% of Israeli nonprofits are in real financial distress, with about 40% reporting a decline in support from government and philanthropic sources. Currency has quietly compounded it: a dollar that converted to about 3.56 shekels at the end of 2024 converted to about 2.87 by May 2026, roughly 19% less. Nonprofits are on course to lose in the region of 3 billion shekels this year compared with 2024 on the exchange rate alone. Nobody gave less. The money simply bought less.

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And in conversations with donors, the same note keeps recurring. Not anger. Not disengagement. Fatigue.

The convenient explanation is “donor fatigue,” as though it were a weather system. It is a lazy diagnosis. Donors do not tire of giving. They tire of not knowing.

Outcomes, not outputs

A donor who gave a million shekels in November 2023 probably received some photos; perhaps a thank-you letter, or a report describing how many kits were distributed or how many families were housed. All of those are outputs. None of them is an outcome. They answer the question “What did you do with the money?” not the question “What changed because of it?”

In an emergency, that distinction sounded like a luxury, but nearly three years on, it has become the most obvious question in the world. Did the children who spent a year in hotels get back onto an academic track? Did the psychological resilience program reduce symptoms, or did it solely employ people? When there is no answer, the donor does not conclude that the program failed. They conclude something worse: that it cannot be known. And when it cannot be known, the next contribution goes somewhere it can.

The intuitive response is to demand better reporting from the organizations. But in most cases nonprofits are not concealing their outcomes. They do not know what they are, because nobody ever funded the capacity to find out.

The social sector measures what its funders ask about. When the ask is that 100% of a grant reaches the field — a demand made in good faith on both sides of the ocean, and one that sounds like nothing but responsible stewardship — the arithmetic forbids spending anything on measuring whether the work is working. The norm produces precisely the not-knowing that exhausts the people who set it.

The seven programs

So far, this is the familiar argument we’ve been talking about: measurement as a language of accountability toward the funder. Now, let’s look at what is available to the person the program was built for.

Consider a family that has returned to Kiryat Shmona — a city near the Lebanese border, evacuated for much of the war — after 18 months in a hotel. Their kid is in seventh grade and has lost two years of schooling. The parents are somewhere between military reserve duty, repairing a house and putting their income back together.

Seven programs are now available to them. Three offer emotional intervention for children, two offer family case management, one offers employment rehabilitation and one promises “holistic support.” All of them are free. All of them are run by good people. All of them are philanthropically funded. All of them have a website and persuasive testimonials. 

And yet the family has no way — not a one — of knowing which of them works.

In any other market we would not accept this. We read the nutrition label on a box of cereal. We do not book a hotel without reading the reviews. On the single most consequential decision of the lot, we proceed on good intentions rather than knowledge.

That error is paid for in money and time spent, and in willingness to try again. An ineffective program does not merely waste a grant; it spends the scarcest asset in social work, which is a beneficiary’s trust in the systems that arrive to help. A person burned by two programs does not show up for the third, however good the third one is.

What’s next?

Four measures that can address these issues:

A shared language of outcomes. As long as every organization measures itself against indicators it invented for itself, nothing can be compared with anything. A field in which three or four outcome measures have been agreed, suddenly becomes navigable.

Information is built for the beneficiary, not only the funder. Impact reports are written for donors and boards. Nobody writes for the family in Kiryat Shmona. That is not a technological limitation. It is a decision about who the client is.

Measurement inside the program, in real time. Not an external evaluation that lands two years after the budget has closed. Measurement that changes an intervention while it is still running is worth several times a report card issued in hindsight.

Willingness to hear no. This is the hardest of the four. Measurement that never leads to closing a program is a ritual rather than a tool. This is where outcomes-based contracting earns its place. In a Pay for Success project, known as a PFS or a social impact bond, investors provide the working capital, an independent evaluator measures an agreed outcome, and the payer settles up only if that outcome is reached. What that does is force every party to agree in advance on what success would look like — and that is already half the work.

Measurement is not coldness — it is respect

The standard objection is that measurement is technocratic, that it reduces human suffering to a spreadsheet, that some things cannot be measured. There is a kernel of truth in it, and most of that kernel dissolves the moment anyone tries seriously. What happens in the absence of measurement is that an organization goes on delivering, in complete good faith, a program that does not help.

The opposite of cold is not warm. The opposite of cold is serious. To tell a family, “I know this works, and here is the evidence,” is a far deeper expression of respect than “Come on, let’s try — we mean well.”

The slowdown in giving is an opportunity, if we choose to see it as one. The generation that gave in 2023 out of solidarity will give again, to something proven and measurable. Which means the most useful line a funder can add to the next grant agreement is the one that pays for finding out.

Yaron Neudorfer is the co-founder and CEO of SFI Group. He is also a member of Board of Governors at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem and at the Academic College of Tel Aviv–Yaffo.