Since 2023, the Haitian Community Help & Support Center has been assisting refugees and immigrants, especially Haitian nationals, as they find their place in Springfield, OH. The center helps newcomers navigate housing applications, the job market, legal issues, and language barriers so they can become self-sufficient members of the community. For many, the center is more than just a service provider; it is a form of civic infrastructure.

Now, however, the center is under threat.

In July 2026, a decision from the Supreme Court allowed the Trump administration to terminate Temporary Protected Status (TPS), a designation that permitted some nationals experiencing danger or difficulties in their home countries to live and work in the United States. The termination threatens not only immigration status, but also the structure built around the families the program served. Springfield’s TPS case raises a broader question: What happens to immigrant-led nonprofit infrastructure when the legal status of the community becomes unstable?

Why Springfield Matters

The Springfield Haitian community was growing long before it was put under the national political spotlight following false claims made by Donald Trump. Over the past several years, the number of Haitians in the Ohio city has risen. According to the City of Springfield, an estimated 12,000 to 15,000 Haitians now live in the county, with a mix of legal statuses. Many Haitian nationals in Springfield were given TPS because they were unable to return home due to unsafe conditions such as ongoing conflict, environmental disasters, and deadly epidemics that included a cholera outbreak.

Haitians were drawn to Springfield thanks to job opportunities, specifically in construction work, and a lower cost of living. As the Haitian population grew, so did the need for their own civic infrastructure. Places like the Haitian Community Help & Support Center became essential civic institutions, hosting such events as children’s Christmas parties and free language lessons.

But in 2024, false claims about Haitian residents fueled national political rhetoric that disrupted community life. Haitians in Springfield lived in fear following a string of bomb threats that resulted in the closure of city hall, schools, and other government buildings.

While much of the attention on Springfield focused on immigration politics, Haitians continued to build something that was much less visible: community institutions that allowed neighbors to support each other.

Building a Nonprofit from Inside the Community

The center, founded by Haitian leaders Viles Dorsainvil and Rose-Thamar Joseph, helps immigrants and refugees integrate into life in Springfield, supports education initiatives to bridge the gap, and advocates for their social, economic, and legal rights.

The center is more than just a nonprofit organization. It is a form of community governance in which Haitian immigrants have created trusted institutions at a time when many public institutions struggle to keep up with community needs. It is also an example of how communities often turn to grassroots organizations first.

But the termination of TPS sent ripples through every aspect of the nonprofit’s work and set the stage for deportations. Haitians who have lost their TPS status and entered immigration proceedings have been placed into ICE’s Alternatives to Detention program. They will have to wear an ankle monitor to track their whereabouts until an immigration judge decides whether they have a legitimate reason to remain in the United States.

This criminal designation is already having devastating impacts. In September, 20-year-old college student Pierre Damas Bel died by suicide after losing his TPS status and being forced to wear an ankle monitor. According to his family, the ankle monitor prevented him from playing soccer, which he loved; it also interfered with his ROTC uniform and caused bullying from classmates.

Springfield offers nonprofit leaders a stark reminder that organizational resilience is more than just expanding programs.

While services continue at the Haitian Community Help & Support Center, uncertainty now surrounds legal status and future residency, and Dorsainvil spends his days responding to frantic calls from Springfield Haitians.

The termination of TPS also carries practical consequences. Changes to immigration status mean that families and residents will need renewed legal guidance, and organizations like the Haitian Community Help & Support Center now have added roles. Not only are they providers of housing support, language access, advocacy, and financial literacy, but they must now interpret ever-changing immigration policy as communities turn to them for guidance.

Changes in legal status are also affecting the foundation of immigrant-led civic infrastructure. In August, the Haitian Community Help & Support Center was shut down for two days due to fear of a rumored ICE operation. Dorsainvil faces the same challenges as the community he serves. He has yet to receive a letter from the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) about his own possible deportation, and despite the uncertainty hanging over his head, he continues to build a place where the community can turn. As he told TIME, “I meditate to reboost my system and mental health, just so that I can continue to serve my community again tomorrow, and the next day.”

What Nonprofits Can Learn

The TPS case in Springfield offers nonprofit leaders a stark reminder that organizational resilience is more than just expanding programs. Today, resilience means building community-trusted institutions that can absorb political shocks and continue to serve the community, rather than government agencies absorbing the initial fallout.

As policy changes, these organizations are expected to respond to public misinformation, panic, and increasing service demands without institutional support.

Nonprofits have always operated in uncertain times. But right now is one of the toughest periods for immigration nonprofits across the country. According to a report by legal software management firm , there are three major problems: policy shifts, unpredictable federal funding, and community demand outpacing organizations’ capacities. As policy around legal status shifts, people struggle to navigate the system—and organizations struggle to figure out these new uncertain systems themselves while under pressure from increased demand.

“Previously, certain cases that would have been considered simple and straightforward filings now require additional screening measures, disclaimers, and more evidence. We’ve seen higher RFEs [Request for Evidence] and denials. This has significantly impacted our caseworkers’ output,” Sylvia Ortiz, from The Coalition for Humane Immigrant Rights (CHIRLA), said in the report.

The termination of TPS introduces another challenge to immigrant-led nonprofits. As policy changes, these organizations are expected to respond quickly to public misinformation, panic, and increasing service demands. It’s therefore crucial that nonprofit leaders strengthen their organizations before a crisis hits.

When public systems become unstable and unpredictable, immigrant-led organizations often become the glue that holds communities together. But the question looming is whether grassroots organizations will receive the support they need to continue assisting their communities.

Since its founding in 2020, the United Vision Project has reached more than 1.4 million people across 13 states and engaged in more than 107,000 conversations. Of those conversations, more than 48,000 have continued over days, weeks, or even longer, providing rare insights into what is driving authoritarian drift—and what it will take to reverse it.

Through our Authentic Relational Conversations (ARC) and Authentic Relational Organizing (ARO) models, participants engage across differences while challenging political stereotypes, building trust through genuine curiosity, deepening understanding, and creating opportunities to discover shared interests from which collective action becomes possible. This is the patient work of rebuilding the social fabric upon which democratic life depends.

These conversations reveal that today’s political divisions are rooted not simply in ideology or policy preferences, but in deeper questions of meaning, dignity, recognition, agency, trust, identity, and belonging. Again and again, participants describe feeling invisible, disconnected, and politically homeless. As isolation replaces connection, suspicion replaces trust, and fear replaces curiosity, people begin searching for certainty, community, and someone to blame. That is where authoritarian movements often find their opening—not simply because of what they believe, but because of what they provide.

Civic Abandonment

When communities lose the institutions that connect people to one another, they lose far more than services.

Our research reinforced what organizers, and democratic theorists have long understood: People are not simply searching for information. They are searching for belonging, connection, and purpose. Nearly 58 percent of participants primarily identify with a political or social group they believe is for people like themselves, while only 8 percent identify economic hardship as their primary political motivation. Material hardship matters, but belonging often shapes how that hardship is understood—and where people look for answers.

While rural and conservative communities comprise roughly 20 percent of the country’s population, multiple analyses estimate they receive only 6 to 7 percent of philanthropic funding in a typical year.

These are places that have long experienced a decline in local newspapers, civic associations, labor unions, community organizations, and other institutions that once connected people to one another and to public life. The result has not simply been economic hardship, but civic abandonment. When communities lose the institutions that connect people to one another, they lose far more than services. They lose the capacity to solve problems together. They lose trust. They lose shared identity. They lose confidence that democracy can improve their lives.

And when communities feel abandoned long enough, something inevitably fills the void. People never stop searching for belonging; they simply look elsewhere to find it. Authoritarianism does not emerge in a vacuum. It grows where democratic institutions have slowly disappeared.

Over the past several decades, extremist organizations, White nationalist groups, anti-government movements, conspiracy networks, and increasingly sophisticated ideological ecosystems have stepped into spaces where democratic institutions retreated.

Building Power

Long before much of the country began confronting today’s authoritarian politics, Idaho had become a proving ground for many of the forces now reshaping the nation. White nationalist organizations, anti-government movements, Christian nationalist networks, and ideological institutions spent decades building relationships, leadership pipelines, media ecosystems, and political influence in communities that had been written off by many national organizations.

Lasting political power is rarely built during election cycles. It is cultivated over decades through organizing, leadership development, institution building, and sustained investment—and the battle for American democracy is increasingly being fought through institutions most Americans rarely notice until they are already under extraordinary strain.

As politics has become increasingly nationalized, decisions once viewed as local now carry profound national consequences. Well-funded advocacy organizations, ideological networks, and special interests have spent decades investing in state legislatures, judicial races, attorneys general, governors, secretaries of state, think tanks, litigation, and model legislation because they understand that lasting national power is often built state by state rather than election by election.

But controlling institutions is often more durable than winning individual elections. The goal is not simply electoral victory but the ability to shape the institutions that determine how power is exercised, protected, and transferred. Decisions about voter registration, certification, litigation, ballot access, and election procedures made in a single state can now reverberate across the country.

For example, Christ Church in Moscow, ID, founded by Douglas Wilson in 1975, has grown from a small local congregation into one of the most influential institutions within the modern Christian nationalist movement. What began as a local church has expanded into a sophisticated network of schools, publishing houses, media platforms, churches, leadership development organizations, and affiliated institutions that now reach hundreds of schools and congregations across the US and internationally.

In 2026, Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth invited Douglas Wilson to lead a Christian worship service at the Pentagon. Reporting by The Washington Post and Military.com noted Hegseth’s longstanding relationship with Wilson’s work and highlighted the growing ties between Christian nationalist networks and federal power.

While places like Idaho are often dismissed as too conservative, rural, or politically inconsequential to justify significant investment, these movements made a different calculation. They listened, organized, recruited, and built institutions. And that turned into power that now reaches from rural communities into the highest levels of American government.

Authentic Relational Organizing

If authoritarianism is built through relationships, then rebuilding democracy must be as well.

Political identity increasingly functions as social identity. People are often motivated less by policy preferences than by questions of status, recognition, community, and belonging. These are not fringe dynamics but are the very dynamics through which movements are built. Human beings are social creatures—wired for connection, shaped by the communities to which we belong and wounded by the communities we lose.

What happened—and continues to happen—in Idaho should not be viewed as an anomaly. It should be understood as a warning.

When lived experiences are validated and people feel seen, heard, and valued, they are more likely to form trust with one another and develop the ability to work together across differences for their shared interests—and are far more likely to participate in civic life.

We repeatedly encounter people searching for purpose, agency, recognition, and belonging. That does not mean all grievances are equal. It does not mean all beliefs are equally valid. But it does suggest that if democratic movements hope to compete with authoritarian movements, we must become better at meeting the human needs those movements have learned to exploit.

We’ve found that when people are approached authentically and with genuine curiosity, personal and political transformations are within reach. UVI’s research in a study of 6,500 conversations shows a 32.7 percent sentiment shift across extreme political differences after conversations occur. This work shows that beneath the noise of our politics, most people are carrying stories of fear, loss, hope, and contradiction that rarely fit neatly into the categories we assign them.

Statistics tell us what people believe. Relationships help us understand why.

The Work of Democracy

Several years ago, a potential funder came to Idaho to learn about our work. About 50 miles outside Boise, we stopped at an old gas station that sold fresh produce, local goods, antiques—and Confederate flags.

I introduced myself to Randy, the owner, and told him what I did.

He looked at me and smiled. “Well,” he said, “I guess we’re on different sides of the political aisle.”

“Maybe,” I replied. “Let’s find out.”

What followed was a 45-minute conversation about healthcare, family, agriculture, economic change, community decline, and political division. At one point, Randy’s wife spoke through tears about losing loved ones while struggling to access affordable healthcare.

“People don’t understand,” she said. “It’s not that we don’t believe everyone should have healthcare. It’s that the insurance companies are getting richer and richer while we are all getting sicker and sicker.”

Randy told us how they had restored the old station to help support their daughter after her husband was paralyzed in a trucking accident and denied compensation. He talked about young people leaving town, family farms disappearing, rising political hostility, and his fear that the divisions consuming the country were destroying the sense of community that had once defined their town. He talked about his fear that disputes were no longer being settled with words, but with guns or knives.

None of these concerns fit neatly into the caricatures we often construct about one another. They were deeply human concerns.

As we prepared to leave, I asked Randy a question, mostly for the benefit of my colleague because I already knew what his answer would be. “What would happen if we walked out to my car and it wouldn’t start?”

He looked genuinely puzzled. “Well,” he said, “I’d call my friend who’s a mechanic. He’d come down here, we’d figure out what’s wrong, and we’d get you on your way.”

That answer captured something I have encountered repeatedly in rural communities. Beneath all our political conflict, Randy’s first instinct was community. His first instinct was still to help.

Months later, I returned with 15 national leaders during a rural democracy tour. We spent another hour and a half talking with Randy. Before leaving, I asked about the Confederate flags he had been selling when I first visited.

He looked down for a moment, then he said quietly. “Since the last time you were here, we don’t sell those anymore.”

What made that moment meaningful was not simply the outcome. It was what the process revealed.

The change did not emerge from public shaming, social pressure, or an argument that proved him wrong. It emerged through authentic dialogue that led to relationship. Through trust and genuine curiosity, moments like these create the space for reflection, for grappling with the complexities that shape people’s beliefs, and for finding the grace to reconsider them.

Resisting authoritarianism therefore begins long before an election.

The lesson is larger than one conversation. Democracy survives or declines through the choices ordinary people make every day.

