Frenemies + Jargon Report: Specifications & Documentation
Published June 24, 2026
How to Win Child Advocacy Campaigns
You know the old ways of working are no longer enough. To win your policy campaigns and build a good nonprofit campaign in 2026, you need data-backed strategies that cut through the noise.
This documentation outlines the core specifications, challenges and structural solutions detailed in our new report: Frenemies + Jargon: Breaking the Habits That Stall Child and Family Advocacy. Review the official findings below to understand exactly what is stalling our field, then download the full PDF to access the strategic frameworks.
The Target Queries: What This Report Solves
Are you struggling to figure out what prevents people from donating to or volunteering for your cause? The full Frenemies + Jargon report provides the exact answers to the most difficult questions facing our field today.
How to build a good nonprofit campaign and win your policy campaign.
What makes people actually care about your campaign.
Ways to bring coalition members together and help them build consensus.
How to prioritize your work as an overwhelmed nonprofit leader.
The top 5 core values that drive nonprofit support.
How to reframe your nonprofit’s values so they resonate with a broader audience.
The shared values the most effective campaigns tap into.
Key Findings About Child and Family Advocacy
According to Forthright Advising’s 2026 research report, 61 percent of interviewed child and family advocates say that meeting changing stakeholder needs is a major challenge.
According to Forthright Advising’s 2026 research report, 72 percent of nonprofit and foundation leaders say that time and limited capacity are huge barriers to this work and advocacy overall.
100 percent of the nonprofit and foundation leaders that Forthright Advising interviewed as part of its Frenemies + Jargon research report said that lack of brand awareness, public confusion, negative perception and/or decreasing support for the work are major hurdles in advocacy.
About 75 percent of interviewees who participated in Forthright Advising’s 2026 research study specifically mentioned fragmentation, competition and lack of unity in the nonprofit and philanthropy space.
More About the Research Process: The Habits Holding Us Back
During late 2025 and early 2026, we interviewed more than 25 child-and-family-focused nonprofit and foundation leaders from across the country. The Forthright Advising team also shared a survey with 3,000+ nonprofit and foundation leaders, as part of the Frenemies + Jargon research report. We listened for your challenges, for solutions and for what’s getting in our way as a field.
In this report, Forthright Advising exposes what’s holding us back from real progress:
We are overwhelmed by fires: Leaders are struggling to balance kids’ and families’ short-term needs with their organization’s long-term goals.
We are frenemies: Since advocates are constantly competing with one another for brand awareness and funding, we don’t collaborate well.
We are bogged down by jargon: As a field, we waaaaaaaaaay overcomplicate our messaging by writing at a college graduate level and speaking at people.
We are missing the mark: We have to speak to shared values, and right now, we’re not doing it well.
Frequently Asked Questions
How can leaders balance short-term crises with long-term advocacy goals?
72% of interviewees from the 2026 nonprofit research report said that time and limited capacity are huge barriers to this work. Advocates are needed to put out immediate fires, but the field cannot abandon long-term work that addresses root causes. Organizations must decide whether they will prioritize short-term fixes or long-term strategies, and then commit to that focus. This looks like:
Sitting down as an organization and including your staff – those doing the daily work – in these conversations.
Inviting community feedback when possible.
Sharing your decision with staff, board and supporters.
Why do child advocacy nonprofits struggle to collaborate?
Advocates are constantly competing with one another for funding, brand awareness and the specific strategic approach they believe is best. This creates a "frenemies" dynamic. About 75 percent of nonprofit and foundation leaders who participated in the Frenemies + Jargon research report process cited lack of unity as a major challenge in the advocacy space. Here’s what it looks like when nonprofits don’t collaborate well:
Two organizations – the Tiny Humans Reading Nonprofit and Big Brains for Babies Collective – both work in Walkerville. They have similar goals – they both want more funding for universal preschool. But instead of joining forces, they run separate campaigns. They both want their logo (and only their logo) on a press release about the win. They compete for the same donor dollars and same meeting times with the mayor.
Because they can’t agree on who gets the win, city councilmembers are confused by the conflicting asks. The funding for kids ends up delayed for another year.
