Image description: a bunch of “I VOTED” stickers. Photo by Element5 Digital on Unsplash

In Washington, the voting deadline for our primary is today (Tuesday, August 4, 2026). I hope those of you in WA have cast your ballot or will make a plan get your ballot to the ballot drop box before 8 pm.

Your vote matters. In fact, our democracy depends on it. Our country is increasingly divided by partisanship and threatened by an explosion of misinformation. Voting rights are being curtailed. Please be sure that your vote counts up and down the ballot and encourage others to engage in all elections. The fall mid-term elections are especially crucial.

If you work in a nonprofit, you can urge your staff, volunteers, clients, audience members—your entire network—to vote. Nonprofits enjoy a high level of trust in our communities, so your words and actions matter. While 501(c)(3) nonprofits are legally prohibited from telling people how to vote or endorsing candidates, we can and should encourage people to register to vote and to exercise their right to vote. Need information or resources to do this work? Nonprofit Vote is a great resource.

The political situation right now feels dire and it can be difficult to know how to respond. Voting is one simple thing we can continue to do—a sacred duty to participate in our democratic system. Let’s work together to ensure that more people than ever exercise their right to vote.

Image description: Demonstrators walking in the street. One person holds up a sign that says “Enough!” Photo by Liam Edwards on Unsplash

Unionized workers at SIFF Cinema walked out this past weekend, as described here. I feel for all parties. The union is seeking a timely contract and job protections for workers. The SIFF management is undoubtedly feeling stuck and unable to imagine how they can raise the revenue to improve wages and working conditions. The tension is undoubtedly especially high this week as SIFF began screening The Odyssey in 70mm, likely a cash cow that is needed to balance their budget.

I’ve worked in and with nonprofits for 35 years now, but I have not personally belonged to a union nor been in management at a unionized nonprofit. Unions are more common in larger organizations and in the arts. As a progressive person, I believe in the power and importance of worker organizing. Perhaps if unions were more widespread in the US, there would be less poverty and the resulting need for nonprofit social services.

I think many of us have wondered if more widespread unionization in the nonprofit sector is appropriate. This is a tricky topic. Regrettably, I have witnessed little honest conversation about the pros and cons of greater unionization. A lot of my information is anecdotal, but here are a few thoughts. I would love to hear from others sharing your experience and observations. I’m also very open to criticism and learning—I recognize that my lack of experience and primary identification with management may lead me to err in some of my assumptions.

1. Many nonprofit workers today feel undervalued and exploited. Meaningful work is great, but employees must also be able to pay their bills. Nonprofits should not contribute to poverty or precarity by paying poverty wages or forgoing health benefits. There is ample data confirming that nonprofit workers are paid less than their counterparts in the private and for-profit sectors for comparable work, such as this UW study. The challenge here is shifting from the model that has been dominant for over a hundred years—that of balancing our budget on the backs of our workers, who are expected to work for less in exchange for the satisfaction of mission work.

2. Nonprofit leaders are products of this system as well. Most make living wages now, but they may feel that they have “paid their dues” to get where they are and may not be thinking about the privilege that allowed them to work their way up through unpaid internships, volunteering, long hours, and substandard salaries for many years. In addition, Boomer and Gen X leaders enjoyed relative ease in earning enough to afford college, purchase a house, or other economic milestones, compared with younger generations. For this and other reasons, management may not be as sympathetic as desired toward newer nonprofit workers.

3. While attitude may be a challenge with some leaders, the actual process of unionization is daunting as well, and most nonprofit managers and boards have no experience or resources to help them navigate it gracefully. During the formation period, management needs to be very careful not to disparage the union organizing effort. Once staff vote to unionize, it can take 1-2 years to get to an initial labor contract. It is typically necessary to engage legal counsel to assist management even if the process is not adversarial. The actions required are a substantial additional learning curve and workload for the executive, usually on top of an already unmanageable list of responsibilities. Finally, the financial pressure is intense—where will the revenue come from to increase pay and benefits, as well as the transition support?

We can do hard things

The truth is, the nonprofit sector can and does adapt to changes, including difficult challenges related to pay equity. Beginning in 2020, the State of Washington phased in a higher threshold for exempt (salaried) employment. Prior to the change, nonprofits in Washington had to abide by the federal exempt employment threshold, currently set at the retrograde and miserable level of $35,568 per year. In contrast, Washington state employees must be paid hourly and eligible for overtime below an annual salary threshold of $80,168 in 2026, rising each year with inflation. There was a great amount of fear when this change was proposed, and it has certainly caused stress for smaller and poorer nonprofits. Yet somehow, most of us have adjusted to the change and continued to operate. Countless workers are better off and the system is fairer, making it a big win in my view.

In 2001, Washington voters passed Initiative 775, which established the Home Care Quality Authority and gave home care workers the right to join a union and to bargain collectively with the state. Unionization for home care workers in Washington has been a major success, establishing union representation for thousands of workers through SEIU 775 and raising wages significantly. Other industries might benefit from similar change.

Overall, I will continue to beat the drum that we can’t let fear and lack of imagination drive decisions about compensation and budget, blocking needed change. We must continue to push for the changes we believe are ethical and will create stronger, more sustainable workplaces. This includes adjusting to unionization when it comes. I would love to see nonprofits working together to assist unionizing organizations as they transition and negotiate their first contract. General education about unions should be a part of nonprofit management education. Philanthropy should also contribute to help nonprofits with the legal and operational costs associated with transitioning. Together, we can reinvent nonprofit employment to be more desirable and fairly compensated through unionization or other means.

Please share your thoughts and stories. What do you wish nonprofit folks knew about unions? What successes have you seen or experienced?

Image description: Sheep grazing in a green pasture in Yorkshire. Photo by Illiya Vjestica on Unsplash

The tragedy of the commons is defined by Wikipedia as “the idea that when a resource is shared and can benefit the individual at a cost to the community, it is rational for the individual to overuse the resource, even though this collectively leads to the depletion of the resource for everyone.” This is a ubiquitous economic theory that most undergraduates are exposed to in their first economics course. If you subscribe to this way of thinking, the best course of action is to privatize shared resources as much as possible, or to police people’s behavior heavily (and at great shared cost). But what becomes possible if the tragedy of the commons is avoidable?

Elinor Ostrom was an academic who conducted rigorous research on management of common pool resources (CPRs). She looked at examples worldwide such as shared pastureland, irrigation water, and fisheries. Ostrom determined that in fact common people can and do work collaboratively to sustainably manage resources held in common over many centuries (she acknowledges some failures as well). Based on this work, she became the first woman to win the Nobel Prize for Economics in 2009.

I recently checked out Ostrom’s book, Governing the Commons, from the library to learn more. The book is dense and academic, but the parts that I absorbed were affirming. Yes, people can organize around values other than greed and self-interest and get better results!

In her conclusion, Ostrom observes that small-scale CPRs have advantages:

“In such situations, individuals repeatedly communicate and interact with one another in a localized physical setting. Thus, it is possible that they can learn whom to trust, what effects their actions will have on each other and on the CPR, and how to organize themselves to gain benefits and avoid harm. When individuals have lived in such situations for a substantial time and have developed shared norms and patterns of reciprocity, they possess social capital with which they can build institutional arrangements for resolving CPR dilemmas.”

This quote alludes to the importance of local organizing and building meaningful relationships to create a foundation of trust. This is of course a key building block for all types of ethical, mutually beneficial organizations.