We each bear some responsibility for the moment we are living through and how we choose to move through it. It is tempting to locate responsibility somewhere else—to place it entirely on politicians, political parties, media companies, billionaires, corporations, extremist movements, or institutions. But democracy has never been something that happens outside of us.

Power is not only taken. It is also given—surrendered when we disengage, when we stop participating or retreat from public life because we decide politics has nothing to do with us or that our actions don’t matter.

Authoritarianism depends on that surrender, on people believing they are powerless. It depends on isolation, exhaustion, and the conviction that someone else will fix what is broken—or that nothing can be fixed at all.

Resisting authoritarianism therefore begins long before an election. It begins in how we show up for one another, whether we choose curiosity over certainty, inclusion over exclusion, or courage over cynicism. And whether we continue to believe that ordinary people can shape the future of their communities.

Democracy will not be sustained by spectators. It will be sustained by millions of ordinary people willing to protect it, practice it, and continually reimagine it.

Civic Institutions

Democracy depends not only on individual participation but on the institutions that help people participate together. Throughout American history, civic organizations, local nonprofits, congregations, unions, neighborhood associations, independent media, and community groups have served as the connective tissue of democratic life. They develop leaders, cultivate trust, convene neighbors, and create opportunities for ordinary people to exercise collective power.

If democratic resilience depends upon strong civic institutions, then the conditions facing those institutions should concern us all. Today, that civic infrastructure is under extraordinary strain.

The question, then, is not simply why authoritarianism is growing. It is whether democracy is still investing in the institutions capable of competing with it.

Many philanthropic foundations that have long anchored and sustained the civic work upon which democracy depends have become increasingly cautious, slowing and reducing grantmaking or ending their support entirely. Across the nonprofit sector, foundation and nonprofit leaders increasingly describe a climate of uncertainty unlike anything they have experienced.

While many of these foundations often espouse values rooted in expanding freedom, justice, and opportunity—and possess the resources to support organizations working toward those ends—their retreat has left countless nonprofits facing unprecedented demand with fewer resources.

The consequences reach far beyond the organizations themselves. Every nonprofit that closes, every organizer who leaves the field, every local institution that loses the capacity to bring together neighbors or develop new leaders weakens civic infrastructure. The loss is cumulative, measured not simply in programs or budgets, but in relationships, leadership, trust, and the ability of communities to resist authoritarian movements already investing heavily in those same places.

Civic organizations are facing what many leaders describe as an existential crisis. Many are reducing staff, scaling back programs, exhausting reserve funds, contemplating mergers to survive or simply shuttering.

Extending beyond the fate of any individual nonprofit, the cumulative effect is profound. As civic institutions recede, movements dedicated to exclusion, grievance, and authoritarian politics continue investing in recruitment, leadership development, communications, training, and community formation.

Perhaps the greatest asymmetry between authoritarian and democratic movements is not ideology but time. One invests for generations. The other increasingly operates one election, one grant cycle, one campaign, and one news cycle at a time.

Organizing for Structural Change

The responsibility of our movements wasn’t to function as an extension of any political party, but to build the independent power of ordinary people capable of holding every political party accountable to the people we claim to stand for and with.

Increasingly though, mobilization has supplanted organizing. The authentic relational organizing work at its heart—the slow work of building trust, developing leaders, and cultivating community—is too frequently displaced by reward for pursuing impermanent and incremental short-term or electoral victories, which make transformational change much more difficult to achieve.

The crisis we face is not only about what has happened to our orientation around this work but, what has happened to organizing in this country. The exclusive nature of prodemocracy organizing, despite the claims of inclusiveness and “talking to people across difference” (which rarely means what it purports) reveals deep cracks in our own movements. Purity tests, ideological litmus tests, increasing sensitivity to personal comfort, and an aversion to complexity and conflict are not preparing us for the work before us. Instead, they are too often deepening our divisions while weakening our collective ability to build the broad movement this moment requires.

Meeting this moment requires us to recognize it soberly for what it is and to organize in every place. It requires building alignment across a broad spectrum of people stretched throughout this country. Millions of Americans are ready and willing to fight for something larger than themselves if we are willing to invite them into a movement rooted in courage, accountability, belonging, and shared purpose rather than perpetual conflict.

People across the political spectrum are searching for something our movements have too rarely offered: a credible path toward structural change.

In thousands of conversations, people from every background have expressed to us their desire for legislation that would hold our systems and our elected officials to account. Given the invitation and opportunity to explore their ideas, people are much more united around structural reforms that would produce meaningful change and restore trust in our institutions. In our work, we find universal agreement from Democrats, Republicans, Independents, or disaffected voters alike that they want actionable, systemic change that holds elected officials accountable. They enthusiastically embrace ideas to implement reasonable term limits, end lifetime judicial appointments, impose codes of ethics, ban private profiteering from lobbyists and corporate influencers and uphold serious consequences for violations. They agree that an overhaul of national budgetary priorities is necessary to reverse the extraction and concentration of wealth by corporations and billionaires, and that wealth should instead flow to services and institutions that provide opportunity and support for the people who fund them.

Frustration that meaningful change is out of reach often gives way to the seduction of a
burn-it-down mindset. People are looking for movements willing to champion real structural reform and radical transformation. And this should serve as a warning, because if progressive movements are not unified and prepared to meet that need, people will seek it elsewhere.

History and Collective Action

Building on generations of struggle, people organized. They built trusted relationships and alliances. Leaders rose up from every community, formed coalitions, and connected them. They kept organizing, building, and harnessing power until they mobilized it into realities that no administration could ignore—winning the rights, freedoms and liberty that we have come to understand as the American identity.

The Civil Rights Movement did not succeed because any administration wanted to expand civil liberties and freedoms. Administrations were forced to deliver them by the actions of millions of people who united and harnessed their power. Those gains were not made because of a single leader, a single organization, or a single moment of moral awakening—and certainly not by a political party. The movement succeeded because a vast network of people and organizations spent decades building the relationships, leadership, and civic infrastructure necessary to sustain collective action.

The victories we celebrate—the Montgomery Bus Boycott, Freedom Rides, voter registration campaigns, Freedom Summer, the March on Washington, the Civil Rights Act, and the Voting Rights Act—were not spontaneous events. They were the result of years, and often decades, of relationship building, community organizing, leadership development, training, fundraising, coalition building, and coordinated action.

The Work Before Us

Democracy survives because people participate in collective life. It survives because communities possess the relationships, trust, leadership, and institutions necessary to solve problems together. And yet much of our political culture today behaves as though change happens differently. We invest enormous attention and resources into elections while underinvesting in the organizations that help people participate between them.

Perhaps more than any other time, our democratic institutions are being tested and dismantled, and consolidation of authoritarian power will take decades, if not lifetimes, to remedy. These are perilous times. Democratic institutions matter enormously—and they only exist because ordinary people build, sustain, defend, and renew them.

For some, that work will look like organizing and activism. For others, it will mean mentoring young people, supporting local journalism, participating in mutual aid, serving on community boards, helping neighbors, or simply refusing to retreat from civic life.

It may mean supporting nonprofits, local institutions, independent media, and community organizations that strengthen civic life; donating money, time, skills, passion, or labor on a regular basis. It may mean paying closer attention to the information we consume, where it comes from and what motivations underlie every message. It may mean being conscious about where we spend our money, and refusing to reward businesses, institutions, or leaders who profit from division or undermine democratic norms. It will mean staying endlessly curious and refusing to let others divide us, seeing one another as our power, not our problem.

History rarely remembers those who protected themselves from risk. It remembers those who accepted responsibility for the moment they were living through and rose to meet it. Every democratic expansion in this country’s history was built by people who refused to believe they were powerless or that history’s trajectory was inevitable. They found one another. They organized. They built communities of belonging. Together, they changed what was possible.

That remains the enduring lesson of democracy. Its story has never been one of perfect agreement. It has always been the story of imperfect people choosing, again and again, to build a future together despite their differences.

That is the work before us now.

Amidst a backlash against diversity, equity, and inclusion work, it is critical to recall the intention behind the work in the first place—which is to advance progress for communities being left behind.

The long-established practice of “centering” communities can help us ground again the intention behind equity work. When an organization’s core constituents are prioritized and centered in its programming, resources, and decision-making, concepts like equity and inclusion are expressed through action and impact. That is, they become part of routine choices instead of statements. Solutions and approaches can be asset-based rather than deficit-based. It reframes community members from being “beneficiaries” to stakeholders with their own values, culture, voice, and agency.

“Centering” is not new—James Charlton’s Nothing About Us Without Us: Disability Oppression and Empowerment made the case in 2000—but it can be hard to implement in practice. As Tulaine Montgomery wrote, proximity to community “may be the most powerful untapped force for change we have,” yet philanthropy has too often looked at communities through a paternalistic lens. More recently, Lori Bartczak and Sandra Moore observed that while many nonprofit organizations understand solutions work better when affected people shape them, “when it comes to including that voice…the work often stalls before it starts.”

For an organization looking to “center” the community, the starting point is often hiding in plain sight: the words the organization uses to describe itself. Do the organization’s core statements, such as its mission, vision, and values, reflect language and lenses of external professionals and/or funders – or the language of the community it serves? A mission statement is more than a communication device. It signals whose knowledge counts, whose aspirations are centered, and who the organization ultimately answers to. Can anyone in the community read it and say, “That’s us”?

Two Feathers Native American Family Services offers one example of what this shift can look like in practice. Public Equity Group was honored to collaborate with Two Feathers between January and December 2023 as part of its strategic evolution.

Two Feathers Native American Family Services

Two Feathers Native American Family Services was established in 1998 to respond to the acute mental health needs of Native Americans in low-income and geographically isolated coastal and mountain communities in rural Humboldt County, CA. Overall, Humboldt County is one of just two California counties with the highest proportion of residents reporting four or more Adverse Childhood Experiences (ACEs). With respect to Humboldt County Native youth in particular, 50 percent of youth experience struggles with substance abuse and 60 percent report some degree of involvement with special or alternative education schools, foster care, mental health systems, and/or justice systems.

“It took 150 years to colonize our people, it’s going to take that much time to heal.”

With the appointment of Virgil Moorehead Jr. (Yurok/Tolowa and member of the Big Lagoon Rancheria), as Two Feathers’ director of behavioral health in 2017, and later, its executive director, Two Feathers began investing in increasingly robust clinical programming, growing the organization’s ranks of formally trained clinical staff, and contributing to the organization’s reputation as a highly effective, culturally affirming mental health and wellness program. Under Moorehead, who holds a doctorate in Psychology from the Wright Institute and completed his post-doctoral fellowship at Stanford University, the organization  expanded from a small clinical provider to a multi-site organization partnering with all local tribes and 14 school districts, providing clinical therapy to more than 800 unique youth over five years.

As a result of its successful investments in robust, culturally competent clinical services, “Two Feathers has become [regarded as] the premier Native youth mental health program in California,” noted a leading California mental health expert, a distinction recognized most recently by the 2026 James Irvine Leadership Award.

Per one Two Feathers’ community partner we spoke with during our consulting work, “The vision is that you break these intergenerational cycles of substance abuse, domestic violence, social determinants of health, foster care. You start with some kids, and [help] them have a different experience, opportunities, and environment. And perhaps their children won’t experience the same. It’s a long-term life process…It took 150 years to colonize our people, it’s going to take that much time to heal.” 

Alongside its clinical programs, around the year 2018, Two Feathers also began offering increasingly intensive cultural programs, especially during summer months, to reinforce connection, identity, and belonging as core components of Native youth mental health. Two Feathers, for example, played a leading role in expanding youth participation in the Stick Game, “an inter-Tribal competition played regionally on Tribal Lands,” and the Flower Dance, “a young woman’s coming-of-age ceremony,” according to the California Reducing Disparities Project.

During an interview with Two Feathers program staff, one program participant reflected: “Culture is important to me…it’s made me more mature, and it’s helped me with a lot of things in life and will help me in the future. It’s important for more youth to grow up with their culture; they can carry on that knowledge to future generations…. Culture can help people in our struggling communities.”

Although Two Feathers’ cultural programs were highly praised and deeply valued by participants and community members, they ebbed and flowed over the course of a given year, in part because of limited resources and staff capacity. In the beginning, the connections between Two Feathers’ clinical and cultural programs were unclear to many within the organization and in the community. While participants were referred from the clinical program to cultural programs and vice versa, the two programs felt siloed to participants, staff, and partners—related and very important, yet somewhat separate, efforts.

To address these challenges, in 2022 Two Feathers launched a new strategy that clarified the central role of community, culture, and lived experiences in its approach to mental health and wellbeing. The organization reframed its work beyond crisis response, articulating a holistic model that integrates clinical care, cultural programming, youth leadership, and pathways to economic stability as mutually reinforcing supports for long-term healing.

“We have gone from crisis intervention to approaching mental health more holistically.”

As part of this shift, Two Feathers updated its formerly “deficit-based” mission (“to reduce unnecessary suffering among Native American Children and Families living in Humboldt County”) to an asset-based one that more clearly reflects the communities’ strengths, values, and aspirations: “To empower Native American youth and their families to achieve their full potential by offering culturally affirming mental health and wellness programs in Humboldt County.” This view is paired with a long-term vision that reflects a holistic and intergenerational worldview: “Two Feathers envisions a world filled with love and in balance within ourselves and with all of creation for generations to come.”

