Our August Leadership Lab invited discussion of today’s fundraising landscape, and pretty quickly all four cohorts diagnosed a period of intense economic and operational pressure and a K-shaped revenue landscape: while high-wealth giving through sophisticated third-party vehicles is surging, we are seeing a continued and concerning decline in everyday, lower-dollar givers.
In the nonprofit sector, we sometimes talk about "the mission" as our greatest retention tool. And yes, meaningful work is a differentiator for us as employers. But the data, and our own experience, tells a different story. In our July Leadership Lab, we looked at the actual math of loyalty, exploring why salary increases – for better or worse – are not the primary retention solution, and identified five drivers that actually determine whether your best people stay or go.
We are halfway through 2026. Not almost halfway. Not approaching the midpoint. Halfway. Whatever you said you were going to do in January, you've had six months to do it. And in this month's Essential Leadership Lab cohorts, we stopped moving long enough to look back, so we can move forward with intention. This is the June installment of Lab Notes, our monthly series turning the high-level discussions of the Essential Leadership Lab into actionable insights for the broader nonprofit community. This month, we moved past the polished updates and assessed the gap between our intentions and our reality.
Twenty-five years ago, the day-to-day responsibilities of the heads of development teams looked different than they do today. The ecosystem was more contained, and lines of accountability were clear. That same role now orchestrates 30, 50, sometimes 100+ people across internal and external teams, technology platforms, and volunteer networks. The fundraising function hasn't just grown, it's been fundamentally disaggregated.
The panic is over. The policies are written. The staff are experimenting. And yet, for many of us, nothing fundamental has changed. That's the paradox we tackled in our April Leadership Lab: not whether to use AI, but what it actually takes to move from scattered experimentation to meaningful organizational impact.
Leadership in the nonprofit sector has always demanded resilience, but the current landscape, marked by economic uncertainty, increased demand for services, and the pressure to do more with less, has pushed many leaders to what at times feels like a breaking point. In our March Leadership Lab, we tackled a topic that doesn't get discussed enough in leadership circles: the emotional toll of this work and what it costs us to keep showing up when we're running on empty.
There's a peculiar contradiction at the heart of nonprofit leadership: we are operating in one of the highest-risk environments most of us have witnessed in our careers, yet we perceive the sector as fundamentally risk-averse. This month's Leadership Lab explored that tension head-on, exploring the idea that the greatest risk many nonprofit leaders face isn't taking a bad risk … it's not taking enough good ones.
This post marks the beginning of “Lab Notes,” a monthly series where we share the discoveries and outcomes from our high-level cohort discussions to benefit the broader nonprofit community. This month, we explored the practice of choosing a "Word of the Year,” and why high-achieving executives, now more than ever, can benefit from a single anchoring theme to strengthen intentional leadership.
