92% of Nonprofits Use AI. Only 7% See Major Impact. Here's Why That Makes Sense to Me.

A new benchmark study from Virtuous and Fundraising.AI just dropped, and one stat has been living rent-free in my head since I read it: 92% of nonprofits are using AI in some capacity, but only 7% report major improvements in organizational capability.

The researchers call it an "efficiency plateau." I'd call it exactly what I've been watching happen in real time.

The problem isn't the tools. It's everything that comes before the tools.

When Rock Vitale, CEO of Easie, and I spent 2025 doing discovery conversations with nonprofit leaders, one thing jumped out immediately: the ideas were not the bottleneck. In a single session with one organization’s People Team, we mapped over 30 potential AI and automation use cases across recruitment, learning & development, benefits, and team management. Nonprofit leaders are sharp. They see the opportunities. They want to move.

What's missing is the structure to move responsibly. And the flexible funding to give it a go!

On the structure side, the Virtuous report names three culprits, and I think they've got it right:

81% of organizations use AI individually and on an ad hoc basis. One person experimenting with ChatGPT, quietly, often without leadership's knowledge. The knowledge lives with that individual — not in any documented process, not in how the team operates. When that person leaves or gets overwhelmed, the experiment dies with them.

Nearly half have no formal AI policy. No guidance on what's encouraged, what requires approval, what's off-limits when donor or client data is involved. Without that, cautious leaders freeze and risk-takers charge forward, and neither outcome is good for the organization.

Outcome tracking is almost nonexistent. Most organizations rely on informal observation to assess whether AI is working. If you can't measure it, you can't improve it, and you can't make the case to funders that the investment was worth it.

This is a strategy problem, and it has a strategy solution. But strategy takes time and effort. Where will funding for that effort come from?

I've heard from more than one Chief Program Officer this year that funders are hosting AI convenings without following up with actual dollars for pilots, training, or change management. That's a frustrating dynamic — but it also means the organizations waiting for permission and resources to materialize are falling further behind the ones building internal clarity first.

You don't need a big budget to start. You need:

• A shared baseline of AI literacy across your team, not just your tech-forward staff

• Clear internal policies that give people permission to experiment and guardrails to do it safely

• A disciplined process for identifying which problem to solve first — what I like to call the "hair on fire" question

A $5-10K investment in strategy can set up an organization to be prepared to go after larger technology funding and grants. The report puts it well: the differentiator in 2026 won't be access to AI tools. It will be how intentionally and collectively those tools are embedded into the work. And how organization can make the case that their team is ready for this technology transformation. The organizations pulling ahead are the ones willing to do the less glamorous work of building structure before scaling.

What this means for Arensa's work in 2026

Everything I read in this study confirms the direction we've been building toward. Arensa's focus this year is helping nonprofits move through those three layers — education, governance, and a well-scoped pilot project — before investing in any new technology.

Not because technology isn't worth investing in. It absolutely is, especially for a sector facing historic funding cuts and growing demand for services. But deploying technology without strategy wastes exactly the resources nonprofits can't afford to waste.

If your organization is somewhere in that 81% — people using AI here and there, no shared policy, no way to measure what's working — I'd love to talk. Here’s my scheduling page to grab 30 minutes to meet. The plateau is real, but it's also very solvable.

Read the full 2026 Nonprofit AI Adoption Report from Virtuous and Fundraising.AI here.