Cultural practice, community knowledge and youth experience are no longer supplements to clinical practice. They are now part of the core model.

Two Feathers’ approach also celebrates “indigenous giftedness” and “the importance of understanding the good life, the human way—in Hupa Language K’winya’nya:n-ma’awhiniw—to live in balance and harmony with the world by having honor and respect for community members, the environment, self, ancestors, and creation” (per a 2025 report to the James Irvine Foundation).

Two Feathers also developed a theory of change that more clearly equalizes and integrates clinical care and cultural/human development programming. Within its human development programs, Two Feathers has expanded programs promoting mentorship and job training, as well as programs to address bullying and self-harm in schools (including programming with a strong LGBTQ+/2Spirit focus), increasing youth self-efficacy through cultural teachings that emphasize kindness.

Moorehead noted, “We have gone from crisis intervention to approaching mental health more holistically. We give students options. If a student [is struggling], we ask: Do you want a clinician or cultural program support? We get after the same issues in a more creative way.”

The Youth Ambassador (Leadership Development and Job Training) Program, for example, provides youth ages 15 to 21 the opportunity to develop leadership and advocacy abilities while deepening their connection to others, community, and culture. Activities include peer advising, employment preparation and support, certifications (first aid, food safety), conflict resolution, landscaping and gardening, event planning, youth activities, cultural education, team building, public speaking, and problem solving.

Evaluation data suggest that program participation across Two Feathers’ clinical and human development programs is growing—and that participants are achieving notable gains. In 2018, Two Feathers served 25 youth, but by 2024, Two Feathers had received 247 new referrals, served 289 youth in individual counseling, employed 88 youth through leadership and workforce programs, and engaged 476 community members in cultural activities. Youth participating in leadership development programs reported gains in goal setting, school and workplace engagement; gains in substance abuse prevention knowledge; and reductions in substance use. In communities where mental health crises are endemic, 57 percent of participants reported no mental health challenges in the prior 30 days; 43 percent of leadership and workforce program participants became employed, and 36 percent enrolled in college or trade school (in communities with high baseline rates of unemployment and college enrollment).

As California undertakes a multi-billion-dollar overhaul of its youth mental health system to better serve the 284,000 California children dealing with major depression, the need for effective, culturally grounded models has never been greater. In California, 1 in 5 adolescents has a diagnosed mental or behavioral health condition, and Indigenous youth are at greater risk, statistically. Two Feathers is poised to launch two best practice, holistic wellness centers for youth, and is well positioned to inform statewide conversations about culturally grounded, community-based mental health models.

As Moorehead noted, “Staff members have remarked that it’s powerful for a Native organization to say ‘Hey—we don’t have to follow. We can be national leaders in mental health; we can be creative, have better outcomes, better systems. We can be a model program not just for Native youth, but for all youth and their communities.’”

Putting Community at the Center

The journey that Two Feathers took shows how an organization can clarify its purpose by centering community in its mission and work. Revisiting an organization’s focus and strategies can be more than an exercise in language. It is a way to decide whose needs and experiences shape an institution’s direction and, ultimately, whether its work makes a difference. The organization’s experience shows how clarifying who is at the center can reshape programs, strengthen alignment with community needs, and shift outcomes over time.

The real test is straightforward: How well does the mission center the community it serves? Can a community member quote it with a smile? Do the programs address a deficit from the outside in, or does the organization work from within, helping the community fulfill its own aspirations?

Two Feathers’ experience suggests that centering community is not a communications exercise. It is a discipline that cuts across governance, strategy, management, and resource allocation. Centering community means community values and knowledge reshape programs, redirect resources, and ultimately drive decisions.

Welcome back to NPQ’s fundraising advice column, Ask Rhea. Rhea Wong is a fundraising expert and professional coach, exuberant author of Get That Money, Honey!, host of the Nonprofit Lowdown podcast, and an unfailingly encouraging voice in a sometimes-bleak landscape. Rhea wants you to succeed, and she’s here to answer your questions.

In today’s issue, Rhea covers how to keep above water in the priorities pool when you find yourself slipping underwater.

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Dear Rhea,

I’m the development director at a $4.5M human services organization. For Q4, we start an early giving window that opens November first and runs into December until a week before GivingTuesday. We run a year-end appeal, mail and email. DAF (donor-advised funds) Day. And a peer-to-peer campaign our board chair saw somewhere and is excited about.

Every one of these has a deadline, a platform, and at least one person waiting on me for something. I am already behind and its only September.

Last year I worked myself into the ground through December, we came in slightly under the year before. In January, our board asked me what happened and I didn’t have a good answer.

What do I cut? What do I do first? Is there a version of this where I don’t hate my life by New Year’s?

Sincerely,

Drowning in Colorado

Dear Drowning in Colorado,

I was you. Different budget, same December. By the end of it I was cooked, my team was cooked, and I could not have told you which of the hundred things we did actually brought in money.

You asked what to cut. Wrong question, and I’ll tell you why in a minute. First, the question you should be asking: what is the one thing?

Greg McKeown points out in Essentialism that “priority” entered English in the 1400s as a singular word. It meant the first thing. It stayed singular for five hundred years, and we only started saying “priorities” in the 1900s, as though pluralizing it would let us have several first things at once.

You listed five campaigns. That’s not a strategy. That’s a list, and a list will lose to whatever item is loudest in the second week of October. Because here’s the thing about your five: they’re all urgent and they’re all legitimate. Real deadlines, real people waiting on you. Urgent and important are not the same category, and when you’re underwater you lose the ability to tell them apart.

So, here’s your one thing: land the gifts that move the revenue number.

Look at Your Own Math First

Pull last year’s revenue and sort it by source. At $4.5M, I’d bet money the shape is 90/10—10 percent of your donors holding up 90 percent of your budget. It might be fifteen people. You could fit your entire revenue model in a minivan.

Now pull last year’s Q4 calendar and count the hours. Sort them by what they served.

“You spent your best eight weeks on the wrong 10 percent of the revenue.”

The lists won’t match. They rarely do. The giving day, GivingTuesday, DAF Day, the peer-to-peer thing—together they eat your season and return a rounding error, while the 15 people who actually fund your organization get a mail merge and an auto-receipt that says, “Dear Friend.”

That’s your answer about January. Nothing went wrong last year. You spent your best eight weeks on the wrong 10 percent of the revenue.

Now, About Prioritizing…

I’m not going to tell you to kill the campaigns, and not because I’m squeamish. You have a board chair emotionally invested in peer-to-peer and a comms person who’s already built the GivingTuesday assets. That fight costs you political capital you need somewhere else.

Instead, stop treating them as things you do, and start treating them as things that run. Set them up, hand what you can to your comms lead and your half-person and let them be B-minus. A B-minus giving day plus a booked calendar of major gift conversations beats an A-plus giving day and an empty one. It isn’t close.

The campaigns come with dates attached, and things with dates attached win by default. Your fifteen people have no dates. Nothing on your calendar is ever going to remind you to call the woman who gave you $50,000 last March.

So, remind yourself. Write down the names. Tape the list somewhere you’ll be looking in November.

Three Hours in September

If you only had three hours in September to make the rest of the year easier, here is how you should spend it.

Sort the portfolio (two hours). One sitting, top 50 donors, on your calendar before September 30. Three buckets: ask this year, cultivate for next year, park. The cultivate bucket is where hope goes to hide—if everybody’s being cultivated, nobody’s being asked.

“A B-minus giving day plus a booked calendar of major gift conversations beats an A-plus giving day and an empty one. It isn’t close.”

While you’re in there, pull your DAF donors out. December 31 means nothing to them; they took the deduction when they funded the account, possibly years ago. Look at when their grants actually land. The ones who grant in Q4 stay in the December sequence. Everybody else moves to January and February, and that’s an upgrade, not a demotion. Your calendar is open, their inbox is quiet, and the money is already sitting in an account whose only job in this world is to be given away.

Read the signals (one hour). This is the step everyone skips, and it’s why the calls go nowhere. A big past gift tells you someone could give again. It tells you nothing about whether they want to talk to you right now. Sort by capacity alone and you’ll call 20 people and sit in the silence. Crickets.

The signals are already in your database, unloved. Someone who gave three times this year instead of once. Someone who showed up to an event after four years of declining. Someone who opens every email you send, including the ones you were embarrassed by. Someone whose gift arrived unprompted and off cycle in April. Behavior over amounts. That’s the whole hour.

Then count one number.

Solicitation conversations should be on your calendar by November 1, with donors who’ve given you a signal. Not touches. Not coffees. A date, confirmed by the donor, where you intend to ask for a specific amount.

November 1 is already circled on your calendar—it’s when early giving opens. Use the date twice. That morning, before you look at a single platform dashboard, count your booked conversations. That number tells you what kind of December you’re about to have, and you’ll still have five weeks to do something about it.

Target: double your number of conversations from last year. If you booked four, book eight. Not 15, not 25, not a number off a conference slide about best-in-class shops. Eight is achievable by a person with your actual calendar and your actual one-and-a-half staff.

You make those asks. That’s the job and it doesn’t delegate. What your board can do—including your peer-to-peer enthusiast, who now has something better to be excited about—is open doors. The introduction, the “you should meet her,” the call that warms a cold name. Get them working it in September so that when you call in October, you’re not the first person who’s mentioned you.

Anyone can count this number, including your board chair. Nobody can fudge it. The meeting is booked or it isn’t. If it’s not on the scorecard, it didn’t happen.

What January Could Look Like

Next January, when they ask you what happened, you want to hand them a list of names with amounts asked and amounts received. That’s a fundraising season. An open-rate report with a total is a marketing season, and only one of those compounds.

Q4 is the Super Bowl of fundraising. Everybody says so, and everybody means it as a compliment. But nobody ever got good at football in February. The Super Bowl settles a season that was already decided in the months nobody was watching. You show up in February to find out what you built.

You’re not behind, Drowning. You’re in September with three hours to spend and 15 names that matter.

Water the flowers. Not the weeds.

Keep afloat,

Rhea

You can find more insights and resources from Rhea at rheawong.com.

In Defense of Civil Society, a column from the staff at Protect Democracy, provides timely, research-driven analysis on why protecting American democracy requires protecting civil society and how nonprofits can navigate this moment, stand in solidarity, and continue our mission-oriented work.

In recent months, Americans have taken to the streets in record numbers to protest and dissent. Broad swaths of our communities—everyday people—gather at protests big and small across the country to object to the Trump administration’s immigration enforcement tactics or to express general opposition to its policies. The administration has attempted to suppress these powerful protests in various ways, including through criminal prosecutions of peaceful protesters.

This past June, 15 people in Minneapolis were federally indicted for allegedly participating in a conspiracy to prevent immigration agents from discharging their duties. No injuries to law enforcement were charged, and there are scant specific allegations that the defendants engaged in acts of violence or force, yet they face sentences of up to five years in federal prison.

The Minneapolis prosecution comes on the heels of similar conspiracy indictments directed at protesters in Los Angeles, Spokane, and Chicago. Taken together, these actions make clear that the Trump administration is intent on prosecuting protesters and critics as “conspirators” for organizing together in opposition. The goal is to instill fear of guilt by association and to chill participation in collective action—to make it seem like participating in a Signal chat or showing up at a demonstration could lead to criminal investigation.

Rather than backing away from nonviolent people, groups, or organizations targeted by prosecutions and investigations, nonprofits must continue to embrace them, both practically and rhetorically.

The Minneapolis indictment emerged from a campaign of extensive, targeted surveillance of groups opposed to the surge in immigration enforcement in Minneapolis. That campaign was initiated pursuant to  the 2025 White House directive known as NSPM-7. In early September 2026, the defendants filed evidence in court showing the breadth of that investigation: Undercover federal agents attended organizing meetings at churches, libraries, union halls, schools, and restaurants. They used secret subpoenas to obtain years of financial records of national organizations that were not even linked to any alleged wrongdoing. Prosecutors ultimately showed the grand jury a slide asserting that 18 groups, including the AFL-CIO, were part of the conspiracy. (Protect Democracy and our partners filed an amicus brief in the case, situating this indictment in the administration’s broader campaign to retaliate against its political opponents.)

In our democracy, US civil society plays a critical role in protecting civic space for robust debate and opposition to government policies. Understanding why these conspiracy prosecutions are dangerous—and being prepared to respond—is critical to that mission. Rather than backing away from nonviolent people, groups, or organizations targeted by prosecutions and investigations, nonprofits must continue to embrace them, both practically and rhetorically. The goal is to reassure individuals and organizations that they are safe in continuing their work—which, in turn, strengthens civil society’s collective power in the face of these attempts to suppress it.

Don’t Take These Indictments at Face Value

Why should we be skeptical of these conspiracy prosecutions? After all, each indictment describes at least some actions that sound like they could be illegal—protesters talking, for example, about disrupting ICE enforcement activities, including some individuals offering to block ICE activities with their bodies or vehicles. But we shouldn’t take any of these accusations at face value—in Minneapolis or anywhere else.

