Do We Still Need Campaigns in 2026?

Welcome to the future—2026.

Fundraisers are masters of data, turning sophisticated analytics into tailored strategies. Relationship management is an art and science orchestrated by expert practitioners across a dozen disciplines. Half your donor contacts are virtual; half the titles in your development shop didn’t exist 20 years ago; and half the cars in San Francisco are driving themselves.

Yet we’re still organizing most of our biggest fundraising efforts around the same campaign model a time-traveling fundraiser from 1976 would recognize (as he rummages through his shoebox of 3×5 donor cards).

So much about how we engage donors, steward relationships, and manage information has evolved – why does it sometimes feel like the campaign model hasn’t?

Do we still need campaigns in 2026?

Let’s start by prosecuting the case against the campaign. (We produce dozens of cases for campaigns every year, so why not turn the tables a bit?)

• They can be inaccessible. A campaign is a formidable proposition, especially for emerging programs—and a first campaign is a big enough deal that we haul out the word “inaugural” for it. Isn’t there some more scalable approach that meets you where you are?
• They can be rigid. How certain are you today of what your mission will need three to five years from now, and could you commit to that in a case statement today? Doesn’t our world and work change faster than that now?
• They can be exhausting. The operating budget is going to need you to sustain—just kidding, grow—your annual fundraising while you simultaneously develop dozens or hundreds of biggest-ever gifts from prospects near and far. And will your best volunteer leaders really sign on for five years of sustained push?

All of this is true, and every year we counsel plenty of organizations away from campaigns when the model doesn’t suit their circumstances and some other strategy better serves their mission. We don’t just have a hammer, and the whole world isn’t nails.

And yet, for organizations across a surprising diversity of circumstances, we continue to find that some kind of campaign—creatively tailored to match their capabilities and mitigate the challenges above—offers the best path to both near-term impact and long-term growth.

It’s 2026 and the age-old campaign framework retains a unique power to focus organizational vision, inspire visionary giving, and build long-term fundraising capacity. Something about this well-worn, sometimes maddening model just makes things imaginable that we can’t chart a path to in ordinary fundraising.

Over the next few weeks, we’re going to unpack how and why, with a focus on a few arguments:

• There are gifts you can only ask for in campaigns. Not every major gift or every major donor—but enough of them that campaigns often offer a unique upside.
• Campaigns create a moment around your mission. They’re communications vehicles as much as fundraising vehicles, and they concentrate attention and build engagement around the biggest ideas in your strategic vision.
• Campaigns are when fundraising programs build capacity the fastest. They’re a forcing function that challenges your organization to build cultivation skills, increase investment in fundraising, approve new positions, and overhaul old systems—and all of that should stay with you after the campaign ends.
• They’re more flexible than you might think. The list of must-haves is short and the ways of meeting them are broad. If you’re thinking big with your mission and need both your organization and your community to focus on philanthropy, there may be a campaign structure that fits you just right.
• As we look into each of these arguments further, we’ll bring the vast diversity of modern campaigns into better focus. For as much as they feel like a one-size solution, no two are alike, and none—none—makes it to victory without handling somewhere between 3 and 99 curveballs.

It’s 2026 and we’re not done iterating, innovating, and reimagining the trusty campaign model for the visions and missions that drive us today.