Finding out about Elinor Ostrom’s work is a balm to me. We all need to continue to popularize people and research that challenge economic myths that underpin individualism and capitalism. It can be difficult to reconsider and reject things we were taught as gospel in college. If we can set aside brainwashing about the inevitability of competition and Social Darwinism, there is more space for innovation that centers collective well-being. I’m committed to continuing to reprogram my own beliefs toward reviving democracy and true prosperity for everyone.

Image description: Close-up of a sidewalk painted green with the white stripe. The concrete has a substantial crack running across it. Photo by Umberto on Unsplash.

As I recover from knee replacement surgery, I am grateful for my family and community. I feel very fortunate that I have plenty of community support, and I am again reminded of the importance of relationships to get through hard times. I am still not fully back in action and probably won’t be for another month. But I did feel well enough this week to learn from the latest work of Dax-Devlon Ross, who consistently writes about truly crucial topics for nonprofit leaders.

Nonprofit Quarterly just published When Disruption Hits: Making Hidden Risks Visible to Meet the Moment and Move Our Missions Forward and hosted a companion webinar in which Ross discussed new tools he has developed to help groups have fuller, more productive conversations about risk.

Risk is a topic I covered in the strategic planning course that I recently taught. While not always thought of as a planning-related issue, I believe it is important for board members to reflect on and speak frankly about their personal attitudes toward risk. This can help the group determine their collective risk tolerance and identify what mission and values issues are worth taking risks for. Ross agrees and has gone much further to develop a “Risk Posture Spectrum” that board members can locate themselves on. The spectrum includes “unwavering” in commitment to mission despite risks, “protective” of the institution, and more different stances in the face of a threat.

Ross also provides process suggestions to ensure that strategic discussions are informed by articulation of all risks to the organization and the community served, not solely legal and financial risks (which are more commonly raised in the board room). These include moral risk, reputational risk, risks associated with broken trust, and risk of compromising mission impact.

In the article, he notes that disruption typically sparks risk-related governance discussions, using the example of the recent backlash against diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI). He comments that “A shock can teach, but only if a system is willing to learn.” An organization can make a more superficial, transactional decision in response to external threats or disruptions, or the leadership can take a deeper dive to surface complexity and differing opinions. This extra work will support a better decision as well as collective learning and growth. Only through this deeper dialogue can the group build its adaptive capacity and ingrain resilience into its culture moving forward.

I will raise one additional consideration related to an organization’s collective “risk posture.” Where a nonprofit locates itself with regard to risk may also be influenced by its field or ecosystem. A child welfare advocacy group may be able to take a riskier stance if it is a part of a diverse group of child welfare organizations serving a particular community, knowing that other organizations have a lower risk tolerance and are covering complementary aspects of the work. An organization that is the only resource of its kind in a large rural area may be more resistant to taking a risky position given that the community stands to lose its only service provider in this area of service. Further, an organization’s ability to take risks may be impacted by whether they have community allies willing to stand in solidarity with their position.

I am grateful for Ross’s insights on this and other topics. I highly recommend reading his new article.

Image description: Roses in Portland’s Penninsula Park last weekend.

The class I have been teaching at Seattle University, Nonprofit Planning & Evaluation, wrapped up last night. Our topic was leading in uncertain times, and how planning needs to be adapted to ensure that organizations remain nimble enough to navigate the massive change we are seeing these days. We had some good discussion, and a lot of it focused on the challenges facing nonprofits right now. Here are these future leaders earning a Master of Nonprofit Leadership, and it must feel heavy and countercultural to be doing so at this time. So, during the 10-minute break, I listed out some things that make me hopeful about our collective future. I shared them with the class as we closed, and here they are:

Disruption brings innovation. We need evolution beyond the nonprofit industrial complex and our standard approaches to management and social change, which are insufficient in terms of sustainability and equity. Maybe this disruption can usher in big changes to the way nonprofits do business.

Philanthropy practices are being scrutinized. There are more and louder critiques of organized philanthropy than ever before. I am optimistic that this will result in improved practices and stronger regulation (though not at the speed I would like to see).

Mutual aid, community care, and other grassroots efforts to build stronger community are happening. The way Minneapolis residents banded together to protest and offer practical support to neighbors during the ICE invasion of their city was inspiring.

Nonprofits are still the most trusted institutions. Research confirms that nonprofits are more trusted than corporations, government, or philanthropic institutions. We can be influential thanks to the trust people have in us.

Nonprofits are sustaining communities. We respond impressively when SNAP benefits are about to be cut, when there is a massive flood, and when individuals experience personal crises. We are getting it done.

We are achieving advocacy victories. Some nonprofits get it that the best way to put themselves out of business is to shift public policy to benefit the people they currently serve. I hear all the time about policy changes that I know are driven by passionate nonprofit advocacy.

We are better employers. Compared head-to-head with private companies providing similar services (such as nursing homes and charter schools), nonprofits have better pay and benefits (and better outcomes).

Nonprofits drive progress. Whether it is scientific research happening at nonprofit universities or housing organizations creating permanently affordable workforce housing, or countless other arenas, nonprofits are getting amazing work done.

Our roots in community make us resilient and relevant. Nonprofits are grounded by our relationships in local communities, and we have a network of support because of those relationships. This makes us harder to uproot and more likely to offer the right services to match community needs.

A new generation of leaders is coming and will change how nonprofits operate. We know that future generations have different ideas about leadership, managing people, and getting things done. I welcome their new energy and look forward to seeing what my students and others like them will do.

That’s what I came up with in 10 minutes. Let’s keep up the great work and remind ourselves of all the good that is happening. Have a great day!

Image description: a young child standing outside wearing a yellow rain coat and a light blue backpack. Photo by Daiga Ellaby on Unsplash

For-profit businesses, especially those controlled by private equity firms, look for opportunities to make money by providing services where there is a steady source of public or private funding. They are finding ample opportunities in childcare, healthcare, youth recreation, and eldercare.

An article in the New York Times this week, Short Naps, Long Hours: How Autism Clinics Squeeze Medicaid Dollars Out of Preschoolers, illustrates this trend. The article focuses on private-equity-owned Compleat Kids, a for-profit provider of autism therapy. They document nearly 700% growth in the number of autism clinics in North Carolina following policy changes that allow for Medicaid coverage of the services. “The growth has been fueled by rising autism diagnoses, state insurance mandates and a federal requirement that Medicaid cover the therapy. Private equity investors have rushed into the business, buying up chains and opening new clinics.”

Why is this happening?

Because for-profits have investment capital, they can move more quickly into a field of service and achieve economies of scale by quickly opening many branches that fall under one administrative/managerial umbrella and use standardized practices. Nonprofit social service providers are more likely to be created through a bottom-up, community-driven process and grow slowly with roots in a particular place. They typically lack working capital to move into a market or scale quickly in response to new funding opportunities.

Does it matter?

I’ve written about this before here. Social service nonprofits are losing market share to for-profit competitors.

Many customers are agnostic regarding the tax status of the service provider they use, and government funders will contract with for-profit of nonprofit entities. Some may even have a bias toward for-profit providers, who are sometimes perceived to be more efficient and focused, perhaps compelled by market pressures to provide quality services.

Kids with autism deserve quality therapeutic care. However, as outlined in the article, the incentives to pathologize and overserve children in the autism arena are significant and detrimental to the clients and costly to society. Unfortunately, many of the areas where private equity is stepping in are fields of service where it is difficult to judge the quality of services, customers may be unable to report on their experiences (as with young children or non-verbal autistic children), or where recipients of service have few or no choices (e.g. in many rural areas).

A further concern is continued erosion of nonprofits. Nonprofits will face competition only where there is money to be made. If we cede our market share in areas where there is more adequate funding, this increases our financial precarity and makes paying fair wages or cross-subsidizing other services that may be more difficult to fund impossible.