To start, each time the government announces such a prosecution with much fanfare (which often includes a major press conference), it’s worth remembering the story may not be what it seems. Unfortunately, it has become clear that this Department of Justice often lies about basic facts. More than 500 people have been charged with assaulting immigration agents over the past year, and The New York Times found that in almost half of those cases, the charges were later dismissed, withdrawn, or the defendants were acquitted. Many others are ongoing. In dozens of these cases, court records and video footage show that it was federal agents, not defendants, who initiated physical confrontation—shoving, tackling, or using pepper spray—and many defendants successfully argued that what they’d been accused of was actually self-defense. Prosecutions of protesters have also been marred by government misconduct. Judges have repeatedly rebuked prosecutors and immigration agents for misrepresenting facts and withholding evidence, and two judges found that agents deliberately destroyed evidence—in one case, directing a defendant to delete photos from his phone. In the Broadview 6 case in Chicago, the government dismissed the case after defendants exposed its misconduct before the grand jury. Overall, The New York Times analysis found more than 30 other instances of government misconduct in these cases, including destroying evidence and making false or exaggerated claims.

Second, consider that the illegal acts charged as federal conspiracies are crimes that typically would be charged under state law, often as misdemeanors, if not for the Trump administration’s interest in suppressing the defendants’ political message. Is blocking streets by linking arms unlawful? Perhaps under state or local law. But it’s the kind of nonviolent civil disobedience that civil rights leaders taught about. Is it a federal conspiracy or related to domestic terrorism? No. Yet that is how it is being investigated and charged.

Moreover, using conspiracy charges allows the government to frame the defendants’ speech as part of a criminal enterprise, and thereby criminalize what might otherwise be protected First Amendment speech. Most of those in the alleged “conspiracies” are not accused of any violence. In Minneapolis, the government indicted several people for allegedly participating in Signal chats, meetings, and discussions about actions, without alleging they interacted with law enforcement at all. The move to overcharge and federalize these prosecutions is extremely dangerous to the free exchange of ideas vital to democracy—as evidenced by the fact that federal prosecutors have resigned rather than participate in these cases.

These criminal indictments are part of the administration’s plan to divide and silence the opposition at a time when solidarity is more important than ever. As we enter the final months before midterm elections, the administration’s plan to disrupt the elections and deny the results if its preferred candidates don’t prevail is on obvious display. By prosecuting Americans who participate in protest and dissent now, the White House hopes to splinter the opposition and make civil society hesitant to mobilize, particularly in response to election interference by the administration.

Remember Dissent Is Patriotic

These conspiracy prosecutions aim to paint dissent as violent and dangerous. Our job as civil society leaders is to flip this script.

The protest movements of the last several years remain almost without exception an organic groundswell of nonviolent community organizing. Americans have effectively organized to coordinate community responses to attacks on civil rights. In fact, it is the very effectiveness of these protests—which forced the end of immigration enforcement surges in Chicago and Minneapolis—that makes Trump’s DOJ so determined to criminalize and chill them.

By prosecuting Americans who participate in protest and dissent now, the White House hopes to splinter the opposition and make civil society hesitant to mobilize, particularly in response to election interference by the administration.

Instead of letting the administration push people to fear and silence, we must continue to affirm that dissent is patriotic—even heroic. Assertive public messaging on these points, along with unwavering solidarity among organizations, is the best way to protect our own organizations and to strengthen civil society as a whole.

This movement is part of a proud American tradition of protest and civil disobedience. From the Boston Tea Party in the 18th century through the women’s suffrage movement and the civil rights movement in the 19th and 20th centuries, Americans have defied government policies that they believe violate their civil rights and civil liberties. Protest is how Americans make clear that they need something more or different from the government—especially when they feel their voices are not being heard in the halls of power.

If the administration succeeds in painting protesters as a fringe group of extremists, that justifies further suppression of dissent and erosion of the free-speech rights that Americans still hold so dear. The Trump administration wants to usher in a dark future where protest really is lonely and risky—which it currently is not.

Get Smart About Messaging

Civil society organizations and leaders can and must speak out forcefully in response to the prosecution of dissent, emphasizing that what is happening here is ideological targeting rather than neutral enforcement of the law. Communications should make clear that peaceful protest and organizing are separate from the very small number of fringe cases of violence, resisting the attempt to conflate the two via conspiracy indictments.

Centering values and democratic principles—like free expression, listening even when we disagree, and organizing with our neighbors to advocate for what we believe—is important with every audience. For aligned audiences, such as volunteers and supporters known to agree with protesters, messaging can go further, framing protest and organizing as patriotic and historically effective. Grounding communications in these broad principles will make them more persuasive than discussing the legal details of what makes speech protected by the First Amendment.

It also generally makes sense for civil society leaders to avoid discussing the factual and legal details of specific prosecutions. Any remarks of that kind should come from attorneys or others close to the prosecutions. However, that does not mean one should avoid responding to particular prosecutions, including at the moment of an indictment, when the DOJ seeks to capture the narrative.

Make sure not to assume that indicted protesters have in fact engaged in violence. It is imperative to condemn violence while remaining clear that (a) facts evolve, (b) the federal government frequently lies, and (c) most of those in alleged “conspiracies” are not accused of any violence. Example messages include:

• We don’t know all the facts here, but what we do know is that lately, the Department of Justice’s version of the story has frequently fallen apart when examined by judges and juries.
• These prosecutions are meant to make us think protesters are terrorists and thugs. But the truth is that the overwhelming majority of those protesting this government are neighbors getting together to raise their voices and protect each other. This is not some fringe movement—it involves Americans from all over the country and from all walks of life.
• Protesters often express their views while breaking laws (like entering spaces where they are not legally allowed, or blocking traffic) to draw attention to those views. This kind of civil disobedience—linking arms, blocking an ICE vehicle—is not the same as violence, and treating these actions like “domestic terrorism” is a form of government censorship, targeting disfavored political viewpoints for prosecution.

Practice Solidarity Safely

The guilt-by-association strategy reflected in these conspiracy indictments is an attempt to isolate targets and divide the administration’s political opposition. Reemphasizing solidarity is therefore the key to resisting.

One beautiful demonstration of this kind of solidarity came in response to revelations about the breadth of the NSPM-7 investigation in Minneapolis. A large coalition of Minneapolis-area organizations signed onto a coalition statement that touches on many of the talking points described above. It closes with this powerful statement: “Minnesotans have already proven we won’t cave to bullies. We know the power we have when we organize and act together, and we’ll continue using that power to defend our neighbors and our freedoms.”

How does an organization work both to keep its own organization safe and to reassure others that they can safely continue their work? Organizations can practice smart solidarity in several ways:

1. Understand your organization’s risk tolerance early on. Organizations can benefit from advanced discussions about what they are prepared to do and say if a coalition partner, a grantee, or their own staff comes under investigation for protest activity. That means working through concrete scenario-planning (ideally with the help of legal counsel). It also means identifying which types of solidarity your organization wants to engage in publicly or privately: sign-on letters, public statements of support that uplift core messaging principles, behind-the-scenes coalition-building, etc.
2. Begin conversations with your staff, board members, and funders now. It’s important to emphasize the administration’s intention behind these excessive indictments and investigations: to conflate ordinary civic participation with membership in a violent criminal enterprise, and to get institutions to withdraw from each other before anyone has been convicted of anything. Discussing the reasons behind the indictments helps ensure no one is reacting out of fear. Moreover, how philanthropy responds to an indictment is particularly important. If filing charges alone is enough to dry up funding and deplete organizational resources, then the administration will have unlocked a straightforward way to kneecap civil society opposition. The outpouring of solidarity that has followed the decision by some donor-advised fund sponsors to cut off Southern Poverty Law Center because of its prosecution provides an inspiring model and a rebuke to those decisions.
3. Be deliberate about operational security within and outside your organization. Strong operational security allows organizations to continue to work together with the right safeguards in place. It is particularly important in light of the Minnesota indictments—where federal agents spied on in-person meetings and Signal chats. Coalitions can minimize these risks by implementing good safety and security protocols—particularly on communications channels like Signal or Slack. These include consistently vetting users in your group chat (such as confirming they are who they say they are), ensuring message auto-deletion, and having a plan if you discover your chat has been infiltrated. (Protect Democracy’s guide on Operational Security for Coalitions offers more information on best practices.)

Good Trouble, Necessary Trouble

As the administration ratchets up its crackdown on those who engage in peaceful protest and dissent, civil society must respond in equal measure. Now is not the time to back away or withdraw. US civil society plays a critical role in protecting civic space for robust debate and opposition to government policies.

So, be skeptical of the government’s version of events—and remember that the goal of these criminal prosecutions is to create the kind of fear that fractures coalitions and destroys movements. Find a way to stay grounded in shared values. And above all, get loud—that’s the thing authoritarians fear most. As John Lewis once said, “Get in good trouble, necessary trouble, and help redeem the soul of America.”

I recently spoke with a major gift fundraiser who had quit her job with a large health care facility. Why? She couldn’t stand the focus on metrics as the reference point against which her work was evaluated. Everything was about numbers, and this prevented her from focusing on truly building relationships with the donors to whom she was assigned.

I felt sad—for her, for the organization that could have used her savvy and empathetic approach to fundraising, and for the would-be donors who might miss an opportunity to make gifts that brought them true meaning and joy.

While numbers and measurements have their place, there is an administrative function to them. They are about order, not emotion. By contrast, the best fundraising is emotional. When fundraisers don’t have the time to actively make donors feel excited and inspired by the work they do, donors will take their money and give it to another organization that does.

Today, by shifting the sector’s resources and attention to data and metrics, we are inadvertently creating fundraising cultures that make it harder for people to do the very thing philanthropy requires most: build genuine human relationships. We increasingly expect fundraisers to produce revenue quickly, measure their worth through quotas and activity metrics, and continually prove their value through numbers.

Then we wonder why donors aren’t giving more. The issue is in large part, I would argue, that fundraising isn’t fundamentally a transaction. It’s a relationship. And relationships require something that our increasingly metrics-driven culture is making harder and harder to find: time.

The Crisis of Fundraiser Retention

Today, by shifting the sector’s resources and attention to data and metrics, we are inadvertently creating fundraising cultures that make it harder for people to do the very thing philanthropy requires most: build genuine human relationships.A recent Stanford Social Innovation Review article by Mark Dobosz calls attention to a crisis of fundraiser retention fueled by cultures that value transactions and unrealistic quotas over transformative, long-term relationship-building. He describes it as “the most consequential threat to the long-term health of the philanthropic sector that I’ve witnessed in four decades of this work.” He notes that senior fundraisers—“the relationship architects, legacy builders, and mission storytellers who have spent careers learning the art of transformational giving”—are retiring.

In my own experience, and from what many development and major gift directors tell me, many others are simply leaving organizations where they no longer have the time, autonomy, or support to do the work they know how to do.

For decades, I’ve been saying some version of this, as have other seasoned fundraising practitioners and consultants: It’s not just about the money. Yet this idea doesn’t seem to be breaking through to management and boards that treat fundraisers like quota machines.

Major gifts don’t emerge from a series of transactions. They emerge from the building blocks of relationships: trust, curiosity, listening, and a genuine understanding of what matters to another human being.

That’s why fundraiser retention isn’t merely an HR concern, but a sector-wide philanthropic concern. When an experienced fundraiser leaves, the organization loses more than an employee. It loses years of accumulated knowledge about donors, institutional history, and relationships that may have taken years to develop. This becomes even more consequential as organizations turn to AI to automate more donor communications and touchpoints. While AI might appear to allow organizations to work more efficiently, we must not make the mistake of confusing efficiency with effectiveness. It is imperative that we remember that people give to people. And, if we’re not careful, we may automate ourselves right out of the relationships that make transformative philanthropy possible.

The Cost of Getting Fundraising Wrong

As I see it, the sector has been treating people—both fundraisers and donors—poorly for years. When gifts are viewed as more important than givers, meaning, joy, and belonging—the psychological fuel propelling philanthropy—get lost in translation. While a perspective that critiques “donor-centered fundraising” as pandering to elites poses some important structural questions for the sector, it may not capture the full picture.

I believe that taking the time to get to know donors, so one can orient fundraising on what they care about, can sometimes be the key to good fundraising. As the late Simone Joyeaux said in a 2016 NPQ article, donor-centered fundraising is “another way of saying ‘building trust.’”

And trust takes time. This is the fundamental mismatch we’re facing: Fundraisers are often expected to produce results on timelines that bear little resemblance to the time required to build the relationships that produce transformational philanthropy.

Over a decade ago, Penelope Burk highlighted the problem of high fundraiser turnover—defined as an average tenure of just 16 to 18 months—in her book Donor-Centered Leadership. A structural mismatch occurs here. A fundraiser may have less than two years in a position, while a major donor relationship may take considerably longer to develop. Burk’s research showed donors are willing to give more, but unleashing their philanthropy at a whole new level depends in significant part on their relationship with the organization’s fundraisers. In other words, without a relationship there is no transformative gift.

The financial consequences are substantial. CapDev, specialists in relationship philanthropy, note it costs nonprofits, on average, 90 percent to 200 percent of a fundraiser’s annual salary in direct and indirect expenses to replace them.

But the true institutional cost can be far greater for high-level development directors and major-gift officers when you factor in stalled campaigns, lost institutional knowledge, and donor relationships that must be rebuilt. As CapDev puts it: “First, fundraising runs on relationships. Donors give to people they trust. When the person who built that trust leaves, the relationship doesn’t automatically transfer to the next hire, however qualified. It has to be rebuilt, which takes six to eighteen months, depending on the donor’s giving history.” This isn’t merely inconvenient and expensive. It undermines the very mechanism through which transformational philanthropy happens.

It’s not about high volume cold calls. It’s about knowing when people actually want to talk about giving—and that’s why we need to stop treating fundraiser turnover as an inevitable cost of doing business. Your organization’s transactional culture may be harming it from the inside out.