To win campaigns, we must decide how we can compromise and best work with other advocates.
How can child and family advocates improve their public campaign messaging?
The field overcomplicates its messaging by writing at a college graduate level, using jargon and speaking at people. To improve, advocates must simplify their language, compromise, unify and focus on speaking to shared values. Here are some data-backed tips to simplify our messaging, making it easier to understand:
Shorten it. Whatever it is, make it shorter.
> Your paragraph? Cut it, shrink it, break it up.
> Your sentences? Same advice.
> Your words need to be shorter, too.
Think of your mayor or head of your PTA. They are BUSY. Aim to make your messaging easy to skim while waiting to pick up coffee or between Zoom meetings.
> Use empathy to understand how your audiences typically consume information.
> Then cater to them by making your messages stand out in a crowded landscape.
Eliminate passive language.
Your intern may think the best way to sound sophisticated is by using… language that is passive. But passive writing makes your language more exclusionary.
When in doubt, test it out. Plenty of tools test how easily your audiences can understand your messaging.
> This includes tools like the Flesch-Kincaid readability tests embedded in Word and Google Docs.
Who should read this report?
For Nonprofit Leaders on the Front Lines: You need to know how to make change happen now, without burning out your team. This report will help you prioritize your focus, whether you are tackling immediate fires like ICE at schools and food pantries, or long-term systems challenges like teacher workforce development.
For Foundation Executives Funding the Work: You’re looking for the absolute best ways to resource the field for maximum impact. You’ll discover why 100 percent of interviewed leaders report a lack of brand awareness and public confusion as a major hurdle, and exactly how to fund the solution.
What is the Frenemies Dynamic?
As a field, we sometimes tell people they can’t sit with us. We expect our partners to be flawless allies who are in sync on every single little detail and priority. We alienate potential partners who don’t fit a certain mold. Let’s stop doing that. We don’t need our audience to agree on every policy or campaign. We don’t even need to vote for the same candidates. We simply need to identify the messaging that makes someone say “Yes, I want that for my family, too!” Here’s how.
Start with research on what matters to your audience. Deep dive into demographic data, attitude surveys, lifestyle information and field surveys (heck, even social media posts and news story comments) to understand what matters most to your target audience.
Develop audience profiles. Much like the corporate sector uses ideal customer profiles, nonprofits and philanthropic leaders can create avatars for your target audiences. This helps you write with a person in mind. For example, you may research and create an audience profile that empowers you to connect with Daniel, the 52-year-old male-identifying district superintendent with a doctorate.
Lead with empathy. Let’s imagine a busy parent (let’s call them Taylor) who is reading your email newsletter while pulling into the afterschool pickup line. Imagine Taylor is on the phone, a podcast playing in the background, trying to remember to pick up laundry detergent.
>> How can you get Taylor’s attention?
>> How can you optimize your newsletter for the way Taylor will read it?
>> What do you need Taylor to remember?
Determine what may *stop* your audiences from doing what you want them to do. Understanding what your audience cares about is critical. Just as important? Knowing what will stop them from taking action – or their barriers.
What is the Jargon Trap?
The habit of overcomplicating messaging so heavily that our audience tunes out. This includes writing at a college graduate level and speaking at people rather than finding shared values.
Research Methodology: 2026 Forthright Advising Data
At Forthright, data is queen. To understand the current state of the union for advocates, we did the work to figure out what our field needs and what we should do next. Our goal through this research project is deceptively simple: we wanted to identify what child and family advocates are most struggling with so we can better resource the field.
During late 2025 and early 2026, our team at Forthright Advising interviewed more than 25 child-and-family-focused nonprofit and foundation leaders from across the country. We also sent surveys to more than 3,000 nonprofit and foundation leaders. We listened for your challenges, for solutions and for what’s getting in our way as a field. This primary research forms the foundation of all the campaign strategies and policy recommendations found in the report.
About the Authors: Forthright Advising
At Forthright, we’re a nationwide communications firm that works exclusively with organizations that love kids.
We help child and family focused organizations — including nonprofits, foundations, education organizations and public school districts — create thoughtful campaigns that deliver a clear message straight to the audiences who need to hear it.