To counter this trend, nonprofits may need to make changes to the way they do business. How do we get on the balcony to see these trends coming and strategize about how nonprofits can operate some of these services in a way that is accountable to our communities and competitive with fast-moving private equity? Perhaps we can’t, but we need to talk more about what the trends mean to us and the people we serve.

Image description: a row of candles burning. Photo by Eli Solitas on Unsplash

It is difficult to follow all the closures and restructuring that is happening in the nonprofit sector. Nonprofits that are forced to shut down may be overwhelmed with implementing the legal requirements to dissolve (learn more about these in NAWA’s Dissolving a Nonprofit Guide). Communications and learning from the experience can suffer as a result. There aren’t good statistics available about nonprofit closures. Here are some recent closures that I am aware of, with my comments.

Global Washington - The closure of Global Washington is being handled with grace. They are taking six months to wind down operations, communicating frequently with constituents, and working to ensure that some programs, assets, and networks can be carried forward. They are celebrating the great work that they have done over 16 years. Losing this organization is hard for the international development community here in Washington. It comes on top of severe distress caused by the dissolution of USAID. But at least opportunities to mourn together and affinity groups that will survive into the future are being created. This contrasts with abrupt closures that are happening to some other organizations (this example in the Midwest comes to mind). What makes the difference? Probably money. It takes resources to care for your people, communicate with participants, volunteers, and donors, and wrap up with less strain. Philanthropists take note—funding a good ending can be a great investment, ensuring that people don’t walk away from the cause entirely because of trauma surrounding the dissolution of the organization they worked or volunteered for. It can also ensure continuity of services as it gives time for programs to be transferred or thoughtful referrals made. For this reason, nonprofits need to act decisively when it becomes clear that there is not a viable path forward. This gives the organization more runway to close responsibly and more room for the mission to outlive the organization.

Tacoma Arts Live - Tacoma Arts Live is also shuttering after its 2025-2026 season. This announcement explains why the board reached the conclusion that they need to close, thanks the community, and speaks to the concerns of specific groups of constituents. Like Global Washington, they have planned an orderly process that allows them to meet obligation to ticket holders for this season. They also have a special challenge: ownership of the Tacoma Armory, which will be sold. This article speaks describes the process of receivership, through which Tacoma Arts Live will work with a court-appointed custodian “as a voluntary and quicker alternative to bankruptcy.”

National Novel Writing Month - Thanks to Caitlin Pontrella for writing about the demise of the National Novel Writing Month. This is a cautionary tale that unpacks some bad choices that led to the demise of a valued national nonprofit project. While I do believe that some nonprofits will be sunsetting without making egregious mistakes, it is also real that some organizations are driven to destruction by poor board or executive decisions, or even severe misunderstandings. We should find ways to learn from these experiences, so we don’t repeat our mistakes. This case study is helpful, and I look forward to seeing more in the future.

Earth Ministry – Earth Ministry, a Seattle-based national organization where I served as the Interim ED many years ago, quietly suspended operations in January citing financial challenges after 33 years of operations. The board turned stewardship of the organization over to a few volunteers who committed to “take over tending the bare minimum to keep the nonprofit status active until such time as new life springs forth.” A few months later, that small group laid down the work and is dissolving the organization. The end of the Earth Ministry era does not negate the transformative work they accomplished over three decades, which will have ripple effects for years to come due to the work they did to inspire thousands of people of faith to care for creation. I was struck when I received the first announcement that this seems to be the way that many nonprofits go—fading into the sunset slowly or entering a state of suspended animation in which a founder or dedicated board member continues to keep the organization alive, but without active programming.

NAMI Washington – The Washington chapter of the National Alliance on Mental Illness dissolved in March due to losing its charter from the national group. This article outlines grievances by local affiliates that came to a head following a “violation of inclusion and belonging” that took place in a training two years ago and was apparently not addressed well by leadership. This illustrates the importance of listening to constituents and taking concerns seriously. I’m glad to report that NAMI national is working with local affiliates in Washington state (there are 20 local chapters) to rebuild a state organization.

These examples illustrate that closures happen for a variety of reasons and are not always driven by financial struggles. Unfortunately, learning opportunities can be limited as people move on quickly, some of the facts may be confidential, and people prefer not to revisit difficulties.

Are you aware of other recent nonprofit closures? Please comment to help us all build a clearer picture of changes to our nonprofit sector.

Image description: A boy on an aerial obstacle course. Photo by chris robert on Unsplash

I am deeply concerned about the systemic issues mentioned in my last post (many caused by the current federal administration), which are causing great suffering to nonprofits and by extension to marginalized people at home and abroad. We must continue to vote and protest policies that harm people and our planet. At the same time, these systemic failures are not the fault of nonprofits, and we can’t hold ourselves as individual leaders responsible for all the pain being caused. Leaders must do multiple things simultaneously:

· Create space for ourselves and others to acknowledge and process the grief we feel for what is happening in the world. Be kind to ourselves and our team. Note: This is not the same as throwing accountability out the window or supporting team members to withdraw and not perform.

· Not take responsibility for all the needs we can’t currently meet. Nonprofits are filling gaps to the best of our ability, but the gaps are becoming yawning chasms that are beyond our capacity. As Teddy Roosevelt said, “Do what you can, with what you have, where you are.”

· Speak out and encourage others to join you.

· Interrogate what we are doing in response and how we may also be making mistakes that put our organizations’ futures at risk.

This last point is an area worthy of discussion. Yes, we can be more strategic in the face of uncertainty and challenges. We can only control what we can control, and there are good and bad responses to the shit show.

Here are some things for leaders to keep in mind, and a resource to learn more in each area:

· Change is not always a bad thing, and nonprofits go through life cycles, including closure for those that accomplish their mission, lose relevance, or are unable to renew themselves. Sunsetting an organization does not have to be a failure. Learn about life cycles and reflect on where your organization finds itself.

· The economy goes through cycles, resulting in ups and downs for some of the funding sources that nonprofits rely on. All nonprofits should plan for volatility to the degree they can, including economic downturns and funding shifts. Familiar strategies: building/maintaining reserves, diversifying revenue, and utilizing contractors or temporary labor when continued funding is uncertain. I like Nonprofit Financial Commons’ Playbook for facing financial crisis and determining options.

· Strategic restructuring may be the best option. There are organizational change options that nonprofits can consider to ensure mission continuity even if their organization changes form. The mission is what matters. These include mergers, administrative consolidation, joint programming, or transferring programs to another organization. Help staff and board members understand why major changes may be needed for survival of your programs. Read this NPQ article for inspiration.

· Sunset before you spend all the money. To close an organization in an orderly and kind fashion, in a way that cares for all the people touched by the organization, requires some resources and time. Many leaders wait too long to agree that closing is necessary. Read more of my thoughts about nonprofit closures here and here.

· Attend to concerns. Our organizations and our people are more fragile than ever. Being overstretched can lead to ignoring or minimizing real problems within the organization. Interpersonal conflicts, bad behavior by individuals, or poorly-informed governance decisions can sink a ship, particularly if it is already taking on water. Attending does not mean being perfect, it means having a process in place to review and address mistakes and learn from them.

All of the above requires courage. We are facing an array of new challenges, and adapting is absolutely required for the survival of many nonprofits, or at least their core work. Adaptation should focus on preserving the mission, not the organization in its current form.

A part of being courageous will be acknowledging when a bad situation cannot be fixed. In some cases, organizations simply haven’t been realistic about what it takes to survive in the current climate. During the good times, they failed to prepare for the coming winter. Get objective help. If your finances are not sufficient and there is not a credible plan to turn things around, let your organization go in the best way you can—things are not likely to get easier in the near term.