Culture Eats Strategy for Breakfast

So, what can organizations do to turn the tide? You’ve likely heard the famous quote, often misattributed to business guru Peter Drucker: “Culture eats strategy for breakfast.” While Drucker didn’t actually say those words, the sentiment aligns with his teachings about organizational behavior. Even the most brilliant strategy will fail if an organization’s culture—its daily habits, expectations and attitudes—doesn’t support it.

That’s precisely what’s happening in fundraising. Quota-based strategies are no match for relentless, taskmaster cultures. They yield begrudging gifts, orchestrated by equally begrudging fundraisers and donors.

That’s no way to build a sustainable pipeline of philanthropy. Major gift fundraisers need time to listen, to build trust, to understand what matters to donors, and to help them discover what they want their philanthropy to accomplish. Those relationships may ultimately result in generous, heartfelt, fulfilling philanthropy. But the gift is the outcome of the relationship, not the relationship’s purpose.

Drucker wrote extensively about management as a human endeavor, emphasizing the importance of helping people grow and develop as needs and opportunities change. So, if you want to foster fundraiser and donor growth, start there. Build an organizational culture grounded in values, ethos, and practices that make a real impact—both in the life of the organization and in the life of the donor.

Strategy still matters. Goals still matter. Metrics still matter. But they must serve the culture, not the other way around.

Management Is About Human Beings

A nonprofit is a human and social organization. Its mission, realized by people, exists to serve people.

If we want to retain the people who know how to build transformational philanthropy, we need to stop treating talent retention as an HR initiative and start treating it as a fundraising strategy.

Strategy and metrics matter, too. But when strategy is driven by a quick timeframe rather than a thoughtful sequence of personalized touchpoints—each one building upon the last until the relationship reaches its natural crescendo—philanthropy gets short-circuited, as does the donor’s experience and sense of fulfillment about the work. The giver’s high becomes the giver’s “meh.” And when donors don’t feel known, trusted, or empowered, they move on. They move toward organizations that make them feel smart, empowered, and joyful about their giving, organizations that take the time to discover their intrinsic motivations rather than imposing short-term and organization-centric agendas.

Fundraisers move on, too. Some retire. Others jump ship to organizations where they hope to find a culture more welcoming of the time, patience, and relationship-building required to develop game-changing gifts. And so, the cycle continues: Transactional culture → frustrated fundraisers → broken relationships → disappointed donors → lost philanthropy.

Fundraising Needs a Sea Change

If we want to retain the people who know how to build transformational philanthropy, we need to stop treating talent retention as an HR initiative and start treating it as a fundraising strategy. That means making talent development a strategic imperative. As Drucker put it: “People decisions are the ultimate—perhaps the only—control of an organization.”

So, what might that look like?

1. Create purposeful roles for seasoned practitioners.

Don’t assume retirement means expertise has to disappear. Create advisory, mentoring, or part-time roles that allow experienced fundraisers to pass along the relational knowledge they’ve accumulated over decades. Think of it as building a memory bank of relational capital before it walks out the door.

2. Make relationship-building an apprenticeship.

Don’t leave new fundraisers to figure it out on their own. Pair emerging practitioners with seasoned professionals who can walk alongside them through real donor cultivation and stewardship. You can teach fundraising techniques, but you learn relationship-building by watching someone who knows how to do it.

3. Conduct a culture audit before you lose another fundraiser.

Ask your current and former fundraisers what’s driving people away. Are your quotas realistic? Are caseloads manageable? Do fundraisers have time to cultivate relationships? Are you investing in their professional development? Do your expectations support the kind of fundraising you say you value? And if you’re not sure, ask fundraisers you respect at other organizations what they think.

4. Reimagine the fundraiser as a philanthropy facilitator.

A philanthropy facilitator doesn’t simply do fundraising for an organization. They work with donors, standing by their side as they explore what they care about and how they want to make a difference. In so doing, they accomplish something monumental. The goal isn’t simply to secure the organization’s desired gift. It’s to help a donor write their own philanthropic story. When we do that well, everyone benefits: the donor, the fundraiser, and the organization.

Art + Science

In a recent article for NPQ, Benjamin Alfaro wrote about what distinguishes good development work from great development work. What came as no surprise to me was his description of a synergistic partnership between art and science. Unfortunately, too often the art part—the relational intelligence of creatively reading a room and making joyful, unexpected connections between donors and causes—gets short shrift. The interpretive work, or what sociologist Arlie Hochschild describes as “emotional labor,” gets undervalued in a sea of metrics, spreadsheets, and deadlines. But if we want to retain both donors and the seasoned fundraisers who know how to make them want to stick with us, we need to value—and reward—both science and art.

If you’re fortunate enough to have a fundraiser who knows how to build genuine relationships, don’t get in their way.

This calls for a cultural reframing. A recent essay from Stanford Social Innovation Review by organizational consultant James Lopata traces the nonprofit sector’s current operating logic back to Henry Ford’s 1913 assembly line. Production increased, but workers didn’t thrive in the short-sighted, inhumane conditions. As Robert Gass, author of Transforming Organizations: A Guide to Creating Effective Social Change Organizations, writes: “At their worst, institutions can frustrate our aspirations, stultify our creativity, drain our energy, and even numb our spirits.”

Successful philanthropic cultures require “breathing room,” enabling fundraisers to develop the rhythms and agency required for fruitful outcomes. This means understanding good development work is about givers, not gifts. And good practice means retiring notions of begging, coercing, and even persuading. It’s about inviting people in—opening a door to opportunity, purpose, and joy.

If you’re fortunate enough to have a fundraiser who knows how to build genuine relationships, don’t get in their way. Give them the time to listen, the space to think, the support to grow, and the freedom to build relationships that may not pay off this quarter but could transform a donor’s life—and your organization—for decades.

Ultimately, your organization’s greatest fundraising tool isn’t its database, its CRM, its campaign strategy, or even its case for support. It’s the people who know how to turn relationships into philanthropy. And if we keep driving those people away, we shouldn’t be surprised when philanthropy goes with them.

What if the solution to our deeply polarized political life was more imagination, not less conflict? Centering so much of our public discourse on division—whether lamenting how far apart we stand or countering that we still have a lot in common—does not serve to heal those divides and may even reinforce fears that our sense of common purpose is beyond repair. Polarization itself is less a problem to solve but a symptom of deeper social and political change, and we address it by building capacity to work through disagreement rather than stifling it.

Across the country, organizations are already taking a different approach. Future Caucus has built a bipartisan network that helps young legislators collaborate more effectively to solve problems for their constituents, while Generation Citizen equips young people to engage with their communities, navigate differing perspectives, and develop solutions to local challenges. Their work shows how to strengthen the institutions and relationships that make collaboration across difference possible.

What these organizations’ experience suggests is that we can still build together by offering ambitious visions that inspire and invite big-tent participation, take a problem-solving approach that identifies common goals and common ground, and provide tools for addressing division without insisting that every difference be bridged. The response to a deeply divided and distrustful public isn’t to lean into further division, and it’s not to ignore our differences. It’s to dream bigger.

Why Not Tackle Polarization Head On?

Polarization is often an unavoidable side effect of social change. Steven Levitsky and Daniel Ziblatt note in their book How Democracies Die, “The process of racial inclusion that began after World War II and culminated in the 1964 Civil Rights Act and 1965 Voting Rights Act would, at long last, fully democratize the United States. But it would also polarize it, posing the greatest challenge to established forms of mutual toleration and forbearance since Reconstruction.”

Nostalgia for past eras of bipartisan harmony overlooks how many US voices were excluded to make that level of agreement possible. It’s both natural and incorrect to want to meet in the middle. Doing so ignores differences in power and the underlying values or goals in conflict. For example, many movements for greater equality are led by groups who’ve been marginalized or excluded and face opposition from elites with established power. As my former colleagues Daniel Kreiss and Shannon McGregor put it in their report, “A Review and Provocation: On Polarization and Platforms,” “polarization [as a framework] does not provide a normative or even conceptual way of distinguishing between White supremacists and racial justice activists, despite their asymmetrical relationship to liberal democracy.”

Finally, solving polarization is a negative goal: one that proposes an absence of conflict. Hope in a positive vision of the possible is a much more powerful motivation. We can acknowledge the harms of polarization (especially in affective forms that erode our ability to collaborate) while also recognizing the need to define a future worth collaborating to build rather than simply exhorting everyone to get along.

Dream Bigger

What kinds of visions can inspire across established divides? One promising vision: a generational shift in our politics. Future Caucus convenes and supports young legislators interested in delivering legislative wins and solving real problems for their communities, which they’ve found are motivating across party lines. Generation Citizen’s target audience is even younger—they provide experiential civics education in high schools that activates students to identify and address key issues in their communities.

Other visions look to both the future and the past. Democracy 2076 facilitates large-scale conversations about what Constitution we will need in 50 years and research on issues that could serve to shift political coalitions, while the League of Women Voters continues to find new purpose in its founding belief in the power of women to create a more perfect democracy. Both these missions invite participation across our many differences.

A compelling vision doesn’t need to be grandiose. As many communities are discovering, uniting to ensure local oversight and quality-of-life protections for new data center projects can be quite practical and immediate, too.

Build Common Ground

Though partisan divides might be the most visible form of polarization in our public life, many intractable differences run through US society. Successful approaches are anchored in some common ground, whether it’s rooted in a specific community and sense of place or a shared identity.

Though partisan divides might be the most visible form of polarization in our public life, many intractable differences run through US society.

The students in Generation Citizen’s curriculum select issues at play in their own communities, anchoring their work in a specific place. When they present their recommendations at Civics Day, they’re sharing them with elected officials and other decision-makers who might not share their assessment but do share membership in that same community. Members of Future Caucus hold two shared identities, both generational (as Millennial or Gen Z) and professional (as legislators). The common challenges and demands of elected office provide a foundation for collaboration.

Place-based approaches are popular—many people care deeply about the communities they call home. Funder collaboratives like the Trust for Civic Life invest in building trust through local collaborations responsive to local needs, while initiatives like the Participatory Budgeting project or FIDE support specific practices that involve local communities in self-governance. Communities of faith also play leadership roles in initiatives that range from Interfaith America’s pluralism work to A More Perfect Democracy’s Jewish Partnership for Democracy to the advocacy of Mormon Women for Ethical Government.

Practice Constructive Disagreement

Building a community across divides is not for the faint of heart. Even if there’s strong alignment on some shared purpose, major differences in values and goals will come up. And when our public discourse is so well-trained in seeking the perfect barb or own, any organization doing this work needs clear norms and habits that support coming to shared understanding rather than declaring a winner.

Future Caucus has built robust infrastructure for collaboration. Their Innovation Lab is one such venue—it deliberately creates a space to promote evidence-based policy development. The Lab hosts a policy library, expert briefings, and a space for lawmakers to connect across party and geography to define data-driven approaches to pressing issues ranging from criminal justice reform to the future of work. Members identified shared priorities for innovative approaches that includes revisiting mandatory minimum sentencing practices, expanding broadband access, and providing universal school meals. While some of these policies are broadly popular across bipartisan lines, others benefited from that data-first approach to building a shared understanding of the problem and how to address it in the law.

Generation Citizen’s project-based approach gives students tools to map their local civic landscape to select relevant issues, conduct research, and propose solutions. Each project begins with drafting a “classroom constitution,” requiring students to define their own frameworks for working together and navigating differences. Issue mapping also invites students to understand existing disagreements and imagine constructive resolutions. As one student participant put it, “I found that the most interesting part about this class project was seeing and observing other people’s views on issues they found important. Not only did I learn more about my peers, but this project also encouraged me to take into account other people’s thoughts.”

Practicing bridging habits doesn’t require a specific project to be effective. We can all practice talking about our opponents with dignity. Politicians who set the tone can disagree better. But it’s even more effective when real wins are at stake, making the effort feel worthwhile, and when trust and common ground are already established.

Don’t Solve for Every Difference

The ultimate goal of a democracy is not consensus; it’s to reach decisions collaboratively, transparently, and fairly. Effective collaborations identify which issues need agreement to move forward and which distract from their goals. Which issues fall where depends entirely on the community and its vision, but finding ways to accept imperfect alignment is critical.

We haven’t completely fulfilled the promise of US pluralism yet, and there’s no perfect balance between patience and complacency as we work toward that goal.

When the students in Generation Citizen’s program complete their curriculum, they present their work at a Civics Day, where decision-makers and other stakeholders engage with the students’ proposals. Connecting students directly to the leaders and systems they’re studying is powerful–93 percent of students complete the project confident that they can form plans to address problems, and 81 percent believe they can make a difference. That presentation does not promise that the audience will implement (or even agree with) the students’ recommendations. The students learn to advocate without a guarantee of change; the real lesson is in claiming their own leadership and agency to speak up even when they aren’t immediately heard. In fact, one Philadelphia student studied gentrification and went on to volunteer with a local nonprofit organization where she now teaches others about eminent domain.

Future Caucus’s members focus on building consensus where evidence, data, and debate matter. Issues where innovation and effectiveness can’t reframe divides? Those fall outside their scope, but culture grounded in empathy ensures caucuses remain welcoming even as important divisions remain addressed.

As I came to understand through my own work with the researchers at the Center for Information, Technology, and Public Life, if calls for greater equality often increase polarization, it’s important to create spaces that can withstand controversy and make space for the slow work of changing minds. We haven’t completely fulfilled the promise of US pluralism yet, and there’s no perfect balance between patience and complacency as we work toward that goal.

