Performance Management Can Make—or Break—Your Fundraising: What to do Now for a Winning 2026

Performance evaluations are dead?

Corporate thought leaders have been heralding their demise for years—long beforeDaniel Walker, Apple’s chief talent officer, dubbed them “the stupidest thing American companies do” back in 2023. A pre-pandemicGallup pollshowed that only 15% of employees agreed their performance review inspired them to improve.

Many of today's corporations consider performance evaluations a relic of the 20th century. The trend has been toward real-time performance management with practices characterized in any number of ways: formal vs. informal, written vs. verbal, quantitative vs. qualitative, 360 vs. hierarchical. HR professionals are also increasingly exploring the integration of AI.

While leaders of all types of organizations know that measuring and managing performance is important, how can it be done well today?

Here's the problem for nonprofits.

The corporate and nonprofit sectors are similar but different.Trends in organizational management typically come from large, multinational corporations. Nonprofits have borrowed extensively from the corporate world, and they're deeply invested in corporate performance evaluation practices as a result. But they've never been a great fit.

Nonprofit work cultures tend to value community and commitment to mission above all else. They often operate informally, with workplace frictions viewed as interpersonal rather than operational in nature. Even large, established nonprofits are plagued by high staff turnover, regular task shifting, and chronic staff burnout. All of which prioritizes personalities over systems or protocols, and values a willingness to do more over execution or results.

Nonprofits are also notoriously poor at handling performance issues.Too often, they don't handle them at all—which is why toxic culture is a recurring theme in nonprofit workplace surveys and a primary driver of staff turnover.

Or they go through the motions once a year—checking boxes and wasting valuable staff and manager time with confusing rating systems and vague instructions. Merit raises, professional development, and corrective action rarely tie back to the evaluation process in any meaningful way. The process is based on a questionable and largely misaligned model.

The toll this takes on fundraising is severe.

It handicaps your fundraisers, cripples your revenue generation, and even damages your donor relationships. And it undermines your very financial viability.

Here's how.

Fundraising is all about teamwork. It requires inputs and collaboration from every corner of your nonprofit. Raising money is a professional responsibility but also a team sport—like a soccer match or relay race where every staff member has a critical role to play. When staff members don't acknowledge and respect this, fundraising grinds to a halt.

A dated but still relevant comprehensive survey commissioned byThe Chronicle of Philanthropyin 2019 identified toxicity and a lack of accountability as top reasons why fundraisers leave. Too often they feel they have to cultivate staff to be able to do basic work, when they should be cultivating donors.

If you need further evidence, just ask any grant writer.

Ican't begin to count the number of times in my own experience that proposals were unsuccessful because colleagues in other offices were delinquent in providing essential information. Regardless of how well a proposal project was set up, deadlines were shared, and assistance was proffered, submissions went down to the wire because core content showed up at the last minute.

• In one case, we lost a multi-year, multi-million-dollar commitment promised by a foundation because team members ignored internal deadlines and offers of partnership to get the job done. The funder was spending down and specifically requested a growth plan with budget projections and success metrics. The scenarios I received were ill-defined, and there was no time to refine them. The promised funding went elsewhere.

• In another case (another nonprofit), a foundation program officer shared that the stated submission date was really a "last call" date. Even though they didn't publicize it, the foundation began accepting proposals months in advance and made rolling decisions until the funding dried up. We were urged to submit early. No matter how often this was conveyed to the program and business office teams, staff cited the published submission date as their deadline. Needless to say, our proposal was not successful, and our reputation with the foundation suffered.

• In yet another case (yet another nonprofit), our new fundraising team spent well over a year fielding a loyal funder's questions because program staff had historically not provided adequate data for reports. Rather than focusing on current needs, we spent valuable time on forensic analysis and remediation to get the relationship back on track.

So, what's the solution?

Here's my inspiration. One of my favorite pastimes as a graduate student at UNC-Chapel Hill was watching the women's soccer team in action.

With nearly two dozen national championships to their credit, the team executed with a selflessness and a flawless precision that literally froze opponents in their tracks.

The beauty of their teamwork reminded me of the most elegant ballet. I've been fortunate to experience this with nonprofit teams more than once in my career, and it was truly magical.