If you want to understand why nonprofit communications teams make the choices they do, look at what they’re measured on.
Not what they say they care about. Not what’s in the strategic plan. Not what leadership talks about in meetings.
Look at the numbers they’re expected to report.
One of the clearest patterns in this year’s data is: What gets measured most easily becomes what feels safest to prioritize.
And right now, that’s participation and fundraising.
Here’s what the data shows
When nonprofit communicators were asked about their top objectives:
- 69% included participation levels
- 64% included fundraising
- 49% prioritized list growth
- 45% prioritized loyalty or retention
But far fewer included:
- Change in knowledge
- Influence
- Deeper understanding of issues
That doesn’t mean those outcomes don’t matter. It means they’re harder to measure, harder to attribute, and harder to defend. And when teams are already stretched thin, they tend to lean toward what’s easiest to prove. This is a rational response not a strategic failure.
If you’re evaluated on:
- How many people showed up
- How many people gave
- How many people clicked
- How big your list is
You will naturally optimize for those outcomes.
And you’ll avoid choices that:
- Shrink your list (even if it improves deliverability)
- Slow down immediate participation to build deeper trust
- Invest in long-term awareness work that doesn’t convert right away
You’ll play it safe. And that makes sense.
The problem isn’t that communicators don’t understand engagement. The problem is that systems reward hands (action) more than hearts (awareness) and heads (understanding).
Communications teams are often expected to:
- Build trust
- Strengthen brand reputation
- Increase understanding
- Change hearts and minds
But evaluated primarily on:
- Donations
- RSVPs
- Click-through rates
- List size
This creates pressure to prioritize short-term wins over long-term impact.
It also explains patterns like only about half of nonprofit communicators say they never stop emailing unengaged subscribers.
Not because they don’t know better. But because your email list shrinking can look like failure when list size is the visible metric.
This is where effectiveness comes in.
More effective teams tend to:
- Pair participation metrics with upstream engagement signals
- Look at patterns across awareness, interaction, and action
- Align goals, strategies, and objectives coherently
Less effective teams are more likely to:
- Chase multiple objectives that don’t reinforce each other
- Combine strategies that require very different resources
- Treat every measurable action as equally important
Again, this is not about intelligence or ambition.
A question worth asking internally is: What outcomes are we truly trying to influence? And do our measurement systems reflect that or just what’s easiest to count?
Because what you measure shapes behavior.
This is the second of three realities from the 2026 Nonprofit Communications Trends Report.
If you want to see the full breakdown of goals, strategies, objective combinations, and where teams are most misaligned, download the complete report here.