Celebrate the Wins

In a moment when the threats to our system of self-governance are urgent, it’s easy to dismiss modest progress and embrace despair.

Future Caucus hosts annual Rising Star awards to celebrate moments where bipartisan efforts brought real change for constituents. They publish case studies of the kinds of policy wins that collaboration makes possible. For example, Future Caucus members in the Arkansas state legislature co-sponsored and led the effort to pass legislation to improve maternal and child health, including expanded Medicaid coverage for pregnant women, improved reimbursements for prenatal care, and funding for doulas and community health workers. At Generation Citizen, Civics Day celebrates the students and their work. Local leaders’ participation underscores the value of student insights and contributions.

The women’s suffrage movement once created banners emblazoned with “A Woman Living Here Has Registered to Vote,” celebrating their enfranchisement. When I worked to design a preview image for a voter registration tool that would appear on social media when anyone shared the link, I first thought to use the tool’s logo. A designer friend fashioned an alternative that resembled an “I voted” badge that said, “I’m a voter!” Guess which one more people wanted to share?

A single voter registration is small. Young people’s recommendations for improving their communities are a bit bigger. A bill that expands health coverage for children in one state is quite large. If you’re tempted to give up on the messy work of democracy, look for the wins still happening—or go make one of your own.

Our nation’s next 250 years won’t be a time of perfect harmony. But even now, these leaders (and many more) show that we can still come together to build what matters, find agreement where we can, and accept where we can’t (at least, not yet).

“Nonprofits and NGOs are adopting (generative) artificial intelligence technologies faster than they’re designing governance and training for their teams.” Thus begins the 2026 State of Nonprofit AI: Adoption and Governance Report.

Researched and penned in partnership by NTEN and The Bridgespan Group, the report sets out to explain “how nonprofit and social sector organizations are adopting and using AI tools and technologies—from generative AI tools to AI-powered features embedded in everyday software.”

But as public perception of AI is increasingly scrutinized—from concerns over doomsday scenarios that arise from a lack of guardrails to the environmental costs of data centers—where does AI factor into the nonprofit sector?

According to information gathered during a survey from late April to mid-June, of the 917 respondents, 98 percent reported using AI in some capacity. And 61 percent use AI in an official capacity, which the report considers “organized pilots (33%), team-wide use (24%), or fully integrated use (4%).” Perhaps surprisingly, only 2 percent of respondents don’t use AI at all.

“…57 percent of nonprofit executives report no dedicated AI budget, 37 percent don’t currently train staff on how to use the AI tools available to them, and 58 percent report that no AI roadmap exists.”

With the documented AI use by respondents, the report’s authors highlight three main trends: interest in AI has outpaced the infrastructure required to support it; staff and executives are experiencing AI adoption very differently; and the sector already agrees on the fix: clearer guidance and real training. The report also provides a framework for nonprofit leaders that can help inform decisions about AI implementation within their organizations.

The Implementation-Governance Gap

When it comes to AI use, implementation is outpacing governance at most organizations. The report offers five categories (AI-related budget, staff training for AI tools, infrastructure such as cloud storage and computing resources, data organization, and staff knowledge of responsible use) that respondents weighed in on. Budget is by far the clearest gap, but infrastructure, strategy, and training all lag too.

According to the report, 57 percent of nonprofit executives report no dedicated AI budget, 37 percent don’t currently train staff on how to use the AI tools available to them, and 58 percent report that no AI roadmap exists. Only 8 percent have one in place. Meanwhile, less than half executives surveyed have written guidance in place for what data can be used with AI tool (40 percent) or how to responsibly use AI (38 percent).

“With formal policy this underdeveloped, a meaningful amount of AI use across the sector—including among executives—falls outside clearly defined guidance by default,” the authors write. This presents a new question: If AI use is widespread but fewer than half have written guidance on how to use it responsibly, what does that say about where the sector’s priorities have landed? 

Executive Decisions, Staff Impact

As for who makes the decisions within nonprofit organizations regarding AI implementation, it is perhaps no surprise that the tendency is for it to happen at the top and trickle down. That results in very different experiences with how AI impacts day-to-day operations.

“AI use has already become a routine part of the workday for most of the nonprofit sector,” the authors write. “45% of respondents report using AI for work at least daily, and another 29% use it regularly, about once a week.”

At a glance, executives tend to turn to AI more readily than staff and are more comfortable relying on it as a tool. In response to how often AI is used in day-to-day work, 50 percent of executives use AI daily or more while only 38 percent of staff do. Executives are less likely to shy away from AI use, with only 3 percent reporting that they never use it, compared to 13 percent of staff. Perhaps more surprising are the respondents who use AI less than once a month (8 percent) or never use it in their day-to-day work (7 percent).

“Staff more often describe adoption as something happening ‘to and around them, driven by external pressures or day-to-day work needs rather than being intentional, collaborative, and planned.’”

The degree of use mirrors the comfort level, with 67 percent of executives reporting that they’re comfortable using AI tools compared to only 55 percent of staff. Meanwhile, staff are nearly twice as likely to report being very uncomfortable (19 percent versus 10 percent).

In terms of the reasons behind decisions to adopt AI, the report indicates that executives tend to offer deliberate strategy around AI use, while staff more often describe adoption as something happening “to and around them, driven by external pressures or day-to-day work needs rather than being intentional, collaborative, and planned.”

In other words, executives typically make decisions and are responsible for AI implementation at their respective organizations (63 percent). One-fourth of staff (25 percent) indicated there was an internal AI council or ethics committee that shaped decision-making around its use.

But there is an outlier here, with only 1 percent reporting a collective or all-staff decision around AI use.

More Guardrails and Ethical Training

To bring it full circle, we have to look back at the implementation-governance gap, which highlights the need for guardrails and ethical training for AI tools. The authors note that 53 percent of all respondents report shadow use—informal, unofficial AI use outside of organizational guidance—and counterintuitively, executives engage in shadow use at a higher rate than staff (57 percent versus 49 percent).

Nonprofits have the opportunity to create ethical AI policies, but that starts at the top and trickles down—in much the same way as decision-making around an organization’s implementation of AI. Once that choice is made, thus begins the Sisyphean struggle to ensure responsible usage of a nascent (and controversial) technology.

As with all new technology implemented within an organization, it doesn’t come without its issues. One of the top concerns across the board for executives (55 percent citing it as a major barrier) and staff is data privacy (56 percent citing it as significant)—and 66 percent of staff cite environmental impact as a major concern, which was the single highest response across any concern category measured for staff. Meanwhile, 47 percent of executives cite the widening gap between populations with and without access to AI-enabled services as their top field-level risk.

Although the concerns around AI outlined by respondents are consistent—data privacy, environmental impact, bias, community trust—reported harm is rare, with only 6 percent of respondents reporting an AI-related incident in the past 12 months.

That said, as the report notes: “This question captures realized harm over the last 12 months, not the sector’s current exposure to risk—harm may be going undetected or undisclosed rather than genuinely not occurring.” This then raises a key issue: That gap may say more about the absence of incident-tracking than the absence of harm itself because its implementation is so new and guidance undercooked. Is the low rate of reported harm evidence that the sector is managing AI responsibly, or is it evidence that most organizations don’t yet have systems in place to know when something has gone wrong?

The Fix for AI Governance 

The picture isn’t entirely bleak within the nonprofit sector’s implementation of AI. There is—and likely always will be—some degree of divide around why to use AI in terms of the ethical and environmental trade-offs, and that might be addressed through either a careful cost-benefit analysis or deliberate inaction.

The report is clear that guidance and actual training are necessary. As it stands now, only 32 percent of staff have received formal AI training—even at well-resourced organizations, nearly 60 percent of staff are untrained. At the same time, the report indicates that 49 percent of executives anticipate AI spending will grow moderately or significantly in 2026. Despite this, AI governance hasn’t kept pace with what’s already been spent. To that end, the authors offer a framework—Bridgespan’s Choosing Your AI Path—as a practical starting point for nonprofit leaders to better understand how to think more strategically about technology.

The question then becomes whether organizations will prioritize it before the gap between adoption and governance widens further. Should the moment be capitalized on and the gap closed, the nonprofit sector has an opportunity to, as Jean Westrick wrote in her article on building AI for the public good, “ensure AI serves the public good, advances equity, and strengthens the nonprofit sector rather than exacerbate existing disparities.”

If the solutions are known, then it is merely a matter committing dollars to guidance and training that makes the implementation of AI feel less abstract and more direct. When that happens, the nonprofit sector stands a better chance at ensuring AI does, in fact, serve the public good.

“This is just the start of the work,” said the lobbyist flatly, as if it was the most obvious thing in the world at the end of an exhausting briefing.

This moment was both a reckoning and the beginning of two people coming together to determine how we could begin building a new type of movement in pursuit of renewable energy in co-governance with local neighborhoods. Here, “we” are Crystal Huang, a longtime community builder, and Mark Miles, a technology innovator in renewable energy.

Under the Biden Administration, it was years of organizing disparate voices from indigenous communities, rural areas, and urban neighborhoods across the country to present a unified argument for what energy democracy could look like. We had a US president who’d made big promises on energy infrastructure, and federal action finally seemed imminent. People who had been organizing in this space for years were energized in a completely new way. But the energy Crystal felt fell flat when the expensive lobbyist Crystal’s coalition had hired to help get the meeting told her she was only at the beginning of a long slog. Just like that, she knew something had to change.

This is what happened when we decided to stop waiting for Washington.

When Reasonable Strategies Stopped Making Sense

Crystal: For years, I had operated on a reasonable assumption: Federal policy is the critical lever for local communities seeking greater control over the energy that fuels their lives and livelihoods. The premise was that, with strong federal rules and sustained funding, communities could gain real control over—and share in the benefits of—the infrastructure that shapes their quality of life. For many years, I led the Energy Democracy Project: a team of passionate, dedicated community leaders and practitioners across the country who shape energy policy from the ground up by organizing in their communities, advancing locally rooted solutions, cultivating relationships with policymakers, and weaving a diverse national movement to democratize energy.

Mark: I was working from a different angle, but with a similarly reasonable vision. For over a decade, I had been developing thermal energy technology focused primarily on a commercial model. It looked like a distributed network supplying cleaner and less expensive heat to businesses with high natural gas costs, with community benefits that were substantial, but limited to factors like job creation and job-training revenue.

Compared to energy options like rooftop solar and household heat pumps, which often require expensive installations for individual buildings, thermal energy networks are designed to serve entire neighborhoods: renters and homeowners, small businesses and schools alike.

When we came together as co-founders, we learned that we’d both been thinking inside frameworks that weren’t big enough for the possibility of what we could accomplish together.

Both of these were smart, reasonable strategies that once made sense. But our first lesson was that when you’re presented with a big opportunity, sometimes smart, reasonable strategies become too small.

The Opportunity We Found

Thermal energy networks are an under-the-radar technology that’s capable of powering entire neighborhoods. Using a shared network of pipes that transfer heat in and out of buildings, thermal energy networks provide heating and cooling to multiple buildings at once with heat pumps. Many networks use geothermal heat, and they can also be designed to leverage creative sources like solar thermal systems or waste heat from sewage systems. Compared to energy options like rooftop solar and household heat pumps, which often require expensive installations for individual buildings, thermal energy networks are designed to serve entire neighborhoods: renters and homeowners, small businesses and schools alike.

Still emerging as an energy option in the United States, thermal energy networks are not generally considered utilities. This means they present an unusual opportunity for communities to have a shot at owning the infrastructure that could heat and cool their homes. Due to these possibilities for community ownership and benefit, thermal energy networks are attractive propositions to local governments and small community organizations like our own, OakTREE Initiative. But the networks are also attractive to private utilities and developers, who are less interested in community ownership than they are in turning a profit.

Another big moment for us came when we realized that thermal energy networks can create benefits for communities even beyond ownership. Through extensive conversations where we shared what we knew from our different fields—community-owned energy infrastructure and technology development breakthroughs—we realized there were opportunities hiding in such networks that could provide communities with some answers to the multiple crises they’re facing.

For example, community members we’ve spoken with have made it clear they’re as concerned with job creation, food security, and affordable energy costs as they are with climate adaptation. So at OakTREE Initiative, a nonprofit organization building block-scale, community-owned, technology-agnostic thermal energy networks in Oakland, California, we’ve designed networks to energize neighborhood blocks with renewable thermal energy and community heat pumps. Energy travels through buried, insulated pipes to the surrounding apartments and homes. Local greenhouses are connected to produce both thermal energy and fresh vegetables for the neighborhood. This design allows residents to monetize excess energy and use the revenue to employ an ecosystem of local workers to deploy, maintain, and operate the infrastructure. The entire ecosystem creates a system of interdependency and community accountability.

What we’ve learned from our years of building OakTREE is that while federal policy will always matter, our current political moment makes local and state-level organizing even more urgent and more effective.

Developing networks like this required us to spend years patiently developing and validating new technology, intensely engaging with community members, and above all, believing in the idea that regular people are capable of being stewards of energy infrastructure, not just consumers of it. Our preliminary 10-year projections include close to 100 permanent jobs, annual abatement of 8,000 tons of CO2, and energy savings of more than $300 per year for roughly 14,440 households. But we think those numbers understate what’s possible when communities become genuine stewards of their own energy future.

