---
title: "Seven findings on the state of scholarship donor stewardship | AwardSpring"
description: "What 125 foundations revealed about scholarship donor stewardship, and what to do about it. Download the free report."
canonical_url: "https://awardspring.com/blog/2026-donor-stewardship-benchmark"
markdown_url: "https://awardspring.com/blog/2026-donor-stewardship-benchmark.md"
---

[Blog](https://awardspring.com/blog) [Donor Stewardship](https://awardspring.com/category/donor-stewardship)

# Seven findings on the state of scholarship donor stewardship

Alex Stepien · June 29, 2026 · 2 min read

![Advancement staff working at dusk in a modern campus office with floor-to-ceiling windows](https://awardspring.com/_astro/donor-stewardship-benchmark-advancement-office-dusk.1nJCTySU_129TWE.webp?dpl=dpl_D6YG7rhC2PHhYinyL2amzkvPWqaT)

Alex Stepien

CEO at AwardSpring. Focused on building the Fund Platform for higher education.

For years, donor stewardship has been treated as the part of fundraising you cannot measure. [_The 2026 Donor Stewardship Benchmark_](https://awardspring.com/stewardship-benchmark), out today, shows it is not unmeasurable. It has just gone unmeasured.

It is a benchmark of how scholarship donor stewardship works across higher education. 125 foundations told us how the work actually gets done: how it is staffed, how reports go out, how thank-you letters are handled, and where AI fits. The picture is candid, and it is more clarifying than comfortable.

## What the data shows

-   **Capacity is the constraint.** 46% of programs run on one FTE or less, and 53% name staff time, not budget or technology, as their single biggest barrier.
-   **Reporting is stuck in the past.** 79% still deliver by U.S. mail, and 45% have no way to know whether a donor read what they sent.
-   **Quality is a quiet worry.** The field rates its own work 2.66 out of 5, and only 5% regularly collect donor feedback to check.
-   **Unawarded funds are a silent risk.** 71% had at least one fund go unawarded last year, and 37% had no protocol for telling the donor.
-   **AI adoption is wide but shallow.** Half are experimenting; only 15% use it consistently.

## The pattern underneath

Read together, the findings group into three pillars: a capacity-quality trap, a measurement blind spot, and an AI inflection point. And they point to one conclusion that should change how you read the rest: this is not a story about people who do not care. It is a story about people who care a great deal and do not have the infrastructure to act on it. A systems problem has a systems answer.

## What to do about it

The report closes with three recommendations you can start on without new budget: audit your capacity against your fund count, build a measurement baseline so you can see whether donors engage, and operationalize AI in one high-volume workflow instead of experimenting at the edges.

## Get the report

_The 2026 Donor Stewardship Benchmark_ is a free download. It includes all seven findings with the data, the methodology, and the three recommendations in full. While you are there, you can watch the on-demand webinar, grab the executive brief, and score your own stewardship work against the field with our free benchmarking tool.

[**Download the report**](https://awardspring.com/stewardship-benchmark)

Tags Donor Stewardship Scholarship Management Fund Strategy Industry Trends AI & SpringIQ

## More from this author

-   [AI & SpringIQ What SpringIQ Changes About Donor Stewardship](https://awardspring.com/blog/springiq-donor-stewardship)
-   [Fund Strategy Introducing the Fund Platform](https://awardspring.com/blog/introducing-fund-platform)
-   [Scholarship Management From Spreadsheets to Scholarship Intelligence: A Practical Transition Guide](https://awardspring.com/blog/spreadsheets-to-scholarship-intelligence)

Author

Alex Stepien

CEO at AwardSpring. Focused on building the Fund Platform for higher education.

Related posts

-   [AI & SpringIQ What SpringIQ Changes About Donor Stewardship](https://awardspring.com/blog/springiq-donor-stewardship)
-   [Fund Strategy Introducing the Fund Platform](https://awardspring.com/blog/introducing-fund-platform)
-   [Scholarship Management From Spreadsheets to Scholarship Intelligence: A Practical Transition Guide](https://awardspring.com/blog/spreadsheets-to-scholarship-intelligence)