I hope we can remain curious, learn from what is happening, and avoid blame. The vast majority of nonprofit leaders are doing the best they can in adverse circumstances. Let’s keep talking about how we preserve what matters most. In the process, we also will need to get better at letting go.

My next post will focus on what we can learn from recent nonprofit closures.

Image Description: A wildfire burning in Klamath National Forest in 2017, with sparks flying into the air. Photo by Matt Howard on Unsplash

I’ve been busy lately with consulting projects, teaching, and life. It’s been hard to find time for reflection and writing, and this may continue for a bit. This does not mean that I am not paying attention. I continue to watch for news of nonprofits and talk with colleagues in an ongoing effort to make sense of what is happening.

Most of the news about nonprofits is not good. We continue to lose large and small nonprofits, while others are being forced to reduce staff and/or sell off assets. Yesterday, the Seattle Times reported that at least 250 art and culture jobs have been lost in the Seattle Area since last October. They have also reported on the Pacific Science Center selling off a good part of its campus and laying off some staff to stabilize its finances, and on affordable housing providers selling off buildings in their portfolios that no longer pencil out (in spite of infusions of cash from the City of Seattle). Nationally, I recently read about a small Vermont college closing and then last week the closure of Hampshire College was announced. These may be the leading edge of college closures as small liberal arts colleges are struggling with declining enrollment and rising costs.

This shit show is primarily caused by systemic challenges—we know that despite the amazing efforts of many nonprofits, the ravages of late-stage capitalism and the cruelty of the Trump administration’s policies are destabilizing for people and for many nonprofits, especially in human services, housing, healthcare, and equity-related missions. Oh, and arts, culture, and heritage. And for sure environmental conservation and justice, and climate action. Holy cow! We are up against a lot of devastating policy changes, funding shifts, and greedy corporate actions. Will policies change in time? Will corporate power be reined in as more Americans protest soaring wealth inequality and the marginalization and dehumanization of many people? I hope so.

The changes that are probably the most devastating financially to nonprofits are the cuts to federal funding (the worst is yet to come), declining philanthropy and volunteerism, the war on DEI, and economic distress (rising costs, stagnant wages, etc.). Nonprofits are also impacted by seismic shifts in the post-Covid workforce, including changing attitudes toward work, remote work, changes in volunteering patterns, and a job market that is not working well for either job seekers or employers. In Washington State, nonprofits continue to have great difficulty adjusting to the rising exempt salary threshold, adding further stress to staffing decisions. In addition, a lot of nonprofits became accustomed to having more unrestricting funding during Covid, as funders loosened their purse strings and PPP loans were forgiven. Both sources effectively provided additional unrestricted funding. This funding allowed us to relax a little, invest in expanded programming, staff up and/or raise wages. Now, it is difficult to sustain the gains we achieved and balance budgets.

My next post will be about how leaders can respond to this very tough operating environment.

Image description: Magnified connective tissue cells in a blood sample. Photo by Bioscience Image Library by Fayette Reynolds on Unsplash

The role of our immune system is to keep germs and other invaders out of our bodies and attack harmful foreign substances that get in to keep us safe and healthy. The Cancer Research Institute describes our immune system this way: “The immune system is the body’s natural defense system. It does not reside in one single part of the body—rather, it is made up of a network of cells, molecules, tissues, and organs working together to protect the body. Each of these elements plays a key role in how the immune system works and its function as a whole, which is crucial to preventing infection or disease.”

The mission of the US Department of Justice (DOJ) is to uphold the rule of law, to keep our country safe, and to protect civil rights. The immune system is a good metaphor for the intended role of DOJ and some other federal agencies—they are designed to uphold the constitution and our laws and protect American citizens from criminal elements and other hazards. It is one of several institutions that form a network to defend our democracy and keep it healthy.

I would argue that many nonprofits play specific roles in our democracy’s immune system as well by facilitating voluntary action and civic engagement, caring for people, and challenging behaviors that run counter to our nation’s highest values. We complement the missions of DOJ, the Environmental Protection Agency, the Department of Health and Human Services, etc. I’ve also heard the nonprofit sector described as the “connective tissue” of our country.

If this is true, then the current activities of DOJ and other federal agencies can be likened to our American democracy’s immune system going haywire, as our body’s immune system does when we have an autoimmune disorder. With autoimmune dysfunction, the immune system mistakenly attacks healthy tissue, failing to distinguish between our body’s own cells and harmful invaders.

DOJ is currently engaging in politically-motivated attacks on nonprofits and public institutions. Concern about DOJ going after nonprofits has been mounting since President Trump issued the Countering Domestic Terrorism and Organized Political Violence memo on September 25, 2025, directing federal agencies to investigate, prosecute, and disrupt nonprofit organizations the Administration (mis)characterizes as supporting or funding domestic terrorism. The same day, the New York Times reported that Trump was directing DOJ to investigate and seek to bring criminal charges against George Soros’ Open Society Foundations. Accusations and charges have been levied against many organizations since then. In January, DOJ targeted hospitals such as the Children’s Hospital Los Angeles, subpoenaing records related to the provision of gender-affirming care.

This week, DOJ indicted the Southern Poverty Law Center (accusations of donor and bank fraud connected to its use of paid informants to gather information about hate groups) and announced an investigation of the University of Washington (for anti-semitism, based on off-campus activities of the group Students United For Palestinian Equality and Return-UW which is not currently a registered UW student organization). In addition, the US Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) recently announced that it was launching a fair housing investigation of the Washington State Housing Finance Commission’s Covenant Housing Program, a bipartisan effort to redress the impact on redlining on Black residents and their descendants through favorable housing loans and assistance with closing costs. These are clear attacks on organizations that have failed to align with Trump’s policy priorities—which is not a crime!

I list all these instances to illustrate that this governmental autoimmune disorder is advanced, widespread, and already causing lots of destruction. Let’s hope the body politic can heal itself soon.

Photo description: Photo taken from above of people of all ages navigating a maze. Photo by Susan Q Yin on Unsplash.

Yes! This is the vocabulary I needed to describe my current journey to get a total knee replacement. When I was sharing a little about the alienating, technology-mediated, bureaucratic maze I am navigating to get care and its impact on my mood, resilience, and feelings about the upcoming procedure, my friend who works in public health research immediately rattled off these terms and sent me a relevant article (thanks, Jessica!).

To receive healthcare for serious and complex conditions, patients and their caregivers are forced—during a difficult time—to spend considerable time and energy engaged in understanding and completing forms, scheduling, advocating for themselves, appealing insurance denials, and jumping through many other hoops. In addition, people are often unprepared for the financial costs of serious illness, as we gradually learn that some of the high costs are not covered by insurance. Financial pressures create additional strain. The concepts of financial and time toxicity were invented to describe the toll that these burdens take on patients dealing with serious medical issues such as cancer.

Studies show that these are “prognostic for adherence [to treatment], quality of life, and survival.” Not in a good way. In fact, the impacts are dramatically negative, leading to quotes like this one in the article referenced above: “More recently, the concept of time toxicity has drawn attention to the lived days consumed by cumulative treatment demands (e.g., travel, waiting, and clinic visits) that may rival or even exceed the months of life gained.” Yikes!

Thankfully, my situation is not life-threatening. But there are moments when I feel like I am in the twilight zone, and I’ve already burst into tears in the doctor’s office. I’ve still got a long haul of authorizations to secure, long distances to drive to appointments, and bills to monitor and appeal before paying.

What does this have to do with nonprofits?