“As someone who didn’t wait for infrastructure to catch up to my neighborhood’s needs, I’ve always believed in working collaboratively and building resilience with resources that were readily available,” said Keneda Gibson, a longtime East Oakland resident who’s led mutual aid organizing in her neighborhood, in an interview with NPQ.

Gibson has also been involved with energy democracy work for years. Last year, she helped us organize a local community event to involve Oakland residents in our planning and development. “I’ve seen firsthand how easily communities burn out when they are forced to rely on borrowed equipment, temporary solutions, and goodwill alone,” said Gibson. “OakTREE represents something more enduring. It creates community-owned infrastructure that strengthens the work neighbors are already doing and gives resilience a permanent home. To me, that is the difference between simply surviving crises and building lasting community power.”

Notes for Other Nonprofit Organizers

What we’ve learned from our years of building OakTREE is that while federal policy will always matter, our current political moment makes local and state-level organizing even more urgent and more effective. While the national organizing we did wasn’t at all wasted, it wasn’t sufficient for moving at the speed our communities need. Our ability to pivot quickly when the landscape changes, or when we learn new information about systemic possibilities has been key to continuing our work in rapidly changing times.

As activist and scholar Angela Y. Davis reminds us, “It is in collectivities that we find reservoirs of hope and optimism.” In creating new possibilities for everyday people to engage with their own infrastructure, we create opportunities to organize with ambitious funders to fund a paradigm shift. Here are some of the additional lessons we’ve learned:

Find the people who want the future you see and build with them: Co-governance works when people know what their roles are, can clearly see their impact, and have real dialogue with the people building alongside them.

Invite people into stewardship rather than consumption: Today’s energy system offers communities a very clear role: Pay the bill and take whatever service the utility offers you. There’s an equally clear role for Investor-owned utilities in this system, which is to serve their shareholders. The relationship we’re looking to build is one of mutual accountability. Only when energy producers and community members are accountable to each other can governance be a shared experience, and a vehicle for bringing wealth back into neighborhoods.

New technologies can be shaped to benefit communities, not just extract from them: Communities have rightfully treated new technologies with skepticism when they’re rolled out alongside an exploitative business plan. But when it’s harnessed for community benefit, innovation can open opportunities that weren’t previously possible. Thermal energy networks are a good example: The window to build community-owned infrastructure with them is open right now, before private developers and investor-owned utilities capture the regulatory landscape, but that window is narrowing.

That lobbyist was right about that long-ago congressional briefing being only the start of the work. She just didn’t know which work she meant.

As the leader of a large nonprofit organization in Boston—the birthplace of the American Revolution—I’ve found myself asking: In the face of escalating attacks on our communities, our sector, and our society, what do modern-day revolutionary acts look like?

Over the past year, as we’ve seen our hard-won rights deliberately eroded through policies that are fueling and exacerbating economic and social inequality, I’m reminded that revolutions aren’t always one-off, dramatic uprisings, but are shaped by the methodical, gradual daily investments that we make to build a better society for all of us.

For me, that means recognizing that lasting social change requires more than the important work nonprofits do every day to serve and strengthen our communities. It requires direct democratic action through policy, advocacy, and lobbying. Too often, nonprofits are told that this work is outside our role or beyond our reach. But if we want to change the conditions that create inequity in the first place, we must see policy advocacy as essential to our mission—and as a powerful tool for advancing the change our communities need.

I am a child of immigrants and a lifelong Bostonian, born and raised. I carry deep pride in being from the city of firsts: the first public school, the first public park, the first public library, and the first subway. To be Bostonian is to carry a fierce loyalty deep within your bones—to initiative, rigor, and the public good over superficiality and self-interest.

If we want to change the conditions that create inequity in the first place, we must see policy advocacy as essential to our mission—and as a powerful tool for advancing the change our communities need.

Yet I am also an Asian American woman who has spent my life navigating a city profoundly shaped by segregation, economic inequality, and elitism. To be a non-White, immigrant, working-class Bostonian is to inhabit a constant paradox: of grappling with the injustices of a city so profoundly shaped by racism and segregation while being rooted in democratic ideals; of having rocks thrown at you while walking to school in a White neighborhood, and then sitting in a classroom to learn about Boston’s identity as the crucible of the American Revolution.

This contradictory experience has created a lifelong ambivalence. I am a Boston girl proud of the city’s long list of historical firsts and its role in creating our nation, even as I remain deeply critical of the systems of oppression that shape the lives of people of color and working-class communities. A short walk from my office brings me to the sites of the Boston Tea Party and Boston Massacre. This is the version of my city’s history that is canonized in our nation’s classrooms and textbooks. And a five-minute walk in another direction takes me to where I grew up in Chinatown, a shrinking community built by low-wage laborers—restaurant workers, seamstresses, and hotel workers. My experience of Boston and its history is one that is not represented in history classes; it is complex, multifaceted, and often bitter. Yet it is always shaped by the resistance of communities of ordinary people. And, more often than not, the heart of that resistance is found in the coalitions and the nonprofits that are the bedrocks of our communities.

With more local nonprofits per capita than anywhere else in the country, Boston’s community-based organizations have always been at the forefront of driving transformative change for marginalized communities. Beginning with the settlement house movement in the 1800s, Bostonians founded organizations that moved away from antiquated notions of charity toward social justice, economic empowerment, and community organizing. Several of these organizations (or their successor entities) are still in operation today.

Since then, Boston has been home to many nonprofit organizations that are national models. Take the Dudley Street Neighborhood Initiative (DSNI), which organized resident-led urban revitalization and transformation of more than 50 acres of vacant lots into affordable housing and community-owned spaces, leading to national and global recognition and replication. Or BAGLY, the Boston Alliance for LGBTQ+ Youth, which has been pioneering and advocating for social support, leadership development, and health promotion programs for LGBTQ+ youth since its founding in 1980, resulting in replicated programming across the country.

Organizations and coalitions like these were crucial in reconciling my experience of growing up in a wealthy, educated, and multiracial but highly segregated Boston. From a young age, I was exposed to many forms of resistance—from active, sometimes violent action to quiet community building—and I came to understand the pivotal role nonprofits played in community life.

These elders showed me what community-led power building and resistance can accomplish and illustrated that change can happen gradually and through persistence. 

In my community of Chinatown, residents organized to resist racism, xenophobia, and limited access to services—from advocating for the inclusion of Chinese parents’ voices in the school desegregation process, to organizing for community control over state and institutional land appropriation and development in Chinatown. These efforts led to the creation of many organizations dear to me. The Quincy School Community Council, which pioneered community-based school governance and multilingual classroom programming in the 1960s and 1970s, became a national model for the community schools movement and non-native English-speaking parent involvement. This organization became the Boston Chinatown Neighborhood Center (BCNC), where I would work for 20 years, first as a youth organizer and eventually as the executive director. It was at BCNC where I learned to connect my experience to my community’s history, and to connect my community’s history to the history of our country and its treatment of all those who come seeking a better life. It was also at BCNC where my mother learned English, where I made friends as a pre-teen, where my children would go to pre-school, and where I, as a young college graduate entering nonprofit work, found mentors in the elders who passed on wisdom gained from their formative experiences in civil rights campaigns in the 60s and 70s.

These elders showed me what community-led power building and resistance can accomplish and illustrated that change can happen gradually and through persistence. Organizers like my father fought overwhelming odds and taught me that standing up to injustice is our right and our responsibility.

I am inspired to carry the organizational persistence and resilience that have shaped my life with my own work in the sector—first in my own community and now at Third Sector New England (TSNE). Nonprofits aren’t just participants in social change; they are the infrastructure that supports and cultivates leaders who make sustained change possible and the institutions that teach our young people agency and voice.

The organization I now lead, TSNE, was also a maverick. Founded in 1959 to support public and community health research projects, TSNE was the first fiscal sponsor in the country. Later, recognizing that organizational needs went beyond fiscal sponsorship, we broadened our support to include consulting and leadership development, shared services, and the operation of one of the largest shared nonprofit centers in the country. We focus on building the capacity of the social sector and providing the tools, information, and infrastructure for organizations to make change and to make good trouble. We take care of the “busy work” so that nonprofits stay focused on their missions and the work of advancing their missions.

For so many nonprofits across the country, budgets are razor thin, and compliance is increasingly a high-stakes game. Nonprofit leaders are overburdened and organizations are understaffed. Through models like TSNE’s shared services or fiscal sponsorship, nonprofits are able to share the cost of back-of-house services such as accounting, payroll, and human resources. The supportive work of an organization like TSNE allows for more visible work to thrive in organizations like Future Chefs, a Boston-based organization empowering young people with life and culinary skills to succeed beyond high school, or the Massachusetts Voter Table, which works to engage voters and advance access, engagement, and representation for people of color and working-class people across the state. From the organizations feeding families to those providing healthcare for our veterans, nonprofits strengthen and support the communities that function as the bedrock of a democratic society.

TSNE’s work is not the loud work of resistance but instead the quiet, methodical, and strategic work to support and build the infrastructure of our sector, which in turn supports our communities. But now, supporting the sector and our communities demands more active engagement and direct action. As a result, TSNE has engaged more deeply in advocacy and using our voice to support policies critical for a strong nonprofit sector. Through educating policymakers, organizing national tables in response to legislation threatening our values and our work, and rallying our partners to also engage—we have flexed our muscles beyond our direct service work to protect the systems that make our work possible. 

Like our elders in the social justice movement and this nation’s forefathers, we must build coalitions, agree to disagree, organize, and fight to retain our rights. We must embrace advocacy as a critical tool to ensure we can continue providing services for our communities. We must see our current social and political context for what it is—and understand that this is our revolutionary work. We must continue the struggle “to form a more perfect Union.”

As a sector, we are structured to be competitive. We compete for funding, recognition, and sometimes even constituents. But this is an outdated model based on individualistic principles and centered on philanthropy. Is there another model that can focus on cooperation, collaboration, community, shared resources, and common advocacy—so that we find strength together as a sector? How might we find power as a unified voice? If we find or create such a model, it could be revolutionary.

We can be victorious in building a more equitable and just society for all of us. But nonprofits must be intentional, strategic, coordinated, and unafraid to use our collective and organizational voices. Now is not the time to center egos or individual agendas; it is the time to build cross-sector alliances. We must align on narrative structure and share compelling stories, share resources and improve operational efficiencies, be open to mergers to maximize resources and impact, and strategize on shared policy and advocacy agendas to create the society we want to live in. Gil Scott-Heron said it best: “the revolution will not be televised.” As I see it, it will be sustained, principled, and rooted in community—and nonprofits will be at its heart.

The story of a white teacher, Barbara Henry, and a six-year-old Black student, Ruby Bridges, integrating a New Orleans elementary school is an iconic civil rights story. But going deeper into that story illustrates key leadership dilemmas that we still face today.

Many of us have been inundated with ideas of leadership deeply rooted in a dominant Western viewpoint—one that leans heavily on the fearless, rugged individualist who moves through the world with absolute certainty. Or perhaps a leader on a hero’s journey, gaining knowledge and wisdom by way of slaying their personal dragons. While these archetypes may contain some truths, treating them as universal facts without accounting for social context, race, and gender, distorts our understanding of effective leadership.

Indeed, scholars such as Laura Morgan Roberts, Anthony J. Mayo, David A. Thomas, bell hooks, among others, have long shown that these archetypes reflect patriarchal and Eurocentric norms of authority. Relying on solitary figures erases the decentralized, group-centered networks that actually drive movement building and organizational change, while insisting on certainty assumes that complex human situations have simple answers—making it impossible for people to admit mistakes, build trust, or keep each other safe.

While these [Western] archetypes may contain some truths, treating them as universal facts without accounting for social context, race, and gender, distorts our understanding of effective leadership.

Yet even when a narrative follows a single figure, leadership is rarely solitary; her true strength is drawn from the connection she built with the person beside her.

Barbara Henry: An Introduction

Ten years ago, at a house party a few houses down the street in my new Boston neighborhood, a stylishly dressed woman came up to me, warmly shook my hand, and introduced herself: “Hi, I’m Barbara Henry.”

Her name was familiar, but I couldn’t quite place it. I cocked my head to the side, in slow recognition. She laughed and said, “Yes, that Barbara Henry—Ruby Bridges’ teacher.”

I knew who Barbara Henry was because I knew the story of six-year-old Ruby Bridges depicted in the famous black-and-white photograph, flanked by US marshals escorting her to the William Frantz Elementary School in the Upper Ninth Ward of New Orleans in 1960–1961, a school desegregated by court order.

Since that party, we’ve had many conversations over the years about neighborhood happenings, gardening, and politics. As an organizational strategist and leadership coach working with professionals who are developing their skills to lead their teams and organizations, I have a deep curiosity about effective leaders. I wanted to understand what 28-year-old Barbara was thinking when she found herself at that school with Ruby, and what a 90-year-old Barbara thought about the experience from her present vantage point.

After years of putting off asking her for an interview over the worry of being seen as an intrusive neighbor, I finally mustered the courage to ask for one, which she gladly accepted. On a chilly December morning in 2022, Barbara welcomed me into her home with a smile, dressed in a light olive shirt, gold-colored earrings, and understated makeup. I set up my laptop and microphone in her living room with a view of the street adjoining our homes.

As I settled onto her couch, I asked whether she would describe herself as a leader. I thought this was a slam dunk question, one that would deepen the conversation about her leadership. Instead, Barbara raised her eyebrows and responded, “No, I have never used that word myself. This is the first time that someone has asked me that question. So, it’s very interesting and provocative. I think probably I was one who was willing to take risks and be the first one [to act], but I never saw myself as a leader.”

