Strengthening nonprofits for an uncertain future - Lessons from the Middle Ages

In the Middle Ages, the strongest part of the town was its castle- often built atop the highest point of town and fortified by thick walls. The Middle Ages, a time marked in European history books as the time between the fall of the Roman Empire and the rise of the Renaissance was a thousand years of documented and undocumented uncertainty, famine, plague, and invasion.

During this period, the castle served not just as the nobleman's residence but also as a fortress where villagers could find refuge in the event of an enemy invasion. The walls of the castle could be anywhere from 2 meters to 6 meters thick and proved to be the best defensive measure to protect the townspeople from danger.

I, like many of you, are looking at what is ahead of us in the nonprofit space. I can only make out an amorphous horizon of uncertainty.

As a natural problem-solver who, when faced with a problem, seeks to gain its full picture and identify a staged, planned approach to address it, uncertainty is not a place in which I like to be.

There are areas where we can anticipate certain danger

-          a decrease in government funding crucial to nonprofit sustainability; and

-          an increase in the needs of vulnerable communities

While the exact details are vague and difficult to anticipate, some leaders have been actively working to protect areas they speculate will be targeted first:

-          climate justice

-          immigration

-          LGBTQIA+ rights

-          housing security

-          public education

Such news may provide a small measure of reassurance in the face of what we know will be some difficult years.

In these coming years, nonprofits will be, as they have always been, the backbone of our social safety net. The need for housing advocacy, justice for system-involved youth, support for survivors of violence, nonprofit capacity building, equitable access to education, food security, affordable health services, etc. etc. etc. will remain.

A village finds fortitude in both collective action and division of labor. We need each other and we need to specialize in the tasks in which we all excel.

For my part, I am committed to continuing to help nonprofits become more efficient, to work with them to identify, implement, and evaluate the programs that lead to the highest impact and allow them to serve those in need of their services. As resources are threatened, I believe this is the best role I can play to help contribute to our collective action.  

There is uncertainty ahead, but here is what I know for certain: there are incredible people in this world, doing incredible things to fight against incredible problems. I have the great privilege of knowing quite a few of them personally. In fact, if you are reading this, you probably are one of them.

You are my village. You are my castle. You are building the walls behind which our communities will be best protected from the dangers to come. 

I am surrounding myself with you and your work and I am putting my head down and doing the work I know I am best at, using my skillset, knowledge base, and experience, to buttress the walls with you.