By Steve Zimmerman
There was a strange feeling in the ballroom at the recent Nonprofit Summit of the Midlands, hosted by the Nonprofit Association of the Midlands in Omaha, Nebraska. In the midst of the longest government shutdown in history, a legal battle over funding for SNAP benefits, concerns about cash flow tied up in unpaid government contracts – not to mention the retrenchment in federal funding overall and the usual anxieties about staff well-being and year-end giving – there was, unexpectedly, a sense of hope.
The hope came from a shared belief in the importance of the missions represented in the room, and the power of the nonprofit sector to bring people together to strengthen and enrich our communities. As the poet of the event, Gina Tranisi, so beautifully reminded us: hope is not a plan. And yet, nonprofit leaders are constantly planning – planning to navigate uncertainty, mitigate risks and respond to challenges and seize opportunities.
The conference brought me back to several articles we’ve written lately on these themes: from Navigating Uncertainty to Scenario Positioning to the COVID-era Reimagining Nonprofits, and even our introductory work on the matrix map, a visual depiction of an organization’s business model that points to strategic imperatives for strengthening it. Looking across these writings, I realized something simple but profound: the common thread in all of them is community.
With the pressures nonprofits face today and, frankly, have faced since the Great Recession of 2008 if not before, our consistent approach has been to tap into the collective wisdom of community to move organizations forward and deepen mission impact. In times like these, no one person has the answer. Our missions are better served when people come together to surface possibilities, test assumptions, and decide – together – where to go next.
That begins with transparency. When we share information openly, we invite people to meaningfully engage in the conversation and share their (perhaps very different) perspectives. We never know where the best idea may come from, or who will see the path we’re missing. And as situations change, our sense of community may need to expand and evolve with them to include even broader representation.
Nonprofits are, at their heart, community-based organizations, governed and staffed by people who live in the communities they serve. They exist because individuals believe that together they can make their corner of the world better: by caring for seniors and people with disabilities, educating and developing youth, ensuring basic needs are met, protecting our environment and animals, and enriching our lives through arts and culture.
Our world is full of complex challenges, and mission accomplishment for many organizations is more difficult than ever. But we don’t have to do it alone. This moment is an opportunity to broaden how we think about community to ask who else is contributing to similar or complementary missions and to explore new ways of functioning that are more connected, more collaborative, and more resilient.
Trends and many experts suggest that 2026 will not be an easy year for nonprofits. Organizations will need to be clear where their expertise truly lies and protect their core, while recognizing that status-quo management practices won’t lead to greater success in a changing environment.
To do that, we should remind ourselves of community.
Hope may not be a strategy – but community can be one. And when building community is practiced intentionally and well, it brings us closer together, strengthens our work, and gives real, durable reasons for hope.
Thank you for all you do for community. All of us at Spectrum Nonprofit Services are honored to be your partner on this journey.
Visit our Nonprofit Resource Hub for more actionable insights from the Spectrum Nonprofit Services team.
Photo by Kristy Nuttall on Unsplash