Her answer caught me off guard. Feeling unsure of what to ask next, I decided to take a step back and asked her to share her story.

Barbara Henry’s Path to the New Orleans Ninth Ward

Barbara was born in Boston in 1932 and grew up in the house next door to the one she lives in to this day. She studied and graduated from Boston’s Girls’ Latin School, an academically renowned public high school where, as Barbara said, “The student body was a microcosm of the city’s racial, ethnic, religious, cultural, and socio-economic diversity.” Barbara gives credit to the school’s faculty who “treated every student, regardless of the class, color, or community they were from with the same respect and sense of worth.” This foundation prepared her for the challenges of Boston College, furthered her interest in the history and government master’s program, and fueled her desire to go to Europe to visit the primary sources of her studies.

After graduating, she learned about a government program created to teach the children of Air Force personnel. Barbara applied, hoping it would provide an avenue to go abroad. However, after being accepted, she was dismayed to draw Alaska as her scheduled landing spot. Disappointed that she wouldn’t have the opportunity to experience Europe, she wrote to the Massachusetts senator at the time, John Kennedy. He wrote back suggesting that because she was so young and just barely made the cut, that she wait another year and reapply.

In 1958, at age of 26, she received a posting in Dreux Air Force Base School in France. It was here she taught in a desegregated school for children of US Air Force personnel. Barbara recalls that the risk was rewarded with an extraordinary cultural experience as well as meeting Hank, an Air Force first lieutenant. After pursuing a second teaching post in Germany, she returned home to Boston, where she married Hank—her husband for 65 years.

Following Hank to his hometown of New Orleans, she found herself “lonesome for her teaching career.” Barbara applied for a teaching position within the city’s school district, and not long after, she received a call from the New Orleans superintendent of schools about an opening. On the call, he divulged a secret: The position was at an elementary school that was soon to be desegregated.

“Would that make a difference to you?,” he asked.

Barbara was stunned by the question and appalled by its implications. She accepted the offer. The superintendent told her that the police would have her name when she arrived at the school.

The constant stream of dominant culture messaging I took in made it patently clear that someone like me—a young Black lower middle-class girl—was not a hero and would not, could not, be a leader.

That first day of school, scared and unaccompanied, Barbara walked surreptitiously (“no one knew who I was”) through the irate mob that assembled as soon as the white parents found out it was their children’s school that was being desegregated. The New Orleans police were “not sympathetic” to her plight. The front doors of the school were locked, and she had to knock a few times and wait—the furious crowd at her back—until finally she was let in. Barbara recalled the faces of the faculty she encountered inside the school, “frozen with fear and anger.” It was then that she learned that she was the one who would be teaching the desegregated classroom.

By midday on that first day, most students had been withdrawn by their parents, leaving the school nearly empty except for officials and staff. Despite the difficult circumstances, Barbara felt empowered by her own beliefs, which had been shaped by experiences in attending and teaching in desegregated schools in Europe. Undeterred, Barbara was told she’d meet her new student the next day—and she confidently affirmed she would return. The rest, as we know, is history.

Facts vs. Fiction

My own early ideas of leadership were a tangle of superheroes: Larger than life

figures who performed superhuman deeds and solved difficult problems. Growing up, I dreamed of a superhero who would swoop down and find me, find my emotionally volatile and financially struggling family, and make our situation better. The superhero dream morphed into a fantasy of leadership.

The constant stream of dominant culture messaging I took in made it patently clear that someone like me—a young Black lower middle-class girl—was not a hero and would not, could not, be a leader. My life experiences and observations undoubtedly shaped my lifelong inquiries about the nature of leadership and power, seeking stories of all types in which leadership takes form. But Barbara’s story of leadership led me to contemplate what I thought I knew, because of what I heard.

Barbara went on to talk about Ruby Bridges, “She was strong…she would come every day, back to school, knowing that she wasn’t going to have playmates to play with, or anybody to talk to, but me,” Barbara said. She added that “[Ruby] was interested in learning and achieved, of course. She was chosen because she was smart.”

As Barbara continued, her voice deepened, “But when I found out that there were three or four other kids in a room hidden in the basement of the school…” Her voice trailed off.

One day, Barbara went to the basement to fetch materials and discovered a few white students in a room with a teacher, playing music. She went to the principal and demanded to know what was going on and why these kids weren’t in her classroom with Ruby. The principal explained that the teacher refused to teach Ruby. Outraged by the situation, Barbara declared she would teach all the students.

“We did things such as social studies and science that we would do communally,” Barbara recalled. “I never taught them reading…the other teacher kept them [the white students] in the mornings, and then I had [all] the kids in the afternoon. And so, in the afternoons, we desegregated the school, literally and factually.”

As I conducted my own research, I found many meaningful details that were omitted from the popularized version of the “Brave Ruby” story. The entire family dealt with the harsh consequences of their desire to give Ruby a better education and the opportunities they never had. Both of her parents lost their jobs. Ruby’s grandparents were evicted from the rural Mississippi farm where they had lived and sharecropped for a quarter century. Ruby would have nightmares about the mob gathered at her school. And while the struggle to integrate the William Frantz Elementary School was taking place, a powerful movement was already successfully underway to keep schools racially partitioned, as segregation academies took full bloom.

Dismantling Fables in Favor of Complex Truths

After my conversation with Barbara Henry and reading accounts from Ruby Bridges herself, I wondered if the story, much like the fables of leaders, has been so stripped down as to become fantasy? It certainly makes for a simpler story, to be able to omit many of the facts.

While these details provide a more accurate version of Ruby’s story, it’s likely less satisfying for those who want neat lines and conclusive endings. But these facts matter because they speak to a broader picture of risk, courage, and a process of transformation that rarely, if ever, happens as cleanly or as rapidly as these fables lead us to believe. These more complex stories might give leaders navigating daily ambiguities a more honest template for living and leading. It confirms that even the most determined among us will be met with victories, partial successes and, at times, outright failure. The unredacted glimpse of Ruby Bridges’ and Barbara Henry’s experience might offer us guidance in place of a fable; it confirms that even within our daunting challenges and uncertainty, we are not lacking. We are having a truly human experience.

Consider, for example, how exhausting is must have been for Barbara to have US marshals stationed outside her classroom door for safety, the lack of support from the school superintendent and principal, and the isolation she felt from the other teachers. Yet her singular focus remained on being a good teacher to Ruby, creating a vibrant learning experience for her. The relationship resulted in a deep and long-lasting friendship between Ruby (71) and Barbara (94).

As our two-hour conversation wound down, Barbara reflected on her teaching career. “You really are a leader when you’re a teacher. You can actually use that word. You are in a classroom facing 30 or more students. You definitely have to be,” she said.

The path of leadership is not a straight line but a road map that is complex with vagaries and ambiguities along the way. The more complicated stories are those that allow us to learn from each other and take comfort in the fact that we are not alone, as we walk our unique leadership path. It is a path that must be shaped by our full humanity, by our traumas, by our strengths, and by our triumphs.

I’ve observed that our connections to each other can make all the difference; these connections can be people who are willing to open doors for us or, just as importantly, those who help share our emotional burden as we, as leaders, navigate difficult waters in the midst of uncertain times. My conversations with Barbara Henry created a new way for me to consider how leadership can take flight, especially from those who don’t describe themselves as such.

Many funders are rightly concerned about the state of our democracy. That concern has become more urgent in the lead-up to the midterm elections—as it does every two years, right on schedule. It’s true that multiple indices show our democracy is in free fall. But our “democracy” has always been a myth to far too many US residents. For the communities that have been consistently excluded from democracy’s security and prosperity, the idea of protecting it is abstract, at best.

Private philanthropy has the power and potential to help upend this reality and finally deliver on democratic promises for everyone by looking at where capital-market solutions or government interventions have failed to intervene. To realize a democracy in more than name will require consistently driving investments to the locus of change: communities that reflect the diversity of society.

Not that long ago, philanthropy was on the right path to creating the conditions for a more inclusive—and therefore more effective—democracy. In the years after the racial reckoning in 2020, investment poured into communities of color that have been historically dispossessed. The emphasis on funding for community ownership and empowerment was rightly seen as both a means of addressing structural racism and one of the most powerful antidotes for a decrease in civic participation that erodes our democracy.

To realize a democracy in more than name will require consistently driving investments to the locus of change: communities that reflect the diversity of society.

But new research confirms what many of us have seen firsthand: The post-2020 funding push for Black-led nonprofits and community groups has been abandoned. As the CEO of a nonprofit corporation, the Center for Cultural Innovation (CCI), which supports cultural transformation through community investment, I’ve had a front-row seat to this regression.

Many funders have shifted away from community-fueled solutions back to run-of-the-mill pro-democracy efforts. The reasons I’ve heard vary from too many demands on funding, to the urgency of the next “most important election of our lifetime.” Often, funders are assuming a false binary: that they can either support efforts to strengthen democracy or focus on communities. Of course, democratic backsliding must be stopped, but an essential part of that work—rather than a deviation from it—is building the foundations for a true pluralistic democracy. Such a system has yet to be realized and should always be our north star, no matter the election cycle.

Repairing Democracy’s Broken Contract by Empowering Communities

A thriving democracy requires not just a transaction of votes in exchange for power. It implies a broader contract between the governed and the governing, between individuals and communities. For many communities, especially racialized communities, that contract has long been broken.

As a result of this broken promise for an already marginalized part of society, it makes sense that over the past two decades the turnout gap between White voters and Black voters has grown. It’s a gap that can’t be fully accounted for by the Supreme Court’s gutting of the Voting Rights Act. Rather, low civic engagement understandably stems from a failure to connect democracy to real results for people.

When attention is paid to communities only during election cycles, while in between those cycles they see no changes to their daily lives, voting becomes disconnected from outcomes. No wonder, then, that it stops being a priority. Healing cannot happen on the schedule of two-year election cycles. Sporadic investment erodes trust, creating an environment in which the fate of a community can seem tied to the whims of an indifferent funder class. By showing up and providing consistent, deep investment, funders can support the kind of bedrock for democratic life we need right now. They can actually advance the vision of democracy that is sustained beyond election cycles.

Authoritarian and plutocratic forces don’t empower their communities. One of the key reasons why hard-fought progressive gains are being lost is because people have been so effectively isolated, divided, and disempowered. Investing in communities to be stronger on their own terms is a powerful lever for pro-democracy efforts because it helps to counteract that alienation. People gain and exercise their power when community belonging is on a scale that they can see and feel.

By prioritizing collective empowerment, we can counter the isolation and shape a better future, manifested in the strength of diverse and inclusive communities—from Indigenous people to all the various people who were brought or who migrated to this country. That can be accomplished in many ways, including investing in cultural spaces where people recognize their sense of belonging as well as supporting local residents in making the budgeting and land-use decisions that shape their daily lives. Imagine if data centers were located on land that local residents collectively govern so they could negotiate better terms and hold technology companies accountable, or if the contracts to build affordable housing were awarded by the people who’ll be living in it.

The Best Ways to Use Your Dollars for Democracy

The good news is that some funders are starting to see the value of taking a long view and building community-level investment. To expand this progress and achieve bigger, enduring change, here are some good places to start:

1. Ask—and then listen to—community leaders.

It’s time to directly ask communities what it will take for them to thrive, with people participating electorally, civically, and societally. The answers will be different from community to community, and they’ll be more accurate if they come from community representatives and leaders. Often, these individuals are connected to institutions outside of traditional philanthropic pipelines, like local mutual aid networks or cultural land trusts. These leaders know their neighbors better than any grants specialist, and they are the ones held to account by their communities. Collecting community input on their needs is its own form of democracy, and helps to strengthen the principles of self-determination, representation, and civic engagement that democracy relies on.

2. Go beyond nonprofits.

It’s a tough pill to swallow, but 501(c)(3) nonprofit organizations are not synonymous with their communities. They do excellent work, but they are often there to serve, not represent or be a voice for communities. And, as mentioned above, they can be prone to shifts in strategy that ultimately stymie impact and change. Alternative organizations and efforts—such as real estate collectives, mutual aid organizers, participatory budgeting processes, and other leaders and groups embedded in and accountable to communities—are essential to an inclusive pro-democracy strategy.

3. Fund without restriction.

There has been an encouraging uptick in unrestricted giving, but much more is needed. Guardrails for how funding can be applied tell communities they aren’t trusted to use their best judgment. Project-restricted, time-limited funding can leave recipients more gutted in the long term as their resources and attention serve funders’ priorities more than their own. Conversely, providing unrestricted support is an inherently trustful and practical act. For democracy to thrive, communities need to have opportunities for practicing self-governance.

Moreover, research shows that unrestricted giving is effective and accelerates impact. Communities will spend funds where they’re needed, whether that’s after-school programs, food banks, or even voter education groups. They are familiar with what they need most, regardless of foundations’ program silos.

Amid a crucial midterm year, where do we go from here?

We should, of course, focus on the midterms and on 2028. But without acknowledging how our democracy has failed to deliver for a lot of people, it will face the same existential threat every two years. We must develop a long-term and proactive approach that invests in the communities that have been neglected, in ways that leave them self-determining. This means realizing that democracy is synonymous with thriving and diverse communities. Every two years, we ask ourselves: Where do we go from here? How do we protect and strengthen our democracy in these critical times? The answer is deceptively simple: by working towards a vision of democracy that is real for everyone.