I was recently invited to give a 5-minute “thought bomb” on a trend that will shape nonprofit technology in 2026. With so much attention on AI right now, I chose to focus less on what’s new, and more on what’s foundational.
I hear AI evangelists and early adopters shouting the same question: What can we do with AI?
I think that’s the wrong place to start. The more important question is: What are we preparing AI to work with?
As we enter 2026, AI is showing up everywhere, in all the systems we already use. CRMs, donor systems, and grants platforms are adding AI summarization capabilities in-system, and chat interfaces are making it possible to query data using words to generate insights contained in it. If you look at the product roadmap for almost any data system we use in our organizations, you’ll see new AI features expected in the coming year.
This means that the data in our core systems – both structured (what’s contained in fields) and unstructured (such as notes and documents) – will be the context for AI. The quality of the outputs will depend significantly on the data in these systems – the data about your relationships and work that you own.
I unpack this idea more fully in the short talk below:
This talk was one of 19 lightning talks shared as part of TechSoup Connect Canada’s annual flagship event: Essential Tech for Nonprofits in 2026.
If you’re interested in how others across the sector are thinking about the future of nonprofit technology, I’d encourage you to explore the full set of recordings on The Digital Nonprofit.
None of this requires a massive digital transformation. In fact, to borrow the words of the fitness instructor for my first workout of the year, “consistency matters more than intensity.”
Through all the noise around what AI can or may be able to do for us, it’s never been more important to return to the fundamentals that have always been true. Clean processes, clean data, and consistent practice matter more than ever as AI becomes part of our everyday systems.
In 2026, the real competitive advantage won’t be AI. It will be the fundamentals underneath it.
If your organization is thinking through how to prepare its systems and data for what’s coming next, I’d be happy to talk.