Foundations, We Are Not at Risk.
Our grantees are. Here’s the data.
For more than twenty years, I’ve worked within the machinery of philanthropy, moving money from those who have it in excess to those changing the world with it. I’ve seen our sector at its best—nimble, trusting, and powerful. But today, after reading the Center for Effective Philanthropy’s (CEP) searing new report, “A Sector in Crisis,” and reflecting on our collective response over the past year, I’m compelled to speak with the honesty this moment demands: We are failing. Profoundly.
As a country, we’re in a fight for our future in a way that many of us have not lived through before. On the frontlines—in the anti-ICE demonstrations, the No Kings marches, the mutual aid networks, and the countless local power-building projects—people are putting their bodies, freedoms, and lives on the line. We’re seeing breathtaking courage from communities large and small.
The Data Reveals “Significant Misalignment”
But where is philanthropy’s unique contribution in this all-hands-on-deck moment? According to the CEP data, our contributions are largely statements, hand-wringing, and a devastating status quo timidity.
“A Sector in Crisis” is the first concrete evidence of the catastrophic disconnect between philanthropic perception and on-the-ground reality. The findings are a damning indictment of our sector’s self-awareness. While 93 percent of foundation leaders believe we understand grantees’ challenges, only half of nonprofits agree that philanthropy understands grantees’ challenges.
Ironically, the report also found that, despite numerous changes foundations have made in the last year, 93 percent of nonprofit leaders are dissatisfied with our sector’s response to the current crisis.
This significant misalignment extends to every critical measure, from responsiveness to communication and the provision of unrestricted support, to the willingness to take risks and more. We in philanthropy seem to be operating in a bubble of our own making, applauding our own self-assessed effectiveness while our partners drown.
Nonprofits and Communities Face Existential Threat
Nonprofits are facing an “existential threat,” as the report states. They’re cutting staff, terrified of shutting their doors completely, all while the communities they serve are systematically being stripped of life-affirming resources like Medicaid and food benefits via SNAP, only to see those same funds militarize the streets with federal agents.
This is a profound crisis.
Yet, the report reveals that foundation leaders simply don’t perceive the threat with the same urgency. Leaders in our sector don’t feel the pain.
This isn’t surprising; it’s a natural consequence of a system where donors and institutional leaders are insulated by wealth and perpetuity. More broadly than that, our sector’s failure to perceive the threat of this moment is a reflection of how deeply our society is segregated by class and race, where many ultra-wealthy folks allow themselves to be walled off from everyday Americans in nearly every aspect of life, from where they live to where they study, eat, access healthcare, spend leisure time (the fact that they even have leisure time) . . . the list goes on.
As I explore in my new book, CONTROL: Why Big Giving Falls Short, when you are deeply benefited by a system, and walled off from communities in the crosshairs of the polycrisis, your priorities—and your perception of emergency—are naturally distorted.
But we don’t have to let the story end there.
Whose Risk?
This brings us to a core contradiction of our sector: Funders are not the ones at risk.
Our endowments are safe. Our institutions are fortified. We leave 95 percent of our assets—collectively trillions of dollars—tied up in investments that all too often fuel the very economic engine exacerbating the inequity and injustices we claim to fight.
Foundations are not a threat to the authoritarians running the show because we refuse to take the financial risks required to upend systemic exploitation, exclusion, and extraction. In a crisis that demands we risk everything, our sector is playing it safe, debating how to most strategically deploy a meager 5 percent of the capital we steward.
The absurdity of this collective response was crystallized for me recently. Leaders in philanthropy celebrated, as we often do, pooling together about $10 million of emergency funding for communities in Minneapolis. On its face, a good deed. But consider the context: The foundations involved, by my estimate, represent over $100 billion in collective assets.
This means we are patting ourselves on the back for moving 0.01 percent of the available capital in a moment of profound humanitarian and constitutional crisis. To think that we celebrated giving at this scale is evidence of the lack of urgency about, lack of concern over, and lack of recognition of what we’re facing right now.