I do believe that much of the burden that patients are experiencing is driven by companies seeking to maximize profit. Across most industries, companies are cutting customer service, relying on automated systems, and externalizing the costs of doing business, often onto customers. But nonprofits are not motivated by greed, so surely they are not going to engage in toxic behaviors. Nonprofits are here for our clients and strive to make their lives better, right? Definitely, and we do every day. However, we can also create financial and time toxicity for clients or increase administrative burden. This happens through our intake and screening processes, requirements to prove eligibility for services, and collection of data to demonstrate our impact. The required data and screening criteria are usually dictated by public or private funding sources, either directly or indirectly. They may not be aware of the impact to people at the frontline level.

The burden of some of these requirements can fall more heavily on people living in poverty, unhoused people, and people with limited English-speaking ability. For these folks, access to computers and internet may be limited, they may not be able to understand and navigate the required forms, or their time may be constrained due to basic survival demands.

The burdens may be also increased by the use of automation and AI assistance. Nonprofits who are stretched thin are perhaps particularly vulnerable to being enticed by “labor-saving devices” to help us “do more with less.” This can leave potential and current clients struggling to navigate an online portal without human assistance, worsening their stress and increasing time toxicity. A nonprofit or public agency deciding to utilize AI screening, predictive software, and chatbots should thoroughly consider the potential downsizes, including whether they are simply shifting burdens onto their clients (as well as additional thorny ethical and privacy issues).

It is worth reevaluating the necessity of the administrative requirements we place on participants. Are we asking something that is reasonable and proportionate to the benefit received? Is all the information we are asking for being utilized? What is the purpose of screening criteria? Are we still comfortable with the rationale for the screening? Historically, poor people have been scrutinized to determine whether they are the “right kind” of poor people who are deserving of charity. Don’t we now know better than to believe that poverty is caused by the individual, independent of outside forces like racism and traumatic events? Some nonprofits ask these questions as a part of rationing and targeting services. This is understandable, but also somewhat problematic. Can we really devise a few questions that separate out the truly needy from pretenders? Is there any evidence that pretending is a widespread or a worthwhile endeavor for non-needy individuals?

I like to imagine a future world where people’s basic needs are met, eliminating the necessity of judging the worthiness of others. Until then, I will continue to advocate for less intrusive, less toxic interventions and greater respect for the humanity and dignity of all people.

Image description: a counter with food (soup and samosas) laid out on it. Photo by Antony Hyson Seltran on Unsplash.

Have you been following the media attention recently on social connection as a basic building block of democracy (and humanity)? In case some missed it, I thought I would offer some links to articles and podcasts that speak to both our hunger for connection and the political nature of building community with friends and neighbors. I have also written about the value of these types of connections among neighbors, building relationships with friends and comrades, and about the sad state of social connection in the US.

Here are a few links to explore:

· Garrett Bucks’ latest article, Seven reasons why hosting a silly little potluck (or game night, or porch hang, or book club, or group hike) is essential to defeating fascism, is getting a lot of attention. He has been writing about related topics for while via The White Pages, including the lovely Potluck Manifesto.

· I was very charmed by Amanda Littman’s reflection on hosting guests for Saturday night dinners every week in 2025, Our year of Saturday dinners. So was everyone. What is nice about this piece is that it specifically explains how and why she and her husband made a resolution and then stuck to it, and covers a lot of the logistics, addressing many of the reasons others might be daunted by a project like this and how they overcame challenges in order to “rebuild community and expand our social life.” It worked!

· I very much enjoyed the conversation Fight Facism with Friendship with Priya Parker, her husband Anand Giridharadas, and Anya Kamenetz. It was cross-posted on Anand’s The Ink Substack and Priya’s Group Life Substack (and perhaps Anya’s Golden Hour Substack as well)—I don’t know if it is accessible without a paid subscription. They speak frankly about some of the problems of modern social life—people’s fears about hosting, people not feeling obligated to reciprocate invitations, social media as a pale substitute for in-person interaction, and much more. And the conversation is solutions-oriented, giving tips for making friends, hosting in a way that works for you, and generally building social connection. Priya Parker can also be heard (or seen, if you are into this new trend of video podcasts) on overlapping topics on the Ezra Klein show: Is Your Social Life Missing Something? This Conversation Is For You.

If you feel inspired to join a movement for local connection and caring communities, check out this awesome manifesto for (re)building civic life that is fun, relevant, and relational: An Invitation to a New Civic Future. If you agree with their principles, you can join me in sign-on to express your agreement and commitment.

There are many more folks writing and talking about related topics right now. Please add a link to your favorite in the comments.

It’s a nice relief from the madness of our current moment to affirm that bringing people together is a political act. It can’t be the only one, but it is foundational to know each other in order to work together. Our neighborhood, like so many around the country, is mobilizing to resist ICE. It’s clear that leaders of our neighborhood group understand the value of relationship building to this effort. They talk a lot about vetting, but what they really mean is knowing who you can trust. If the going gets tougher, none of us will regret the time we spent building a circle of people we can count on. Fortunately, it’s also fun. Let’s do it!

Image description: A healthcare provider sharing information with a patient in a clinic. Photo by CDC on Unsplash.

You may wish to read Part 1 first for an overview of the challenges with private equity. This post focuses specifically on how private equity encroachment is impacting nonprofits and the communities they serve.

Many people may assume that private equity is an issue of concern and interest mainly to the business sector and wealthy investors. However, there are places where nonprofits either compete or collaborate with private equity-owned businesses. Their actions impact our sector significantly (and not just by impoverishing more workers who in turn need supportive services).

Many nonprofit hospitals contract with private equity-controlled staffing agencies to staff their ERs, seeking lower costs. Unfortunately, the corners that these companies cut can impact patient safety and health. During the COVID pandemic an ER doctor at PeaceHealth’s St. Joseph’s Hospital in Bellingham, Washington, was fired by the contract staffing firm who managed the ER, TeamHealth (owned by Blackstone), when he publicly criticized the hospital’s infection control procedures during the pandemic.

Sometimes, financially strapped nonprofit hospitals sell to private equity rather than continue as nonprofits. For example, in 2017, St Joseph’s Regional Medical Center in Lewiston, Idaho, was sold by a nonprofit Catholic healthcare organization, Ascension, to private equity-backed RCCH Healthcare Partners. Changes have included discontinuation of outpatient psychiatric services and psychological evaluations in the ER, reductions in specialty care, and ongoing physician recruitment challenges. Research proves that deaths rise in hospitals that are acquired by private equity firms. Side note: When nonprofits sell to for-profits, the proceeds are generally used to set up a healthcare conversion foundation, which has been a growth area in recent years. This acquisition resulted in the Lewis-Clark Valley Healthcare Foundation.

As private equity firms have grown and are seeking new targets for their takeovers, they have expanded into several industries with many nonprofit providers, including healthcare, nursing homes and retirement communities, and childcare. Distressed nonprofits have sold to them, as have local governments. The have been particularly aggressive in acquiring rural hospitals and nursing homes where patients lack other options and may be forced to accept sub-par services.

As private equity expands into additional care industries, it competes directly with nonprofit providers. For example, many large childcare centers are corporate chains owned by private equity. In the Seattle area, these include KinderCare (27 centers in Seattle alone), the Learning Care group (at least 20 centers in the metro area including La Petite Academy locations), and Goddard School (six sites and growing). Other industries are equally impacted, including nursing homes, substance abuse treatment centers, and methadone clinics (nationally, one-third of methadone clinics are private equity-controlled). This expansion and consolidation of previously independent providers is likely a major contributor to nonprofit job loss (We lost 5.2% of our workforce in social assistance between 2017 and 2022, according to the Nonprofit Employment Data Project. Some of this was COVID-related, but I suspect the trend will continue to some degree.).

