The Stewardship Benchmark

FREE WEBINAR

Tuesday, May 19, 2026

2 PM ET / 1 PM CT

The inaugural benchmark study of scholarship donor stewardship is here. Join our CEO Alex Stepien for an exclusive first look at the data — and a frank conversation about what it means for your program right now.

About this webinar

There has never been a comprehensive, publicly available benchmark for scholarship donor stewardship — until now. Earlier this year, we fielded our inaugural donor stewardship benchmarking survey, asking 125 foundations across higher education how stewardship actually works at their organizations and where it falls short.

The findings are striking. Most programs are under-resourced, under-measured, and sitting at an inflection point with AI — aware of the opportunity, uncertain how to operationalize it. This webinar presents the inaugural data and gives you a framework for understanding where your program stands.

What you'll learn

• How staffing levels, fund counts, and stewardship capacity compare across foundation types — and what the funds-per-FTE ratio reveals about the field
• Why 79% of foundations are still mailing printed reports — and what the engagement data (or lack of it) tells us about the channel problem
• The real story behind thank-you letter programs: compliance is high, but quality is where programs struggle — and where AI is already making a difference
• Where 50% of foundations are in their AI journey right now, what early adopters are doing differently, and what the window of opportunity looks like heading into 2026–27
• The unawarded fund problem: 71% of foundations had a fund go unawarded last year — and 37% had no protocol for telling the donor
• A first look at the full benchmarking whitepaper releasing at NASFAA in late June