2026 digital predictions: The year complexity becomes the strategy

Every year we say digital is getting more complex. 

In 2026, that stops being an observation and becomes the strategy. 

What is changing is not any single channel, tool or regulation. What is changing is how all of these pieces now depend on one another. Data, privacy, performance, AI and infrastructure are no longer separable decisions.  

Here’s what that means heading into 2026. 

Email is not less effective. It's more complicated

More and more, nonprofit leaders claim email is inefficient or declining. The reality is more nuanced.  

Email performance is now shaped by both engagement and infrastructure, and most nonprofits are dealing with challenges on both fronts at the same time. 

On the engagement side, the issues are familiar. Are you emailing too many subscribers acquired years ago through list rentals? Are large portions of your file no longer opening or clicking? Those are not new problems, and they have always affected performance and deliverability. 

What is new is how unforgiving the infrastructure layer has become. 

As I write this in late 2025, roughly 19% of nonprofits still do not have a Domain-based Message Authentication, Reporting, and Conformance (DMARC) record in place. That matters because email service providers like Gmail now require DMARC for bulk senders to reliably reach their users. 

This requirement was announced by Google, Yahoo and other providers in late 2023. Strict enforcement did not begin until November 2025. Many nonprofits are unaware that a missing or misconfigured DNS record, one of three required for modern email authentication, is silently hurting their ability to reach subscribers. 

Nothing breaks. No alerts fire. Performance simply erodes. 

This is why email feels less efficient to many teams. Engagement issues that were once manageable are now amplified by infrastructure requirements that are easy to overlook and hard to diagnose without technical oversight. 

Email did not suddenly stop working. The margin for error disappeared. 

This is a pattern playing out across digital. Compliance with service providers, technology platforms and regulations continues to add layers. Each layer is logical on its own. Together, they raise the bar for operational discipline. 

In 2026, strong email programs will not be defined by creative and cadence alone. They will be defined by how well organizations manage both engagement health and the technical foundations that support it. 

The rise of the digital co-op 

Traditional co-ops were built on static snapshots of CRM and transactional data captured at a moment in time. They told us who donated, how often and to which causes. 

That model still has value, but it no longer reflects how digital actually performs. 

A digital co-op starts from a different assumption, going beyond static data. 

Instead of periodic exports, digital co-ops rely on live connections to systems such as online fundraising platforms, email marketing platforms, mobile messaging platforms and CRMs. These connections create a continuously updated view of supporter behavior that includes recent giving and engagement. 

That distinction matters. 

A supporter who donated six months ago but has not opened an email since is fundamentally different from one who donated less recently but is actively engaging across channels. Even simple engagement filters improve list quality, relevance, and efficiency. 

Traditional co-ops are great for knowing who gave. Digital co-ops give a view into who is paying attention right now. 

That difference opens a world of possibility for nonprofits looking to develop authentic relationships with their donors in a sophisticated way. 

The year of consent management? Probably not

2026 will not be remembered as the year nonprofits fully figured out consent management. That shouldn’t be surprising, as nonprofits are typically behind the curve when it comes to highly technical topics like this. 

Consent management solutions are critical to complying with data protection laws, but they require nonprofits to be knowledgeable of digital data flows, technical architecture and legal obligations. 

When nonprofits do take a stab at applying consent management tactics, they’ll often apply the wrong jurisdictional rules to website visitors, or they fail to properly integrate cookies, pixels and tags into the consent framework. In those cases, consent banners exist, but they do not actually control anything. 

Before consent can be managed dynamically, organizations need a clear understanding of what data they collect, where that data flows, how it is used and who is accountable for it. 

For many nonprofits, that foundational work is not finished yet. 

The year of the privacy policy? Yes

This is where privacy policy re-enters the conversation. 

Privacy policies and consent management are components of compliance, but an updated privacy policy does not make an organization compliant with data protection or privacy laws and a consent tool does not automatically enforce lawful data use. 

What we’ve always known is that privacy policy and consent management are necessary, but they’re not individually sufficient in making an organization compliant. 

What has changed is the role the privacy policy now plays. It is no longer a passive legal artifact buried in a website footer. It has become an operational document that reflects how digital systems actually work. 

Digital co-ops, dynamic experiences, engagement-based modeling and cross-channel activation all require clearer disclosure and tighter alignment between written policy and real-world execution. 

In 2026, many nonprofits will discover that their privacy policy does not match their digital reality.  

Modern digital is dynamic digital 

Many nonprofits still rely on a single message or creative to represent their digital presence. That static approach assumes every visitor arrives with the same intent, on the same channel, at the same moment—and that assumption no longer holds. Today’s digital environment is dynamic, and competitive experiences must be as well. 

Modern digital performance comes from adaptability. Instead of one creative, organizations need sets of messages and images that adjust based on channel, audience, device, timing and behavior. This isn’t personalization for novelty’s sake—it’s relevance. When digital experiences respond to real context and real signals, friction drops and results improve without increasing spend. 

