--- title: "The stewardship measurement blind spot | AwardSpring" description: "79% of foundations in our 2026 Donor Stewardship Benchmark still deliver stewardship reports by U.S. mail. That number alone is striking." canonical_url: "https://awardspring.com/blog/stewardship-measurement-blind-spot" markdown_url: "https://awardspring.com/blog/stewardship-measurement-blind-spot.md" --- [Blog](https://awardspring.com/blog) [Donor Stewardship](https://awardspring.com/category/donor-stewardship) # The stewardship measurement blind spot Alex Stepien · June 2, 2026 · 3 min read ![The stewardship measurement blind spot](https://awardspring.com/_astro/donor-stewardship-unopened-report-envelope.Guf0qf02_kSny7.webp?dpl=dpl_D6YG7rhC2PHhYinyL2amzkvPWqaT) Alex Stepien CEO at AwardSpring. Focused on building the Fund Platform for higher education. 79% of foundations in our 2026 Donor Stewardship Benchmark still deliver stewardship reports by U.S. mail. That number alone is striking. But the number that follows it is the one that matters: 45% have no way to know whether donors opened or read what they sent. These two findings don’t just exist alongside each other. One causes the other. When a foundation mails a printed report, engagement tracking becomes impossible by design. There’s no open rate. No click-through. No confirmation the envelope wasn’t recycled unread. The stewardship program fires into the dark and hopes something lands. ## The feedback loop problem Consider what happens without a feedback loop: a foundation produces a stewardship report. They suspect it’s below average. Our data shows the average self-rated quality score is 2.66 out of 5, and fewer than 20% of respondents feel confident their materials would be rated highly by peers. But they send it anyway, because the deadline is there and the donor is waiting. And then, nothing. Only 5% of foundations formally and regularly collect donor feedback. Five percent. That means 95% of stewardship programs are producing output with no feedback mechanism, and no way to distinguish between a report that deepened a donor’s commitment and one they binned without opening. ## The channel is the problem Mailing a printed report is not inherently wrong. For some donors, it’s genuinely the right choice. But when 79% of foundations are defaulting to mail as the primary channel for all stewardship communication, the channel isn’t a strategic choice. It’s a habit. And it’s a habit with a specific cost: zero engagement data, no way to personalize the next touchpoint, and no signal about whether the relationship is strengthening or quietly eroding. ## Timeliness compounds the blind spot 61% of foundations take one to six months from disbursement to report delivery. 18% take longer, or have no consistent timeline at all. By the time a donor receives a report about a fund awarded last academic year, the emotional window has closed. A report that arrives six months late and disappears into a mail pile with no read confirmation doesn’t build the relationship. It checks a compliance box. ## What high-performing programs are doing differently The foundations in our research that outperformed on this dimension had two things in common. **They measured what they sent.** Even basic signals, whether a digital report was opened, whether a donor clicked through to a student’s story, whether a portal was accessed, gave teams something to act on. Engagement data closes the feedback loop. **They moved away from single-channel delivery.** Mail didn’t disappear from their process, but it became one option among several rather than the default. Digital delivery alongside print, living donor portals, personalized email summaries: these opened signal channels that mail alone cannot provide. The 2026 AwardSpring Donor Stewardship Benchmark documents this pattern across 125 foundations. The full report drops at NASFAA on June 29. _The 2026 AwardSpring Donor Stewardship Benchmark surveyed 125 active stewardship professionals across higher education foundations, colleges, and universities._ Tags Donor Stewardship ## More from this author - [Donor Stewardship Seven findings on the state of scholarship donor stewardship](https://awardspring.com/blog/2026-donor-stewardship-benchmark) - [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) Author Alex Stepien CEO at AwardSpring. Focused on building the Fund Platform for higher education. Related posts - [Donor Stewardship Seven findings on the state of scholarship donor stewardship](https://awardspring.com/blog/2026-donor-stewardship-benchmark) - [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)