Between January and February 2026, we asked 37 cultural nonprofits across Northwest Connecticut a basic question: how much of your staff’s time is spent on administrative work, and what would you most like a computer to handle for you?

The answers were more consistent than we expected.

Across every category we measured, fundraising, marketing, general operations, and data management, organizations rated their administrative time burden at 3.4 or higher on a 5-point scale. More than a third of respondents rated the burden a 4 or higher in all four categories. This isn’t a story about one broken workflow. It’s a story about administrative pressure spread across the full surface of small nonprofit operations.

When we asked what organizations would most like to automate, the responses clustered into five themes: marketing and outreach, grant writing and research, donor management, data and reporting, and scheduling and operations. Most respondents didn’t describe a single task. They described layered, interconnected problems spanning multiple systems.

That software fragmentation is its own finding. Respondents collectively named dozens of disconnected tools, with very little standardization across the sector. Any automation work in this space has to bridge existing systems rather than assume a common stack.

Notably, 81% of the organizations we surveyed said they want to participate in a pilot project.

The full Phase 1 report covers our methodology, the sector research that frames this work, three proof-of-concept case studies from the Arts Council’s own operations, and the project selection criteria that will guide Phase 2 pilots launching this spring.

Read the Phase 1 Research Report →