In addition to facing competition, nonprofits cannot expect support from these entities. Large corporations based elsewhere are less likely to give locally to nonprofits than local businesses. Private equity firms are even less likely to be philanthropic—not only are they not local, they focus solely on investor returns, and they do not intend to stay, typically turning over businesses with a few years.

What can we do?

There is hope! Communities all over the US are fighting back against privatization and private equity takeovers. The podcast To See Each Other documents the fight of a small town in Wisconsin to keep its nursing home public. And Bad Company: Private Equity and the Death of the American Dream profiles grassroots resistance against private equity’s damaging impacts on communities. Finally, state pension fund participants and Guaranteed Education Tuition (GET) fundholders can let the Washington State Investment Board (or the equivalent in your state) know that you want your retirement and/or education savings funds to be invested in businesses that have a positive community impact, not in private equity. To ensure ethical, socially responsible investing, you can also support efforts like SB6304, a Washington State Senate bill (unfortunately, stalled for this year) that “ensures that responsible principles of investing are incorporated into the investment decision making of the Washington State Investing Board.”

I would also love to see more research comparing outcomes at nonprofit and for-profit service providers. While I recognize that both types of organizations can provide quality care, removing the profit motive seems likely to improve the odds of higher quality services. Even absent such research, nonprofits should proudly indicate their nonprofit status and commitment to mission. This is a differentiator if we can get the word out. Without it, I fear that nonprofits will continue to lose market share in many fields.

Image description: Close-up of a “closed” sign in a window. Photo by Tim Mossholder on Unsplash.

It’s time to learn about the economy. I suspect that people who aren’t outraged about the state of the financial sector haven’t taken the time to understand it. Unfortunately, even though we may feel we aren’t participating, our financial wellbeing and our community institutions are very much at risk, and our retirement savings are invested in some very unsavory ventures.

It is true that the economy is complex. Traditional economic theory no longer reliably explains what is happening. But there are some basics that everyone can understand. Please don’t stop reading, even if you are one of those people that glaze over when presented with a spreadsheet.

Private equity is bad

I have been following and ranting about the rise of private equity for years now, but I haven’t tried to write about it. It’s easy to ramble as it is pervasive and hard to explain. I’m going to try now because I really believe we need to sound the alarm about it and be on the defense when even greater private equity infiltration of our communities is happening.

Private equity is an investment option where investors pool their wealth in shared funds that are used to invest in companies and manage them for short-term gain, often extracting wealth from them and leaving them for dead. It is also known as vulture capitalism. This area of investing has grown tremendously. Private equity investing is higher risk but has generated greater returns than the stock market, leading to more money being invested this way as investors seek high returns. Unfortunately, the returns are generated at the expense of workers and communities. There are numerous examples documented of the way in which private equity ruthlessly extracts resources from companies and exits leaving them indebted and crippled. I can’t really cover them in a short post, but I highly recommend Bad Company: Private Equity and the Death of the American Dream (very readable descriptions of what happens when private equity firms acquire an apartment complex, a hospital, and more). To better understand how private equity firms were invented and grew, check out These are the Plunderers: How Private Equity Runs—and Wrecks—America.

There are several problems with private equity:

· Ethical concerns – This is the biggest concern. Make no mistake: private equity generates big returns at the expense of average people. Short-term profits are prioritized over long-term health or even survival of acquired businesses. Tactics like shrinking staff, reducing salaries, selling off property and other assets, and saddling companies with unmanageable debt generate immediate, large returns for investors. If the companies taken over by private equity were providing non-essential products and services, this might not be a major concern. However, private equity firms, in an insatiable search for new money-making opportunities, are now heavily invested in care industries like healthcare, childcare, and senior housing.

· They are sneaky – Private equity firms acquire companies but don’t necessary want you to know that your hometown local businesses are now owned by the evil empire. They often maintain the original branding but make changes that are detrimental to affordability and quality of care. Their real estate companies have names like Inspire Housing (Apollo Global Management), YES! Communities (Stockbridge Capital Partners), and Hometown America (Calzada Capital Partners). They depend on your continued patronage until they extract their profits and leave again.

· They target disempowered people – Private equity firms purchase distressed properties and businesses. The invest in rural hospitals because rural residents have no alternatives when care quality declines. They target mobile home parks where low-income residents can’t actually move their homes and are stuck paying escalating land rents (or being evicted).

· High risk, waning return – Private equity has outperformed the stock market for many years, however, it is far riskier, and many believe that the golden era of high returns for private equity is ending. Significant losses are possible and the industry has fewer safeguards than the stock market. This may be why Trump and other ultra-wealthy investors are now “democratizing investing”—encouraging “average people” to invest and pump more money into the now rotten system.

Here are a few statistics that indicate how pervasive private equity is now:

· 25-40% of US hospital emergency rooms are staffed and/or managed by private equity-controlled companies.

· Private equity firms own over 53,000 apartments in the Seattle-Tacoma Metro Area. Nationally, they own approximately 10% of apartment stock, and 25-35% in some Sunbelt cities.

· 25-30% of US veterinary practices are owned and controlled by private equity firms, as well as 75% of specialty and emergency vets (these are more lucrative).

Why should you care

Private equity’s focus on profits over people contributes to job losses, wage stagnation, and rising prices. It hurts us all when doctors have less discretion and less time with patients, or when vet prices skyrocket, or when nursing homes are understaffed. An additional concern is the way in which institutional investors have increasingly staked our future on private equity investments. Last week, the Seattle Times published WA Treasurer warns state to pull back on private equity investments. This is an excellent article that outlines how the Washington State Investment Board has gone deeper and deeper into private equity investments to chase bigger returns to keep the pension fund solvent. Our state now has 28% of the state pension fund invested in private equity firms. This is double the rate of most other states. I find it sad, illogical, and morally indefensible for public sector institutions who are stewarding the funds of workers to invest in the destructive practices of private equity.

On Saturday, Part 2 will zoom in on the ways that private equity presents challenges for nonprofits.

Image description: overhead view of a file drawer full of paper. Image by Ag Ku from Pixabay

Nonprofit leaders need to fundraise. There is no way around it in our current context. Effective leaders are typically able to communicate in a compelling way about their organization’s work and attract resources.

How has the fundraising arena changed over the past 35 years? My first fundraising job was stepping into the role of the first Development Director at Gay Community News in 1991 at age 24. I was raising funds using grassroots techniques learned by reading Kim Klein’s classic book Fundraising for Social Change (first published in 1985, now in its 8^th edition) and talking with more experienced colleagues. I maintained a database of supporters and appealed to them via our newspaper, mail appeals, local events, telethons staffed by our board and volunteers, and in-person solicitations. The keys to success were well-crafted appeals, systematic asking, understanding how bulk rate mail worked, and thank you notes.

We also asked some of our more famous supporters to headline events when they came to town (I got to meet Dorothy Allison, Essex Hemphill, Urvashi Vaid, Susie Bright, Allison Bechdel, and many more LGBT authors and activists) and organized big dance parties and Boston’s first Gay and Lesbian Film Festival (yes, it was that long ago), raising modest amounts of money through ticket sales. In addition to raising funds, we were building community and solidarity within the community. Our vision was inclusive and intersectional, and we were ensuring that journalism by and for the queer community was available. Because we were not yet so assimilated, we knew we had to do this for ourselves, including raising the funds to make it happen. Do I sound nostalgic? Maybe I am. The LGBTQIA+ community is much more fragmented today, and many of the more privileged people within our community are comfortable and out of touch with the survival struggles of more marginalized people.

