When Disruption Hits
A note on my new essay for Nonprofit Quarterly
Dear friends,
Last winter, Nonprofit Quarterly handed me a wide-open invitation: design a talk and write a companion essay about what I had been seeing and sensing in the work. As generous as the invitation was, it also presented a challenging task. I did not know exactly what I was going to explore. I only knew I wanted to go where the work felt most unsettled.
When I sit down to write about the nonprofit sector, I believe I have a responsibility to "go to the territory." For me, that territory is twofold. It is the uncharted, volatile environment our organizations are being forced into right now. But it is also a deliberate choice in how I approach my work as a writer-practitioner: a commitment to step into the hardest rooms, name the unnameable anxieties, and still map out paths forward grounded in practical realities.
Ralph Ellison’s phrase “going to the territory” has been hovering over my shoulder through all of it. He drew it from Bessie Smith, but it was also the title of the last book he published in his lifetime. Ellison’s ultimate message was that we are not a marginal, isolated subset. Our role, our presence, and our aspirations are not a "side project" to be silenced whenever it becomes legally or politically inconvenient. We belong in every single room because we have helped shape every aspect of the American story.
Yet, the aggressive targeting of equity and anti-racism work is shrinking the rooms we sit in. The temptation to retreat, scrub websites, and lower the temperature to avoid scrutiny is incredibly high. But what I kept seeing at leadership tables was not simply disagreement about how to respond to the threats posed by this administration. Something more complicated was unfolding. People were looking at the same set of facts and experiencing different risks. Some saw legal exposure. Some saw political danger. Some saw staff trust beginning to fray. Some saw community credibility on the line. Some saw the quiet, structural cost of retreat.
The essay (and the talk) is my attempt to give language to that complication. It asks what happens when organizations that have spent years naming equity, anti-racism, and justice as central commitments suddenly begin to wonder whether those commitments now make them vulnerable. It also asks what else becomes vulnerable when fear becomes the dominant frame. Inasmuch as there is risk in staying visible, there is also risk in backing away from what we have said we believe.
But this piece does not stop at the diagnosis. It offers a way through. It provides a practical framework to help us move past defensive panic and toward clear-eyed strategy. It is an actionable path to map the structural risks that standard compliance models completely miss, and a tool to bridge the volatile gap between anxious boards and exhausted staff.
It is a strange and baffling thing to live in a country that so desperately needs us to show up and help save its soul again and again, yet is always trying to sideline us the moment things get too hot under the collar. I refuse to accept a version of risk management that allows people to launder their fear into prudence, position themselves as the adults in the room, and treat our willingness to stand up as the real danger.
In this season of intense risk aversion, I offer this piece as a reminder of our complexity and our depth, our ubiquity and our clarity. It is a framework to help boards, executives, and staff leaders make those hidden risks visible before panic narrows the room too much. I do not pretend to have resolved the tension. But I understand it better than I did when I began. And that is what going to the territory requires and reveals.
I am grateful for this growing readership. You bring your own perspectives to the work, and that is all a writer can ask. If the piece speaks to the frictions you or your organization are navigating right now, please hit the like button, share this post with your network, or forward it directly to your colleagues and board members. Otherwise it just gets lost in the wild. We build true resilience only by widening this conversation and walking the territory together.
My new essay—When Disruption Hits—is live here.
DDR