Kevin Martin
President · AwardSpring
On-Demand Webinar · Recorded September 15, 2026
The 2026 Donor Stewardship Benchmark: The Deep Dive
All seven findings, the data behind them, and what the strongest programs do differently. Recorded live with Kevin Martin.
Recorded Tuesday, September 15, 2026 · about 30 minutes plus live Q&A
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Kevin Martin
President, AwardSpring
About this session
Early this year we asked 125 scholarship foundations how donor stewardship actually gets done. The findings became the 2026 Donor Stewardship Benchmark: 46% of the foundations we surveyed run the whole operation on one FTE or less, 71% had a fund go unawarded last year, and 45% can’t tell whether a donor ever opened the report they were sent.
In this recorded session, Kevin Martin goes inside that data: all seven findings across the three pillars, the Capacity-Quality Trap, the Measurement Blind Spot, and the AI Inflection Point, with the numbers behind each and what the strongest programs do differently. The through line: stewardship is the only part of the fundraising cycle with no scoreboard. You’ll leave knowing where you stand against the field, and the one move to make first.
What’s covered
- What donor stewardship is, and what it is not: everything owed to a donor after the gift is committed and the award is made
- Why this benchmark exists, and the honest frame behind the numbers
- Three numbers that tell the story
- Pillar 01 · The Capacity-Quality Trap: capacity, quality, and thank-you letters (findings 1 to 3)
- Pillar 02 · The Measurement Blind Spot: reporting channels and unawarded funds (findings 4 and 5)
- Pillar 03 · The AI Inflection Point: adoption, and Financial Aid to Advancement alignment, a systems problem rather than a relationship problem (findings 6 and 7)
- Where your program stands: scoring yourself against the field
- Live Q&A
Score your stewardship
two minutes, scored against the same 125-foundation study
Get the full report
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