The 2025 Advancement Leaders Playbook
Today’s advancement leaders are navigating mounting pressure with fewer resources. Staffing shortages persist. Donor pipelines are thinning. Expectations for digital, data, and AI sophistication are rising faster than teams can realistically keep up.
To understand how advancement leaders are responding—and where real opportunities exist—EAB surveyed 160+ advancement leaders nationwide. The 2025 Advancement Leaders Playbook distills those findings into a clear view of the challenges shaping advancement today and the strategic moves leaders are making to protect revenue, strengthen pipelines, and build sustainable teams.
Three challenges reshaping advancement and where leaders see opportunity
Advancement leaders are navigating unprecedented pressure with fewer resources and rising expectations. Findings from EAB’s Advancement Leaders Survey point to three interconnected areas that are defining advancement strategy in 2025 and creating clear opportunities for leaders who act decisively.
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Workforce capacity is the defining constraint.
Nearly three-quarters of advancement leaders report current vacancies, and hiring and retaining productive team members ranks as the top priority for the year ahead. With workloads increasing and budgets constrained, leaders are being forced to rethink how work gets done, not just who does it.
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Donor pipelines are under growing strain.
More than 80% of leaders are concerned about declining donor counts, yet many institutions are not prioritizing new donor acquisition or recent graduate engagement. This puts future mid-level and major gift pipelines at risk and makes strengthening the base essential to sustaining long-term growth.
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Data and AI ambition is outpacing readiness.
While interest in AI is widespread, fewer than one in eight leaders believe their teams have a strong understanding of how to use it effectively. Data silos, inconsistent data quality, and limited expertise are preventing many teams from turning insight into action.
The 2025 Advancement Leaders Playbook explores these three areas in depth, pairing national survey data with practical considerations to help advancement leaders prioritize where to focus, what to modernize, and how to build resilience in the year ahead.
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