What Fundraisers Told Us at AFP LEAD 2026: Silos, Budgets, and Growth

Only One Person in a Room of Fundraisers Gave Their Team a 5

Last week in New Orleans, I led a session at AFP LEAD 2026 called The Nonprofit Growth Map: Charting Your Unique Path to Growth. The topic was how even strong fundraising and advocacy programs can quietly lose money and supporter trust when they don’t operate as one connected program. The Nonprofit Growth Map is Media Cause’s framework for assessing how mature each part of a nonprofit’s marketing and fundraising program is, and how well those parts work together.

The conversation kept going after we wrapped. A good number of attendees found our team at the Media Cause booth afterward, and the Q+A felt more like a strategy session with a client than a presentation. Those conversations shaped this post as much as the slides did. (And if you’re catching up on this fall’s conference season, here are my fundraising takeaways from the 2026 Bridge Conference.)

Here’s what we covered, what fundraisers told us, and what the early survey results are showing.

The Question Most Fundraising Teams Can’t Answer

Most fundraising leaders can describe how mature their program is. Far fewer can say whether fundraising and the rest of their marketing operate as one program.

If someone asked how mature your fundraising program is, you could probably answer on the spot. The harder question is whether fundraising and every other part of your program are working together.

That’s the question Media Cause’s Nonprofit Growth Map is built to answer. It looks at eight Growth Drivers: Brand, Audience Intelligence, Technology + Data, Content + Creative, Paid Media, Organic Channels, Fundraising, and Advocacy. Each Driver moves through three stages of maturity:

• Build: getting the foundation, infrastructure, and baseline capabilities in place so investment can pay off.
• Optimize: using data to keep improving. There’s no finish line here, and most of the best programs in the world live in this stage for most of their Drivers.
• Transcend: operating at a level that rivals the best brands in any sector and setting trends for others to follow.

Each Driver is assessed on its own, and no organization scores perfectly across all eight. A world-class brand can sit next to an underdeveloped paid program. A sophisticated fundraising operation can rest on a weak technology foundation. That’s normal. Growth compounds when the Drivers reinforce each other.

What Fundraisers Actually Told Us at AFP LEAD

Fundraising leaders told us they feel underrepresented in marketing and communications decisions, and that frustration usually points to a structural gap.

One theme came up again and again, in the session and at our booth. My colleague Delaney Mullennix, who staffed the booth, heard it from several fundraising leaders before the session even started: fundraising feels underrepresented in marketing and communications decisions. Less budget. Less room on the calendar. Less of a voice in planning.

When fundraising and marketing plan separately, each team can do strong work while the organization still leaves money on the table. The frustration fundraisers described is usually a symptom of that structure.

A Blind Spot Inside a Strong Program

Two strong Drivers can still fail a deeper test when they run as separate operations.

In the session, I walked through an anonymized example we called Organization X. On paper, it’s an elite program:

• Donation conversion above 30%, nearly double the sector benchmark of about 17%
• A healthy monthly giving program
• A large, responsive advocacy list with strong action rates

But fundraising and advocacy each had their own team, calendar, KPIs, and supporter file. The same supporter was being treated as two different people:

• Donors received mixed or redundant asks in the same inbox.
• Advocates who would gladly give were never asked.
• Two teams were paying to maintain what should have been one supporter relationship.

The root cause was easy to miss. Nobody had checked whether the donation platform and the email platform were talking to each other. The gap sat between the advocacy and fundraising Drivers, and so did the opportunity.

If this sounds familiar, read why smart nonprofits are tearing down channel silos, along with our donor retention strategies for keeping supporters engaged once they’re in the door.

Try the Gut-Check

In a room full of experienced fundraisers, only one person rated their team a 5.

Near the end of the session, I asked everyone to rate this statement from 1 to 5:

Our fundraising and other teams share a single view of our supporters.

The answers were all over the map. Only one person raised a hand for a 5, and several landed at 1 or 2. The room was full of experienced fundraising professionals, and most of them had never been asked this question at work.

Where would your team land? And would your marketing and communications colleagues give the same answer?

Early Response to the Nonprofit Growth Index

Responses to the Nonprofit Growth Index are already coming in.

So far, nearly 40 organizations have taken the survey. We’ll share what the results show once the full data is in.

The Index is an annual sector benchmark built on the Growth Map. Most teams look hard at the Driver they own. The Index asks the cross-Driver questions for you.

Get Your Read on All Eight Drivers

The Index survey takes about 10 minutes. When you complete it, you’ll get:

• A personalized maturity read across all eight Growth Drivers
• A comparison against organizations of similar size, cause area, and budget
• A short recommendation from Media Cause strategists
• An invitation to the official Index webinar on the findings

[Take the Nonprofit Growth Index survey: https://nonprofitgrowthmap.lovable.app/abg]

Every organization’s map looks different, and no one scores perfectly across all eight Drivers. Mapping your program shows you where your Drivers are already strong as well as where the blind spots are, so you can walk into 2027 planning with a clearer case for where to invest.