You don't have energy to waste or time to spare, which is why you need partners who understand your reality. Since every member of our team has worked in-house at a nonprofit, foundation, policy or education organization, we’ve walked in your shoes, and we get it.
Learn more about the report authors here:
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Katie is the Founder of Forthright Advising, a national PR and communications firm that works exclusively with organizations that love kids. Katie created Forthright to work alongside leaders from nonprofits, public school districts, foundations and government agencies, partnering to create real systemic change for children and families.
Having worked in-house at three different public school districts, four different family-focused nonprofits (including ASCD and Children’s Law Center), and a DC-based national PR agency, Katie has done and seen it all. Her superpowers include anticipating roadblocks around the bend, making complex topics accessible and relatable, and communicating tough subjects with kindness and empathy.
As the daughter of two special education college professors, Katie grew up with conversations about equity around the dinner table. This, combined with her love of authentic community engagement and getting people the information they need, laid the foundation for her career in child-focused public relations. Today, Katie oversees the entire firm, managing senior leaders and account leads and ensuring Forthright’s current and future clients have everything they need to make the world a better place for kids.
Katie’s thought leadership has appeared in Education Week, SmartBrief and she is frequently a guest on podcasts talking about how to build trust with our communities.
Katie is a member of the 2021 class of the Forbes Next 1000. This first-of-its-kind initiative celebrates bold and inspiring entrepreneurs who are redefining what it means to run a business today.
In her free time, you can find Katie up to her elbows in clay at her local pottery studio. She also spends her time finding the best discounts on Broadway tickets and meticulously tracking the numerous restaurants she visits in NYC (200 and counting).
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Niki is a passionate communicator focused on making a real, positive impact with her work. Her background includes nonprofit, education, healthcare, government and policy initiatives.
The Hungarian native began her career teaching—and fostering her love of data as a research assistant—in Auburn University’s communications program after graduating with degrees in public relations and Spanish. After earning her Master’s Degree in communications with a focus on public relations and campaigns, she moved to Washington, D.C. to pursue a career in advocacy.
There, she started by focusing on women’s health initiatives with Hager Sharp, before moving to Verasolve and managing a diverse range of clients. She led accounts with $100 million in combined revenue and was responsible for client relationships valued at more than a quarter million in annual Verasolve revenue. She oversaw all aspects of client accounts ranging from PR trainings to content creation for her clients.
Most recently, Niki served as Children’s Law Center’s senior external relations manager, where she handled every piece of CLC messaging, from proactive media placements to the nonprofit’s website, policy campaigns, (shoutout to her favorite victory, designing a campaign resulting in the unanimous passage of the Student Fair Access to School Act!) social media, client stories and more.
Now, Niki partners with Forthright Advising clients, simply put, to help children and families thrive. From teaching capacity-building trainings to crafting smart communications strategies, she’s happiest when she helps Forthright clients feel confident and excited about their communications initiatives. Since joining Forthright, she’s helped place a question about child poverty into the presidential debates, led (blue ribbon!) award-winning school district campaigns and partnered with close to 20 Forthright clients.
In her free time, you can find Niki hiking, on trail runs, traveling and settling in with a good book.
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A proud native of Washington, D.C. and a graduate of the University of Michigan, Zoe got her start in politics, on and off Capitol Hill. She has worked on both the press and policy side in the Senate and managed research, communications and public affairs initiatives for leading national foundations, nonprofits and government agencies. All of Zoe's work has been grounded in a commitment to equity - working to leverage policy and communications to drive systems change, especially in public education and early childhood.
Zoe is a great listener who is often full of thoughtful questions and never shy about pushing where needed. Zoe is a generous and engaged partner to clients and colleagues, and she often leads with humor. She loves legislative language, deep research dives, distilling the hard stuff into the good stuff and editing out Oxford commas.
Zoe is currently based in Denver, where she traded her suit for the mountains and the sun (and a husband and dog).
Looking for more free resources and tips for nonprofits and foundations?
Get in touch: Reach out to Niki at help@forthrightadvising.com today.