So, what does this have to do with how fundraising has changed? Certainly, some of the elements are still the same. Here are a few observations:

Individual giving: Many nonprofits have a greater divide between their donors and their participants than was present 35 years ago. Due to increasing wealth inequality, many are forced to chase bigger gifts from the wealthy few. These wealthy few may be harder to identify and to form a relationship with, with many using donor-advised funds or foundations as intermediaries. In addition, fewer households give at all. In 1991, 72% of US households gave to charity, and today the percentage is under 50%.

Corporate giving: Back in the day, it was relatively easy to identify who owned local businesses and approach them personally for sponsorship or in-kind gifts. You could observe what level of sponsorship they offered to other nonprofits and calibrate your ask more easily. Even at businesses that were under a corporate umbrella such as the local bank or grocery store, community giving was usually handled at the local level by the branch manager. Now, corporate giving tends to be consolidated more centrally and may be based on trying to stand out in an online submission rather than a personal relationship. Many corporations have very narrow sponsorship criteria that must be aligned with their business interests.

Foundation giving: Years ago, there were fewer foundations, but more of them had broad giving guidelines and offered unrestricted grants. Reporting requirements were minimal. United Way still provided general support to a set number of “member organizations” and talked about a “safety net” rather than “impact.” Most giving was to “mainline” nonprofit organizations that claimed to serve everyone but tend to be white-led and very much reflected the dominant culture. Applying for grants was onerous—it was common that grantors required applicants to submit a thick packet of written information with a narrative and many attachments. Sometimes, the requirement was to mail or drop off ten or twelve copies of the complete application packet, so that they could be distributed to each of the people on the decision-making committee. Things have changed a lot, for better and for worse. As much as I dislike some of the online grant portals, it’s been good to leave the paper-intensive processes behind. I do miss the days when many foundations were open to a wide range of nonprofit work. I understand the desire to specialize, but this approach may discourage cross-pollination and collaborative missions that combine insights and strengths from several fields to accomplish their work (arts-based outdoor ed, intergenerational work, etc.).

I share these observations just to acknowledge that times have changed. For those of you who have worked in the sector for many years, do my perceptions match yours? What other changes do you see? And how do you feel that times have changed for better or worse?

Image description: Close up of two people working together with laptops and a page of paper with complex notations on it. Photo by Scott Graham on Unsplash.

The emphasis on measurable outcomes and data collection has grown tremendously during my career. In my earlier years in the sector, making the case—telling the story about the need your organization was addressing and your solution—was important, but data was less critical. Now, funders are demanding much more proof of impact than in prior decades. The logic behind this trend is that funders and donors want to invest in effective programs that really achieve the changes they claim to. Nonprofits must be accountable and demonstrate their effectiveness, so that funding can be directed to where it will do the most good. Of course, nonprofit folks also want to do effective work, and good evaluation is formative as well as summative—it allows for learning and continuous program improvement.

A whole industry has grown up to help nonprofits develop evaluation systems, collect and analyze data, and report on their outcomes. Evaluation is difficult, time-consuming, and expensive if done well. Even beyond the effort and expense, evaluation can have additional challenges. It can require nonprofits to collect information from their clients that is invasive, time-consuming, and may discourage some from participating. Due to resource constraints, most nonprofits do evaluation poorly or incompletely and present results that are not truly proven. A few manage to get the funding to not only do their work, but also to evaluate it rigorously and establish evidence-based programs. With this gold seal of approval, they can replicate their program in new communities. These programs can be great, but they are also static, maintaining fidelity to the original approach and unable to adapt to changing community conditions.

Is formal evaluation worth it? Yes, but not always. It is important to strike the right balance between doing the work and evaluating it, and to do it in a way that does not damage your client relationships.

Some articles that I have read recently raise even deeper, more philosophical concerns about evaluation and measurement.

In The Tyranny of the Measurable, Mike Chitty outlines what is lost when we focus too heavily on measurable results. He comments, “When care is reduced to measurable output, it ceases to be care in the full moral sense. It becomes service provision. Task Completion. Risk mitigation. And something vital, something human, is amputated from the work.” He calls for a balanced approach that values storytelling along with data and refuses to reduce our work to things we can count.

In We Optimized Everything, And Made It Worse, Michelle Flores Vryn argues that “philanthropy has mistaken volume for value” and nonprofit programs are distorted as “programs get built around funder priorities instead of the highest needs. And success gets measured in dollars, not in lives changed or systems transformed.” She also addresses the problems with scaling (covered in prior posts), saying “Systems don’t scale. They can only transform. Choosing “scale” as your north star deprioritizes the dynamics that actually enable systems to work better, like relational cohesion, trust and belonging.”

I think that evaluation is most useful when it is used not to determine the worthiness of a particular program for funding, but to advance the field. We need research that helps us understand the most strategic ways to reduce hunger, encourage college completion, reduce violence, etc. It needs to be shared within relevant professional associations and used for learning and continuous improvement.

The history of GiveDirectly is instructive. GiveDirectly was started as sort of the anti-program program—an experiment to see whether just giving cash directly to poor people in Africa would have more impact than the programs that had been developed to serve them in a more structured way. If so, why not just provide resources and not put the energy into developing organizations, training staff to be helpers and case managers, and putting specific requirements on how any funds provided could be spent? The appeal is obvious: rather than a paternalistic approach to people in poverty, GiveDirectly assumes that poor people are capable of running their own lives. Rather than spending the bulk of aid on organizational infrastructure to deliver the aid, the funds would go directly to people in need. The good news is that this approach has been very successful, and there is a large body of research now confirming that direct cash payments change lives and lift people out of poverty. Please read about this type of work to better understand how the United States can benefit from Guaranteed Basic Income!

GiveDirectly is an interesting case study. It shows that a simple, non-bureaucratic approach to aid can be effective. At the same time, it has grown because of its investment in formal evaluation to prove the model. Ironically, they are playing the game, too. But most importantly, it drives home a key point: form must follow function, and we can’t let organization-building get in the way of mission achievement. For nonprofit leaders working to hold their organizations together under intensifying external pressures, this point is critical.

Image description: A picture of me trying to look professional back in 2010.

In the 1990s, most nonprofit CEOs grew into their positions in nonprofits or founded their organizations. Except for specialized nonprofits (medical, legal, etc.), graduate degrees were not thought of as a requirement for leadership. We still sometimes called our sector the “voluntary sector,” and passion for the mission was the primary qualification for the work. Running a nonprofit was hard work but far less technical than it is today.

Over the decades that I have worked in and with nonprofits, the academic field of nonprofit management has exploded. My personal story illustrates some of the change that has taken place. When I looked for graduate education in this area in 1993, there were just a handful of business/management/policy graduate programs nationally with a central focus on nonprofits. I applied to MBA programs and MPA programs and eventually chose the University of Washington Graduate School of Public Affairs (now the UW Evans School of Public Affairs). The liberal bent of a public policy and management school seemed like a better fit than a business school, and this program had greater flexibility to take classes outside the department and create your own concentration. At that time, the department had just one course focused on nonprofits, taught by Nancy Long and Frank Chopp. I became the first student to graduate with a concentration in nonprofit management by proposing an independent concentration, but it took over a year to convince the curriculum committee that nonprofit management and policy was a valid field of study. Within a few years, faculty focused on nonprofits were hired and the study of nonprofits became an integral part of the school’s offerings. I started teaching at the graduate level in 1998 at UW and later at Seattle University, and I have loved being a part of this field.

