New Report

Frenemies + Jargon: Breaking the Habits That Stall Child & Family Advocacy

  • Here’s a quick summary of the 2026 Frenemies and Jargon report from Forthright Advising.

    • The Problem: The old ways of advocacy are no longer working. As a result, child advocacy organizations, such as nonprofits, are falling behind too often. 

    • The Cause: Challenges include limited capacity to do the work well, trouble collaborating and complicated language.

    • The Solution: Advocates must simplify their messaging, find shared values with partners, and commit to either short-term crisis response or long-term strategies.

The old ways of advocacy are no longer working, so we have two options: 

Keep falling behind, or update our strategy and start winning again.

To do that, we need to know what’s working in 2026…

And what isn’t. 

That’s what Forthright’s new report – Frenemies + Jargon: Breaking the Habits That Stall Child and Family Advocacy – is all about. 

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During late 2025 and early 2026, we interviewed and surveyed nonprofit and foundation leaders from across the country. We listened for your challenges.

For solutions. For what’s getting in our way as a field. 

Then, we put it all together. In the report, we expose what’s holding us back from real progress. And then – because we know you – we include SOLUTIONS to those challenges. 

When you read the report, you’ll walk away with action steps you can take today, to win big tomorrow. 

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The Solutions: What You’ll Learn in the Report

Because we know you, we didn't just expose the problems — we included SOLUTIONS to those challenges.

Here’s a preview of the three key shifts we must make:

Solution 1: Pick Your Priority. Our field needs advocates to put out fires as they happen, like ICE at schools and food pantries. We also can’t abandon long-term work that addresses the root cause of the problem, like teacher workforce development and food security. It’s time to decide what you’ll prioritize as an organization: short-term fixes or long-term strategies.

Solution 2: Simplify, Compromise, Unify. We are frenemies who use complicated messaging, competing for the detailed approach we think is best. This has to stop. It’s time to simplify, compromise and unify as advocates.

Solution 3: Speak to Shared Values. We agree on many issues, such as wanting affordable child care. We don’t need our audience to agree on every policy or campaign. We simply need to find the things we agree on and speak to them!

Learn more about the report methodology and specifications here. 

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You’re Not Alone: What the Data Reveals

  • 72 percent said that time and limited capacity are huge barriers to this work.

  • 61 percent of interviewees reported that meeting changing stakeholder needs is a major challenge.

  • Nearly three fourths of interviewees specifically mentioned fragmentation, competition or lack of unity.

  • 100 percent mentioned lack of brand awareness, public confusion, negative perception or decreasing support for the work as a major hurdle.

About 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 create thoughtful campaigns that deliver a clear message straight to the audiences who need to hear it. 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.

See the full report documentation here.