A life-destroying global pandemic. Anguished demands for racial and social justice. Millions of families in financial freefall. Whiplash change across the social sector and with it, unpredictable funding flows. These cascading challenges are testing the design limits of nonprofits everywhere, often exposing a constricted capacity to bounce back and help communities build toward a better tomorrow. It’s more clear than ever that nonprofits need to possess a well-honed process for continuously building and reinforcing organizational resilience. But how?
How can nonprofits summon the creativity to pioneer new pathways to social impact, when deep crisis has shaken their fundamental approaches to achieving their goals? What can nonprofits do to navigate uncertainty, so they have a better shot at seizing new opportunities to extend their reach—opportunities that the pandemic itself has revealed? And what does it look like when nonprofits are capable of continual, trauma-free renewal, even in the absence of a crisis?
Such questions were top-of-mind in the summer of 2020, as the US surpassed 3 million Covid-19 infections and cries for racial justice persisted in cities across the country, after police officers fatally shot Breonna Taylor in March and choked George Floyd to death in May. That summer, The Bridgespan Group and the Emerson Collective embarked on a year-long effort to support 48 nonprofits in the Emerson Collective’s portfolio as they fortified their organizational resilience.