I am a nonprofit nerd, and I am so glad that we now have serious research about our sector and are learning constantly. But I also recognize that there has been a kind of inflation going on—people feel pressure to go to school rather than learn on the job and then require higher salaries to pay off their student loan debt and survive. Knowledge about statistics, formal evaluation, resource development, and policy advocacy can help our organizations get ahead. It can also lead to educated elites outcompeting community-based leaders and groups for resources and attention.

Professionalism can also be weaponized. There can be a tendency to look down on others who do not know the same things that you do. Given inequitable access to education, this results in the same people who have always been marginalized having their voices sidelined within the nonprofit sector despite our professed commitments to DEI.

As Jan Masaoka has observed in an excellent series of articles on volunteers, this attitude can often be extended to nonprofit staff feeling superior to volunteers and treating them poorly. This is an assault to the “voluntary sector” from within, and it hurts us. While I very much understand the equity-based call to eliminate unpaid internships and to pay people fairly for their labor, I also see the decline of volunteerism and civic engagement as a huge vulnerability for our democracy. Much good has been accomplished by voluntary action, and we still need it—witness the mutual aid networks that emerged during COVID and now in Minneapolis to ensure the neighbors’ basic needs are met. If we lose the habit of volunteering and the leadership and cooperation skills associated with voluntary action, we lose some of our agency.

So, let’s tap the power of nonprofit education, but also recognize that it must be paired with a real reverence for authentic, grounded community action and voluntary engagement.

Image description: surreal image with a landscape of dead trees, a figure, and several distorted pocket watches flying overhead. Image by Susann Mielke from Pixabay

Over the course of my 35-year nonprofit career, the nonprofit sector and the requirements for leadership have changed significantly. I have witnessed positive and negative shifts, and I have definitely had to adapt to change. I’ve absorbed the new requirements slowly and been able to adjust to most of them. Luckily, I truly enjoy learning. But it is clear to me that possessing all the skills and knowledge ideally needed to run a modern nonprofit is difficult to impossible. This is of course not news. The question is, how do we daylight some of the trends and requirements and reevaluate which are actual improving our results?

In my next three posts, I will discuss how expectations of nonprofit leaders have changed over the course of my own career in the areas of professionalization, evaluation, and fundraising.

Image description: a fern leaf about to unfurl. Photo by Agathe on Unsplash.

Having recognized that scalability has significant shortcomings, we can inquire how the concept relates to nonprofits. Scaling is a topic of much discussion in the nonprofit sector. Proponents of scaling argue that nonprofits are not making a substantial enough impact on the big social challenges of our day, and that big challenges require big solutions. Therefore, they have developed an area of practice devoted to scaling up successful programs to have exponential impact.

This approach is appealing to funders who want to drive measurable, large-scale change. If a program has proven results at the local level, why not replicate it nationally? Interest in scalable projects is also very high in the field of international aid, where a model that can help hundreds of villages seems preferable to one that is particular to a single location or region.

Of course, spreading good ideas and approaches more widely is valuable. Helping more people escape poverty or more teens graduating high school is something we all want. Why not establish the effectiveness of an approach through evaluation and then replicate it widely? Considerable good has been accomplished in this manner, and the literature lifts up some great examples of local programs that have been expanded to serve many more people. Best of all, some proven programs such as pre-k programs and hospice care are adopted as public priorities and added to the list the things that receive regular government funding and are reliably available.

But there are reasons for caution as well. Scaling often relies on business theories about how to replicate services, and this top-down, managerial approach has limitations. As noted in the last post, scalability tends to reduce workers’ roles to replicable, defined key actions and reduce the use of human judgment. A key premise of scaling is that evidence-based programs need to be delivered with fidelity to the original, proven model. Flexibility, reliance on local knowledge and culture, and tapping the unique talents of staff delivering the services may be discouraged as these introduce new variables.

Can we embrace nonscalability? Nonscalability is concerned with honoring and tapping into complexity and interdependence. Natural ecosystems such as the now familiar metaphor of symbiotic trees and mycorrhizal networks are examples of nonscalable networks. Elements within a nonscalable network are open to transformation. If we are imitating this type of organization, we will prioritize relationships and embrace constant change and evolution of our ways of working and delivering value to the communities we serve. In such a system, ideas will spread organically and be adapted to new settings, and diversity becomes a strength rather than a challenge to be managed. Growth will take place via fractals (simple rules iterated to form patterns like a snowflake or fern leaf), not the precision-nesting approach (planned, hierarchical structures inside structures like a files in folders in drives) used to take projects to scale. An adaptable system such as this is more responsive and able to navigate and survive changing conditions.

The paragraphs above are dense and filled with jargon. Clearly, there is work to do to think through how to popularize these ideas and apply them in the workplace. Further, nonscalability is not aligned with our current dominant culture and reward system in nonprofit organizations. There is considerable work to do to ensure that resources flow to support a new way of managing programs and organizations. Resourcing nonscalable social impact projects requires a high level of trust and an ongoing relationship to maintain the trust. Even with this barrier to widespread implementation at present, Anna Tsing’s work inspires me to think a little differently about management and leadership and gives me one of those glimpses into how things can work better.

Image description: a close-up of the center of a sunflower, displaying an amazing spiraling pattern of seeds. Photo by Mathew Schwartz on Unsplash.

In my continuing search for insight about how to transform nonprofits and civil society, I am reading a wide variety of things. I’m finding challenging ideas that are compelling and difficult to fully comprehend and apply in my life and my consulting practice. I think of these as glimpses of what could be next, or elements on which to build a new understanding about how we can build a better society. I’m hungry for new insights, and thus willing to struggle to comprehend these ideas and look for patterns and opportunities to bring them together in my work. The main ideas we currently rely on feel inadequate, so I will continue to explore new approaches.

I recently discovered Anna Tsing’s new work on nonscalability. Her article, On Nonscalability: The Living World is Not Amenable to Precision-Nested Scales, is a bit academic, but so interesting (and there is a book as well, to really go deep). We all have work to do to unpack and unlearn capitalism and to see clearly the way it has shaped our lives, particularly our attitudes and expectations about work and worth. I find this article helpful, and to me, it relates to several trends in the nonprofit sector: the emphasis on productivity and measurement and the zeal for scaling up successful programs.

Tsing discusses how capitalism has focused on creating industries that standardize the elements of production to maximize production and profit. Factories and many other modern workplaces are modelled on the economic success of plantations, the original model for reducing plants (sugar cane), land (cleared and plowed), and people (enslaved) to interchangeable, predictable “nonsoels”—an abbreviation for “nonchangeable landscape elements.” These “nonsoels” are alienated from nature as a means of standardizing their performance. After outlining the rise of the scalable plantation and factory, she discusses the application of these principles to forestry in the Pacific Northwest. She notes that monocrop timber plantations are largely a failed experiment and that communities are left with “ruins” when scaled production fails and is abandoned. Into the ruins, nonscalability reasserts itself in interesting ways, as in the growth of matsusake mushrooms in the Eastern Cascades, a mushroom that cannot be cultivated and scaled but is highly prized.

Clearly, the scalable mode of operating has negative consequences. It reduces complex people and nature to alienated workers and cleared land. It is resource-intensive and dependent on endless growth and continued availability of cheap inputs. Relationships, diversity, and change undermine it and are not tolerated. Fortunately, she observes, “Scalability is never complete. If the world is still diverse and dynamic, it is because scalability never fulfills its own promises.” Perhaps those elements that are intentionally cleansed to create scalable projects are the ones we need to lift up to create something more natural and sustainable for our future.

Next post: How does Anna Tsing’s critique of scalability relate to nonprofits?