If you’ve been feeling stretched, reactive, or like you’re constantly trying to “just make it work” even though you weren’t involved in the decision making process from the beginning, you are not imagining it.
One of the clearest patterns in this year’s Nonprofit Communications Trends Report is: When communications teams struggle, it’s rarely because they don’t know what to do.
It’s because they don’t have the authority to do it well.
Across the 322 nonprofit communicators we surveyed, effectiveness had very little to do with mission area, budget size, or even whether the team had grown recently.
It had a lot to do with structure and authority.
Here’s what the data shows
Teams that report higher effectiveness are more likely to:
- Be Centralized or Integrated teams, where communications helps shape strategy and define workload
- Have clearer boundaries around priorities
- Be involved earlier in planning conversations
- Have systems in place to manage requests
Teams that report lower effectiveness are more likely to:
- Operate as Internal Agencies, with work defined primarily by other departments
- Be brought in after decisions are made
- Be expected to respond quickly to competing requests
- Have limited authority to push back or make trade-offs visible
And solo communicators feel this the most. For example, 55% of solo communicators say they don’t use a system to manage communications requests. When everything comes through email, Slack, hallway conversations, and “quick asks,” prioritization becomes nearly impossible.
The issue isn’t capability. It’s control.
Many communicators are doing grown-up work without grown-up authority.
You’re expected to:
- Be strategic
- Think long-term
- Protect the brand
- Build trust
- Drive participation or fundraising
But you may not be allowed to:
- Set priorities
- Slow down unrealistic timelines
- Say no
- Make trade-offs explicit
- Define what “urgent” actually means
That is exhausting. And it explains why so many of you describe feeling reactive rather than proactive (even when you know exactly what strategic communications should look like).
This isn’t about competence.
Our data shows a field that has matured professionally, but is still operating inside systems that haven’t caught up.
That’s an important shift. Because when you recognize it as an authority and structure problem, the conversation shifts to:
- How communications work is assigned
- Who sets priorities
- When communications staff is brought in
- What success is measured against
And that’s a much more strategic conversation.
This is the first of three realities we’re exploring from the 2026 Nonprofit Communications Trends Report.
If you want to see how measurement practices and management expectations reinforce this pattern — and what the most effective teams are doing differently — download the full report here.