This is where the role of the partner changes. 

The right partner brings more than strategy, creative and analytics. They bring technology and solutions that fill gaps and augment results. Dynamic digital becomes accessible not because nonprofits adopt entirely new platforms, but because existing systems are extended in smarter ways. 

Most performance gains don’t come from complexity. They come from practical optimizations: aligning messages to channels, timing outreach to peak engagement and reducing steps for key audiences. When digital adapts to data, efficiency replaces volume. When it doesn’t, organizations are forced to spend more just to stand still. 

By 2026, static digital won’t fail loudly. It will simply become one of the most expensive choices a nonprofit can make. 

Design frameworks will get popular again 

To be clear, design frameworks did not disappear. They just never became standard practice in nonprofit digital. 

Most nonprofits work with agencies on individual campaigns, individual assets or individual pages. Creative is reviewed one piece at a time, often without a shared system that defines how those pieces relate to one another. That approach works when you only need a small amount of creative. It breaks down quickly when you need more. 

And in an audience-first world, with more segmentation and more personalization, you need more creative. Not a little more. Think three to five times more. 

This is where tension starts to show up. 

If more creative is required, what happens to the core job of nonprofit teams? Do mission leaders suddenly need to spend all their time reviewing and approving endless variations of creative? 

No. That would be ridiculous. 

This is exactly the problem design frameworks are meant to solve. 

A design framework is a set of agreed upon rules that govern how creative is produced. It defines things like layout, hierarchy, typography, image usage, tone, spacing and constraints. It creates consistency without requiring every asset to be reviewed from scratch. 

Nonprofits often do not use design frameworks today because their digital programs have historically not required them. When experiences are static, frameworks feel like overhead. When experiences become dynamic, frameworks become essential. 

Dynamic digital and personalization increase the volume of creative. Design frameworks reduce the burden of managing it. 

When you are ready for more dynamic digital or more personalization, you are also ready for a design framework. At that point, you should not need to review every single creative variation. You are approving the system, not each output. 

If you are already using dynamic creative optimization in media, this concept should feel familiar. You approve the template or layout. You review a single finished creative. You understand that multiple variations will be produced based on agreed upon rules. You trust the framework to govern what is created. 

The same principle applies to web, email and other owned channels. 

Design frameworks are not static. They are iterative. Rules can be adjusted, added or removed as performance data comes in. Over time, the framework becomes smarter and more reflective of what actually works. 

For nonprofits, this matters because it gives time back. It reduces friction. It allows teams to be more nimble with message testing without sacrificing brand or control. 

In 2026, as dynamic digital becomes more common, design frameworks will quietly become one of the most practical tools nonprofits adopt. Not because they are trendy, but because they make scale manageable. 

Responsible AI needs to be rewritten 

For years, Google’s motto was “Don’t be evil.” It sounded right, but it was vague, subjective and impossible to measure. Responsible AI is starting to feel the same way. 

Nonprofit leaders are being told they must comply with “responsible AI frameworks” before they’re handed a set of principles that are difficult or impossible to operationalize. That disconnect is one of the reasons many nonprofit AI initiatives have stalled. 

The issue is not resistance to AI. It’s uncertainty. Organizations want to use AI responsibly, but they are unsure how to do so without violating expectations that are poorly defined or inconsistently applied. In fact, I asked some questions around this topic at an AI “Ask the experts” hosted by Blackbaud last month, and didn’t get a whole lot of clarity. 

Most nonprofit AI use cases are not high risk. Most nonprofits are not creating bespoke large language models to automate sensitive decisions. 

Yet they are often judged against responsible AI standards that assume far more advanced or invasive systems. 

Today’s responsible AI frameworks typically rest on five tenants: fairness, transparency, accountability, privacy and security. Four of these can be defined, governed and audited in practical ways. Fairness cannot, at least not without creating new problems. 

How do you make data “fair” without distorting it? 

How do you correct for bias without introducing new bias? 

How do you prove fairness in systems designed to reflect reality rather than reshape it? 

The path forward is not to abandon responsibility, but to refine it. Transparency and accountability can and should carry more of the burden currently placed on fairness. Clear disclosure of how models work, what data is used, how decisions are influenced and who owns the outcome addresses most of what organizations are actually trying to safeguard. 

In 2026, the conversation will shift from whether nonprofits should use AI to how they use it with defined governance, documented guardrails and real accountability. Avoidance is no longer neutral. It is a decision with consequences. 

Complexity is the real constraint 

The biggest risk heading into 2026 is not a lack of ideas. It’s operational overload. 

Email now requires authentication, domain hygiene and reputation management. Web experiences require privacy governance, performance monitoring and tag discipline. Data requires ownership, plumbing and accountability. 

Every year, digital adds layers. Very few organizations remove any. 

The nonprofits that succeed will not necessarily be the most innovative. They will be the most deliberate about managing complexity and treating digital as infrastructure rather than a collection of tactics.  

Digital is both a source and destination within the donor experience.