Forty years ago, Apra helped define a profession. Now we have to decide what role that profession should play in shaping what comes next. 

When I began my term as Apra President on September 1, I shared that as we approach Apra’s 40th anniversary, I’ve been thinking a lot about what this organization needs to become for its next 40 years. I posed a few questions to our community and invited you to help shape the answers. 

One answer I keep hearing is building strategic partnerships. 

It’s also embedded in Apra’s new strategic plan. We have an opportunity to extend Apra’s reach through stronger strategic partnerships and to establish an even more influential thought-leadership voice for prospect development. Our plan explicitly calls for Apra to amplify the influence and recognition of our profession and to work with like-minded organizations. 

Today, we’re putting that ambition into practice. 

Apra International is joining with the Association of Fundraising Professionals (AFP), the Association of Donor Relations Professionals (ADRP) and the Association of Advancement Services Professionals (aasp) in a new partnership designed to bring our professional communities closer together. 

Why does that matter? 

Because the challenges facing philanthropy don't respect our org charts. Our professional community shouldn't be constrained by them either. 

The lines between our work are already blurring. And as we confront questions that could fundamentally reshape philanthropy, we are going to need perspectives and expertise that extend beyond the boundaries of any one fundraising discipline. 

We need each other as we ponder what comes next.  

Consider AI. 

At The Nonprofit Alliance Leadership Summit recently, I found myself thinking less about the AI tools available to us today and more about how profoundly they could reshape the way our work gets done. 

In three to five years, will a fundraiser ever need to log into a CRM? 

We will absolutely still need an underlying data container. And sure, that might be a CRM. But if generative AI becomes the natural-language layer through which we retrieve, interpret, enter and update information in any system, do we still need the CRM user interface as we know it today? Some practitioners navigating a CRM migration may be doing that for the last time in their career. 

Or consider the donor side: With the rise of agentic giving, what happens to a nonprofit’s ability to build relationships with a donor if there is a layer of generative AI in between you? How do we build relationships when the donor may no longer interact with our donor experience platforms? 

These aren't simply technology questions. They're prospect development questions. Fundraising questions. Donor relations questions. Advancement services questions. They raise questions about data, ethics, relationships, governance and the very nature of our work. And some of the biggest questions ahead of us will require all of those perspectives. 

That is what excites me about this partnership. It isn't about blurring the identities of our respective professions. Apra should continue to bring a distinct point of view rooted in prospect research, fundraising analytics, relationship management and insight. Our partners bring their own expertise. 

The opportunity is in bringing those perspectives together. 

As Apra enters its fifth decade, I want us to be ambitious not only about the professional home we create for our members, but also about the role we play across philanthropy. That means building partnerships, contributing our expertise to bigger conversations and helping our profession anticipate what's coming rather than simply responding once it arrives. 

Apra spent its first 40 years helping define a profession. It can spend its next 40 helping that profession influence philanthropy more broadly.