Five Strategic Pressures Shaping Fundraising and Institutional Advancement  

Marts&Lundy recently completed two research efforts spanning more than 500 organizations across healthcare, higher education, and independent schools to better understand how leaders are navigating today’s fast-moving fundraising landscape. 

While specific challenges vary by sector, the findings point to five strategic pressures worth every leader’s attention: 

1. Growth ambition vs. organizational capacity 
2. More data vs. better decisions 
3. Technology acceleration vs. human connection 
4. Immediate performance vs. long-term transformation 
5. Institutional priorities vs. donor intent 

#1: Growth ambition vs. organizational capacity 

Expectations for fundraising growth are rising, while building staff capacity and skills is also a significant future priority. This creates a potential tension between ambition and organizational readiness.  

What we’re seeing:

• Expectations for fundraising growth are nearly universal. Growth priorities are concentrated around expanding donor pipelines and growing major and transformational giving. 
• At same time, leaders identified staff capacity and skills as one of their most important future needs. Talent management and development emerged among the future challenges organizations expect to face. 
• The result is the following friction: organizations are being asked to produce more while many advancement teams are already operating with lean staffing, turnover, competing priorities, and widening capability gaps. 

Why it matters: 

• Growth aspirations do not automatically translate into growth capacity. 
• As fundraising expectations rise, advancement leaders may need to rethink their strategy and the underlying operating model required to execute on it.  
• They will need to consider talent, structure, prioritization, technology, leadership capability, and where limited resources can have the greatest impact. 
• There is risk in creating increasingly ambitious goals on top of an organizational structure that may have been designed for a different level of performance. 

#2: More data vs. better decisions 

Data and analytics emerged as the highest-priority area where organizations expect to need additional support. Our research points to a growing emphasis not just on collecting data but on using it to inform strategy and measurable results. 

What we’re seeing: 

• Using data and analytics to drive fundraising decisions was a top priority across our research, with strong consistency in all sectors. 
• Research suggests that organizations want more than just more data. Leaders are looking for dashboards, real-time reporting, donor segmentation, portfolio analytics, data quality, automation, and predictive models…all with the purpose of supporting better decision-making and demonstrating measurable outcomes. 
• We’re moving from ‘do we have the data?’ to ‘are we using the data to make better decisions?’ 
• This requires analytics capability and leaders and teams who know what to do differently because of what the data tells them. 

Why it matters: 

• Data creates potential, but it is the decisions informed by data that create value. 
• Organizations that gain an advantage may be the ones that can most successfully integrate insight into how they prioritize prospects, allocate resources, manage portfolios, engage donors, and measure performance. 
• This requires more than analytics capabilities. It requires leaders and teams who can act on the data differently. 

#3 Technology acceleration vs. human connection 

As fundraising and institutional advancement become increasingly technology-enabled, the value of distinct human capabilities may become even more important. 

What we’re seeing: 

• AI, predictive analytics, automation, and digital transformation are emerging as significant forces shaping the future of advancement/fundraising. Leaders recognize that technology will increasingly shape the profession and are seeking guidance on how to adapt. 
• While AI can accelerate analysis and automate certain tasks, leaders continue to see human insight, judgment, and connection as essential. 

Why it matters: 

• The future of advancement is unlikely to be human versus technology, but rather, humans and technology. 
• Top-performing organizations may be the ones that use technology to create more capacity for human relationships, rather than leveraging it to replace relationships. 
• Determining which functions of advancement should become more automated so that people can spend more time doing what people do best will be key. 

#4: Immediate performance vs. long-term transformation 

Fundraising and institutional advancement leaders are under pressure to deliver results today while also building the organization required for an uncertain tomorrow. 

What we’re seeing: 

• Our research revealed a strong focus on measurable outcomes: fundraising growth, ROI, pipeline development, major gifts, and performance. 
• The research also highlights longer-term capability priorities, including building staff capacity, mentoring future leaders, adapting to changing donor expectations, and preparing for technological and organizational change all ranked as important. 
• This all creates a balancing act for advancement leaders who must deliver these near-term results while investing in capabilities, the benefits of which may not be realized for a few years. 

Why it matters: 

• Short-term performance pressure often conflicts with the long-term investments needed for sustainable growth. 
• When teams are stretched, talent development can be deferred, process improvements postponed, technology implementations stalled in favor of urgent demands—strategic thinking is often skipped. 
• Without these important investments, will organizations become increasingly dependent on ambitious short-term efforts to meet rising expectations? 
• Sustainable growth requires leaders to manage both performance and capability building—where immediate performance demands make it difficult to invest in the capabilities organizations will need three to five years from now. 

#5: Institutional priorities vs. donor intent 

Donors increasingly want to direct their philanthropy toward specific problems and measurable outcomes, while institutions must maintain focus on their own strategic priorities. 

What we’re seeing:

• Our research surfaced evolving donor mindsets. 
• Leaders described increasingly sophisticated donors who are behaving less like loyal supporters and more like investors.  
• Donors increasingly want clarity about problems they are helping solve, evidence of outcomes, and confidence that their philanthropy will make a meaningful difference.  
• Juxtaposed with these trends is the reality that donor interests do not always align perfectly with organizational priorities. 

Why it matters: 

• This paradigm creates a more complex strategic challenge for fundraising and institutional advancement organizations. 
• The traditional model of “what does the organization need?” isn’t sufficient on its own. 
• Organizations increasingly need to connect institutional ambition with donor motivation and compelling evidence of impact. 
• That has implications for how organizations develop their cases for support, design philanthropic opportunities, engage major donors, communicate outcomes, and steward investments over time. 

Key Takeaways 

The philanthropic environment is changing faster than many of the systems designed to support it. 

Implications extend beyond fundraising strategy to how organizations use data, develop talent, deploy technology, engage donors, make decisions, and translate ambition into action. 

The organizations best positioned for the future won’t necessarily be the biggest or best-resourced. They’ll be the ones that recognize the need for change early, make informed decisions, adapt quickly, and bring their people along in the process.