When we think of “trends” in our everyday lives, we typically think of concrete things we can see, hear, or even eat. Popular songs, or brand names — the ubiquitous appetizer, the meme we can’t escape.

Over eight years of producing 11 Trends in Philanthropy, the Dorothy A. Johnson Center for Philanthropy has most often taken this approach to our annual review of the sector, as well. Our team has combed the landscape of nonprofits and foundations for the most visible signs of a trend — the increased grant dollars, the emerging networks, familiar voices speaking up.

This year’s trends share a familiar wealth of examples, data, quotes, and research publications that can help us all anticipate the vectors of change. But at the core of 11 Trends in Philanthropy for 2024, readers will find a set of questions rather than answers. Each trend poses a number of moral, economic, equity-related, tactical, and other questions that the sector will have to answer.

In some cases — such as in the use of artificial intelligence in the workplace, or the adoption of new federal protocols for race and ethnicity data — those answers will come due very soon. In others — such as how institutional philanthropy addresses the glass cliff crisis among leaders of color or shifts resources to account for the U.S. South’s booming population — it may be years before we understand whether and how choices are made.

What we see most clearly for philanthropy in 2024 and beyond is that the field will wrestle with these questions. We look forward to the work ahead.