Worse, many seem to believe that making public statements is an adequate substitute for action. But let’s think about clarity of purpose and the unique role funders play. Anyone can make a statement. It’s funders who are uniquely positioned to move billions of dollars with speed and trust to the organizers, legal defenders, and mutual aid networks on the front lines.
That is our one unique, irreplaceable role. And we’re neglecting it.
Responses to the Data
So, how will we respond to this report?
I see brilliant leaders in our sector engaging in nuanced, intellectual discussions about the CEP findings. But too often, these conversations strike me as a form of sophisticated deflection, a way to bat aside the urgent call for change and redirect back to comfortable, incremental adjustments within the 5 percent paradigm.
This is a cultural failure.
The report’s core message is not an invitation for more nuanced analysis; it’s a call for urgent action.
Fortunately, the CEP data reveals a clear path out of our navel-gazing and into genuine partnership.
For 2026, nonprofit leaders have told us exactly what they need to survive and fight.
Yes, they need more money. And too, they’re asking for a fundamental shift in how we provide that capital.
The number one request—from half of all nonprofits—is for capacity-building support. They’re asking for help accessing the resources, skills, and relationships to navigate this perpetual crisis. This isn’t a distraction from moving money but a scaffold that ensures money moved has maximum, enduring impact.
Crucially, nearly half of foundation leaders and nonprofits alike point to a second, profound need: better relational, interpersonal communication. Grantees are asking our sector to listen more and truly hear what is happening in their world.
As one nonprofit leader starkly put it, the disconnect feels like funders are saying, “Oh, I didn’t know that it was affecting you.” Our role cannot be that of a distant patron. It must become that of a connected partner. This means dismantling the bureaucratic bottlenecks we’ve built and empowering our staff to measure success by the speed with which they deploy capital and the depth of the trust they build, not by the complexity of our reporting cycles.
What I’m taking from the CEP mandate is threefold:
Move money with unprecedented speed and volume to meet the acute crises.
Invest deeply in the long-term capacity of organizations serving communities on the front lines.
Transform our relationships from controlling transactional reporting to liberatory partnerships, leveraging the privileges of our sector to boldly advocate in spaces our grantees cannot access or speak out safely within.
The ball is in our court. The play is no longer a simple Hail Mary pass of cash. It’s got to be a sustained, strategic partnership where we block, we assist with all we’ve got, and we resource every down. Grantees have outlined the game plan. In 2026, we must finally have the courage to execute it.
—G.
CONTROL Update
This week, I got to join Share Our Strength founder Billy Shore on his Add Passion and Stir podcast to talk about my new book, CONTROL: Why Big Giving Falls Short. I really appreciated the chance to dive into how our sector can upend the logic that says the same asset managers fueling an unprecedented consolidation of wealth should also manage the $2 trillion foundations hold in our endowments.
There are only 33 days until CONTROL will be released by Wiley. Preorder your copy today, and join me on the journey to fix #BigGiving for good.
More On Substack
“I Said Environmentalism Was Out of Ideas. I Was Wrong. It’s Worse” in All at Once, by Len Necefer, digs into the funding, the gatekeeping, and the culture that’s turned environmentalism into something that’s professionally impressive and politically useless.” In this deeply thought-provoking essay, Len outlines the urgent questions our sector must wrestle with to help build the power needed to save lives and address frontline realities of the climate emergency: heat islands, asthma, energy burden, housing quality, access to cooling, and more.
“Unless Americans—white collar, blue collar, pink collar—have the power to demand a share in the productivity gains,” writes Robert Reich in “AI and the Coming Jobless Economy,” profits will go to an ever-smaller circle of owners—leaving the rest of us with less money to buy what can be produced, which is a formula for a fragile economy and an even worse politics.
In “Don Lemon, Trahem Jeen Crews, Georgia Fort, and Jamael Lydell Lundy,” Stacey Abrams of Assembly Notes provides another proof point—the arrest of journalists covering an anti-ICE demonstration—that we are not in a democracy as we understand it.
strong insights, and action items.