Sorry, the nonprofit sector we knew no longer exists
A little trend is happening on LinkedIn. Good humans are inviting nonprofiteers, myself included, to participate in a thought experiment: ponder how we would create a nonprofit sector from scratch, if that were our task. After trying and failing to respond, over and over, I realized why. It isn’t so much a thought experiment as it is a call to action.
Because the sector most of us thought we knew is gone. It has been for a long time.
Plenty of good humans did respond to the prompt. Many of their remarks centered on how the nonprofit sector is at a crossroads. It’s like the journal Voluntas suggested:
“Government budget cuts have eliminated a significant source of nonprofit revenues and created a serious fiscal squeeze for many organizations… All of this has undermined public confidence in the sector and prompted questions about the basic legitimacy of the special tax and legal benefits it enjoys.”
The funny part? Voluntas published that warning in 1999.
The social sector was at a crossroads long before 2025; back to the explosive shifts from the 1960s to all the “existential” moments I’ve witnessed in my quarter-century in and around this work.
This in no way undermines the current moment. Decision-makers and staff are burnt. Funding systems, if we can call them that, are inconsistent and inequitable. Politics casts a dark shadow on our institutions. As millions of organizations lead life-saving, life-giving work, the social sector feels stuck. Outdated. A slow erosion of trust has taken its toll on workers and boards, funders and grantees, organizations and communities.
In grad school—a Jesuit university—I learned how Ignatius of Loyola had his leg shattered by a cannonball. It changed his life forever; what Jesuit scholars refer to as deconstruction, or, the realization the old way no longer works. (Those same scholars would say what follows are choice, reconstruction, then integration.)
The sector has been deconstructed for a very long time; our cannonball(s) already struck. Sadly, our selection of choice looks more like nonprofit Munchausen’s than it does social sector salvation. If you know me at all, on more than one occasion you’ve heard me say: we’re doing this to ourselves.
What comes next? The loud voices on social media are delighted to tell you… if you’re willing to pay the fee. (Downloadable guide, public webinar, low-cost course, leadership cohort.) To me, it looks more like sustaining the old ways with new terminology and technology, when it must be an entirely different ecosystem.
And this new model may not be new at all.
I think of concepts like B Corp, stakeholder primacy, Inperium’s shared resource network, and beyond—all designs that acknowledge doing good and generating revenue are not necessarily opposing forces.
I don’t know what it will be called. I wish people would stop trying to name the thing before it exists. It first needs to be workshopped, and that is something modern day nonprofiteers can do.
It will need a much bigger, involved table.
Those sitting around the bar will need to come from everywhere. Economists. Farmers. Journalists. Scientists. Faith leaders. Educators. Urban planners. Politicians (the not terrible ones). Organizers. Historians. Futurists. Beyond voices at the table, it needs voices in influential spaces—representation in local, regional, and even federal systems where policy is shaped. (Shout out to Julienne Torres-Hinds for this idea.)
It will be locally seeded and internationally sourced.
The next build needs architecture where power sits closest to the people affected. It should always be this way, though far-away philanthropy has confused that in recent decades. It also needs border-spanning infrastructure so knowledge can flow as necessary. (I’m intentionally writing this for The Nonprofit Hive because it does this!)
It will require real conversations about revenue.
I pine for the day when we stop pretending “money” is a dirty word. Moreover, how revenue is sourced must be less intractable than we make it now—and it may force an uncomfortable reckoning with our precious tax-deductibility. Public-private partnerships. Venture capital. Investments. Mergers. (Considering how difficult it is to found and sustain a nonprofit, there are too darn many out there, duplicating efforts instead of amplifying them.)
It will focus on solutions over service.
Too many exhaust themselves in mission-driven cycles of dependency and burnout. (A strange sentiment coming from the guy who wrote a book about servant-leadership in nonprofits.) Prioritizing solutions requires (demands) both hard and smart work, which will keep service-minded nonprofiteers from spiraling into oblivion.
The next build can do many things if it prioritizes and balances equity, experimentation, and accountability. And that’s a big “if.” Yet, if we can admit the old way is deconstructed—-gone—-maybe we can stop trying to save it.
Maybe we can (finally) give it some dignity, take it off life support, and decide what rises next. Not all at once and certainly not perfectly. But maybe, just maybe, on our own terms. And this time we don’t need permission.
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Evan Wildstein is a Hiver and nonprofiteer with 22+ years of in-house fundraising, strategy, and operations experience. Beyond his social impact work, Evan has coached organizations on board development and talent growth, commissioned operas, and produced learning initiatives. His book, The Nonprofiteer’s Fundraising Field Guide, and Social Impact Staff Retention research project are small ways he works to improve the well-being of our industry.