I’ve participated in many conversations lately about the state of the nonprofit sector. Leaders are feeling the upheaval of the last few years deeply, and many are uncertain about what comes next.
A scarcity mindset isn’t new to the sector, but I’ve seen it become more pervasive. Faced with uncertainty, organizations are pulling back. Leaders assume the worst and react to immediate problems rather than building the capacity to navigate them.
The response is understandable. When resources feel scarce, survival takes priority. How do we maintain programs? Protect funding? Meet growing needs with limited resources?
But resilience requires nonprofit leaders to think beyond surviving the next challenge.
That’s one reason I was interested in reading Building Capacity for Resilience: Practical Strategies for Nonprofit Financial Sustainability in an Age of Uncertainty by Dr. Kingsley Siribour.
Funding matters, but Siribour presents resilience as something much broader than financial sustainability. Financial resources are only part of the equation. Resilience also depends on how an organization is led and how it operates. It also matters how well its people can learn and adapt as conditions change.
That broader view is particularly important when organizations are operating from scarcity. Immediate problems can consume leaders’ attention. There’s little opportunity to act on what the organization is learning or consider how a decision in one area might affect another.
Over time, organizations can become dependent on individual people, institutional memory, and constant problem-solving. They may know a great deal collectively without having a good way to put that knowledge to work.
That raises an interesting question about nonprofit resilience for me:
How can our organization use what it knows to navigate uncertainty and influence what happens next?
Advocacy as Resilience
One idea in Siribour’s book that particularly caught my attention was his discussion of advocacy as a form of resilience.
It struck me because advocacy runs counter to many of the behaviors a scarcity mindset can create. When nonprofit leaders are worried about funding, staffing, and growing demand, the instinct may be to pull back. We don’t want to rock the boat. We want to protect what we have and focus on the problems immediately in front of us.
Advocacy requires us to put our mission front and center. By doing so, we actively represent and support our clients and communities. Instead of simply accepting external decisions, we use what we know to help influence the policies and systems affecting our missions.
Siribour describes advocacy as a form of protection and risk management. Seen through that lens, advocacy becomes one way nonprofits can move from reacting to uncertainty to helping shape what happens next.
And doing that requires nonprofits to put their knowledge to work.
Advocacy Shows What Happens When Knowledge Connects
Nonprofits are often on the front lines of the issues they exist to address.
Your staff hear directly from people affected by policies and systems. They see needs change. Your programs generate data about who you serve and the outcomes of your work. Over time, you develop a deep understanding of the barriers facing your community and what may help overcome them.
That knowledge has value far beyond your programs.
Advocacy puts that knowledge to work for you and the people you serve. Policymakers need to understand how their decisions affect real people. Individual stories can illustrate those experiences. Data can reveal systemic patterns. Outcomes can provide evidence of what’s working and what needs attention.
That knowledge gives decision-makers a view they may not otherwise have. It can reveal an emerging community need or show how a policy is affecting people in practice. It can also provide evidence for where change or additional resources are needed. Most importantly, it can bring the experiences of the people you serve into decisions that affect them.
Effective advocacy depends on connecting these pieces. When that happens, you can do more than communicate what you do.
You can demonstrate what you know and use that knowledge to influence the conditions affecting your mission.
That builds resilience and capacity.
I Saw This Firsthand During COVID
I saw this connection between advocacy and organizational capacity firsthand during COVID.
Domestic violence organizations were seeing an alarming change. Stay-at-home orders intended to protect people from the virus could make home more dangerous for people experiencing domestic violence. We were seeing more people calling our hotline for help and entering the shelter. Local police departments and other domestic violence service providers were seeing the same thing. We were hearing directly from survivors about what was happening in their homes. Our program data helped us understand the scale and severity of the problem.
Policymakers needed this information. So we brought that knowledge together. In partnership with other local providers, we used it to advocate for stronger protections for survivors. We advocated for restrictions on firearm possession by domestic violence offenders and for making strangulation a felony rather than a misdemeanor.
The immediate goal was stronger public policy. But looking back, I can also see how the work built capacity within the organization.
Program staff had knowledge that needed to reach leadership and communications. Data gave us evidence of patterns that individual stories couldn’t demonstrate on their own. Survivors’ experiences helped us show what those patterns meant in people’s lives. Communications turned that knowledge into messages for policymakers and the public. Our relationships with community partners helped amplify the case for change.
The advocacy also generated tremendous community awareness about domestic violence and the work we were doing. I believe that greater awareness contributed to stronger donor support over time.
The knowledge that strengthened our advocacy also strengthened the organization. We had stronger community relationships and a greater ability to make the case for support. Those capabilities remained useful long after the immediate crisis passed.
That’s what makes advocacy such a useful example of capacity building. We responded to a crisis. And we learned how to connect and use what we knew to influence what happened next.
Your Organization Probably Knows More Than You Think
The COVID experience made something else visible to me: important organizational knowledge rarely exists in one place.
Some of it comes from the people you serve. Some comes from your programs and data. Other insights develop through conversations with funders, partners, and the community.
Each perspective tells part of the story. The challenge is connecting them.
Someone may be making a decision without knowing useful information already exists elsewhere in the organization. A fundraiser may be looking for evidence that a program team already has. Leadership may be talking with a policymaker without knowing what staff are seeing on the front line.
Your organization may possess a tremendous amount of useful knowledge without having a reliable way to put it to work.
Shared Understanding Makes Knowledge Usable
This is why I’ve become increasingly interested in shared organizational understanding as a capacity-building strategy.
Shared understanding doesn’t mean everyone needs to know everything.
Your people need a common understanding of your mission and audiences. They need to understand your value and impact. They also need to know the organization’s priorities. But shared understanding isn’t only about what people know. It’s also about how knowledge moves.
Feedback loops are critical. People throughout the organization are constantly learning things that someone else may need to know. A resilient organization creates consistent ways for those insights to move beyond the person or team that discovered them.
As a result, knowledge becomes available when someone needs to make a decision or take action.
You’ve turned operational knowledge into shared organizational understanding.
And that increases your capacity to act.
Resilience Is More Than the Ability to Fund Programs
Organizations facing uncertainty need the ability to adapt. But resilience means more than absorbing the next challenge.
A resilient organization recognizes what’s changing. It understands what those changes mean. Then it decides how to respond.
The response will depend on the situation. Sometimes it requires changing what happens inside the organization. Other times, it may mean using the organization’s knowledge and credibility to advocate for change.
That leads me to a broader way of thinking about organizational capacity:
Resilience isn’t only about having resources. It’s also about whether an organization can use what it knows.
So here’s a question worth asking:
What does your organization know that could help advance your mission, but isn’t reaching the people who could use it?
The answer may point to a capacity gap you didn’t know you had.
Put What Your Organization Knows to Work
What does your organization know that could help advance your mission, but isn’t reaching the people who could use it?
The answer may point to a capacity gap you didn’t know you had.
Identifying those gaps is a good place to start. I work with nonprofits to build shared organizational understanding so the knowledge they already have can better inform decisions, communications, and action.
If this is a challenge in your organization, let’s talk.
