I recently caught myself saying something I now regret. On more than one client call, when we were talking through funding uncertainty and the creeping anxiety of watching a budget that's always been mostly grants start to feel a lot less stable, I told people they were planting seeds. That the work would pay off. That they just needed to be patient.

I meant it. But I was being a little glib.

Planting seeds is good advice — when conditions are right. When there's water. When the season isn't about to turn hostile. The nonprofit funding landscape right now is not that season. A third of nonprofits reported government funding disruptions in early 2025. Federal cuts have cascaded into state and local shortfalls. Organizations that built their entire budget on grants — government contracts, foundation grants, the whole stack — are realizing that the floor they thought was permanent is actually a lease, and the landlord is making changes.

A few weeks ago, I wrote about biddable versus unbiddable dogs—and how that same tension shows up in our fundraising. Are we in dialogue with our donors, our boards, our communities? Or are we standing on the kitchen table being fabulous but ultimately alone?

The response was immediate. So many of you wrote back saying some version of: "Yes, I know I should be more responsive, but I don't have time for a complete overhaul. I don't have the budget for new systems. I can barely keep up with what I'm already doing."

Think about your current board members for a moment. Not their bios, not their giving levels — just how they got there.

Chances are, the path wasn't a straight line. Maybe one of them came to an event, then another. Maybe someone showed up to volunteer one Saturday, quietly joined a committee six months later, and you looked up two years after that and thought — how did we get this lucky? Maybe someone answered a thank-you call you almost didn't make, and the conversation ran forty-five minutes, and something just clicked.

I remember the moment I realized I hadn't talked to anyone my organization actually served in over three months.

I was a development director at the time, deep in grant season. My days were a blur of deadlines, database entries, board meeting prep, and donor stewardship emails. I knew our mission by heart — I'd written it enough times. I could recite our impact numbers in my sleep. But the actual work? The people? The community we existed to serve? I was getting that secondhand, in program reports and staff updates, filtered through layers of organizational communication.

I'm writing this on day four stuck inside. My kids are driving me crazy. And I can barely breathe.

How do you have a snow day when the world feels like it's burning around you?

We're in the midst of an ice storm. It's unsafe to drive so I've spent a lot of time with my kids building forts, watching Bluey, and seeing how big we could get the bubbles in our bathtub. At the same time, Minneapolis is below freezing, and fighting for the future of our democracy.

The year was 1999. The event: Dakota Rubin's Bar Mitzvah. The shoes: magenta hot pink platform strappy heels from the DSW sale rack.

Those shoes were perfect for seventh-grade me—exactly what I needed to figure out who I was. Fast forward to my early fundraising career, and I was still chasing the "perfect" professional shoe, convinced that looking the part meant suffering through galas in stilettos. It wasn't until my late thirties that I realized: I could wear sneakers to an event and no one would give a damn.

I'll never forget the budget meeting where everything clicked into place—though not in the way anyone intended.

We were reviewing next year's projections, and the numbers looked impressive on paper. A 25% increase in revenue. Three new staff positions. Program expansion into two additional counties. The board was energized. "This is what growth looks like," someone said, beaming.

Then our Development Director spoke up, her voice careful. "Can I ask where these new grant projections are coming from? Because I don't see any in the pipeline that would get us there."

The silence that followed was excruciating.

"Well," the board treasurer said eventually, "we're budgeting aspirationally. You'll figure it out. You always do."

I watched her face change. Not anger exactly—something quieter and more devastating. The look of someone who'd just been handed an impossible task and told it was reasonable. I'd seen that look before. I'd worn that look before. And in that moment, I realized we were about to lose another talented development professional to burnout, not because she wasn't good at her job, but because we'd built a budget on wishes instead of reality.

This is Part Two of my exploration of frugality versus scarcity in nonprofit leadership. If the first piece was about shifting our mindset around resources, this one is about the brutal practicality of what that actually means: we have to budget from reality, not aspiration. And that requires us to do something our sector is terrible at—saying no to growth for growth's sake.

A few weeks ago, I found myself reaching for a cookbook I've had for 20 years. More with Less—a Mennonite cookbook that extols the virtues of simple ingredients and stretching your dollar.

By now, you probably know that the Internet belongs to Huntr/x, and Huntr/x don’t miss. That's how it's done, done, done. 

If you don’t know, KPop Demon Hunters is the Netflix animated musical triumph that none of us knew we needed. The premise is as old as the concept of demons: a group of protectors must use their power to keep evil at bay and preserve humanity. The twists are contemporary AF: the magic requires fans to love the music, the lead protector is part demon, and evil rises in the form of a boy band. Okay, that last one may be more 2002, but it also might be timeless; hard to say.

Y’all,

Texan is not a simple identity. It comes with layers of pride, frustration, humor, awe, and a certain inescapable sense of grandiose that I can only describe as Big State Energy. And as a born, raised, and reclaimed Austinite, I have forever felt the eyes of Texas upon me. When you grow up in the middle of it, this state feels legitimately inescapable. Frankly, I only have the patience to drive my way out of it once or twice a year, if that.

I’ve been binge-watching “ER” lately and it’s left me in my feels. I grew up in Chicago and turned eight just a week before the show aired. I would visit my parents in their downtown office, and race down the stairs every few hours to feed the parking meters. Our state-of-the-art car phone was in a small briefcase.  And it was the height of the AIDS epidemic. 

AIDS is a major theme in ER. In just the first few episodes, a young girl dying of AIDS is abandoned by her adoptive parents at the ER.  In 1994, AIDS was the leading cause of death for all Americans between the ages of 25 and 44. Now, while HIV continues to disproportionately impact black and brown communities and is certainly still a serious disease, for most of us, it’s not part of our daily experiences or weeknight TV. 

Thirty years. We saw a deadly disease emerge, peak, and become manageable. We saw a country turn a blind eye to an epidemic, and we saw relentless activism lead to real change.

Hey fundraiser...I see you. I'm also over here hiding in my coffee cup, in denial that Giving Tuesday 2022 is in 40 days.

And I'm feeling pretty overwhelmed by all of the end-of-year preparations I need to do. I bet you're feeling about as clueless as I am right now.

We're being bombarded with messaging that Giving Tuesday is the most important time of year for fundraisers. And while it's true that this is a critical time for nonprofits to engage with their donors, it doesn't have to be as overwhelming as it seems right now.