Performance evaluations are dead?
Corporate thought leaders have been heralding their demise for years—long before Daniel Walker, Apple’s chief talent officer, dubbed them “the stupidest thing American companies do” back in 2023. A pre-pandemic Gallup poll showed 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.
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 by The Chronicle of Philanthropy in 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.
I can'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.
Here's what I know is true. It's something I've shared with my teams throughout my career. As fundraisers, our work sits at the feet of every organizational dysfunction. We're privileged not only to advance missions by raising money, but also to help the nonprofits we serve become more collaborative and operationally sound. A hallmark of our success is to leave each nonprofit in better shape when we move on.
Here's my experience. The best fundraisers are natural team players. Their work exists to support the good work of others. And they're competitive—they're wired to win! They're willing to go above and beyond, but they need to be able to rely on others to play their part. When others are not collaborative or held accountable, fundraisers simply can't do their jobs.
Here's what I believe. Rather than emulating corporate America, nonprofits would do well to look to athletics when it comes to performance issues. The clinical, often punitive approach to performance evaluations borrowed from the corporate world doesn't map well with nonprofit culture. It isolates rather than unifies, feels critical rather than constructive, and incentivizes individualism rather than collaboration.
A performance management approach borrowed from athletics is a better fit, since it focuses equally on individuals, teams, and individuals conditioned to function like teams. What this requires is strength conditioning, ongoing coaching, and performance management on both personal and team levels.
Systems and practices that help us think and act like athletes are familiar and energizing. Everyone wants to be on a winning team! Such an approach can keep all staff accountable while also focusing on big collaborative wins. It addresses the skill-building and professional development that every employee desires. It keeps fundraisers future-focused and fundraising moving in the right direction. And it safeguards donor relationships.
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.
Next Steps
If you want winning fundraising, make effective performance management a New Year's Resolution for 2026.
Think of this as a muscle that's necessary for peak organizational performance. Just like athletic teams, nonprofit teams need clarity about individual roles, team responsibilities, and rules of engagement. This is how to break down silos and execute the types of "plays" that support sustainability. Nonprofit staff also need regular performance coaching to develop the behaviors, practices, and mindsets for team success.
All of this requires commitment and planning.
If you need outside counsel, training, or board support, seek it now. Today's options vary widely, and pro bono support or capacity-building grants may be available. As with all things operational, calibrate your approach based on your needs. The latest corporate lingo or software program may work well for you. Reverse engineer all of this based on clear, concrete goals, and make sure it reinforces the healthy culture you want for your nonprofit.
Frequent performance feedback in real-time—positive reinforcement as well as corrective action—holds favor in many of today's HR circles. It's the way to pave a positive path forward, and one way to substantiate a more formal performance evaluation.
Formal performance evaluations aren't completely dead! When done with strategic intent, they can still be valuable for everyone involved. The process can allow you to zoom out so you can look forward and backward—a time to recognize and celebrate all that's gone well over the course of a fiscal year, identify what hasn't, and address what to do about it. This is a good time for professional development planning—filling knowledge gaps and building important skills for individuals as well as teams in the year ahead. It's helpful to do all of this around budgeting time, since these processes should be aligned.
Even though it's fall, now is a good time to begin planning all of this in earnest. You can develop a framework and define a process that suits your needs for implementation in 2026.
Your fundraising success depends on it.
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AUTHOR
Laurie Reinhardt, PhD, MBA
Founder, ClearView Fundraising Solutions
I help nonprofit leaders, boards, and staff work smarter together, so they raise more money.
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