Every year in the nonprofit sector is a critical moment. Every year, the same ask: rise to it.

We've been in "critical moment" mode for years. And the staff absorbing that urgency — the ones who showed up precisely because they couldn't walk away — are paying the price.

Tema Okun named "a sense of urgency" as a characteristic of white supremacy culture for a reason. It shortcuts deliberation. It silences dissent. It keeps power exactly where it already sits. And it justifies asking the most mission-invested people to give more — indefinitely — without ever questioning the conditions that require it.

We are sometimes in urgent moments. We are not always in urgent moments. The inability to tell the difference is itself a crisis.

On April 29, 2026, the Supreme Court gutted the Voting Rights Act. This was not an accident. And it will not stop here.

This is an attack on Black voters. It is an attack on the Civil Rights Movement and every Black person who marched, bled, and died to make the Voting Rights Act possible. It spits on that legacy and dresses it up in legal language. And it is part of a much larger, much more coordinated plan.

Here’s what we can do about it.

I've led three nonprofits. I've raised money, built donor relationships, run campaigns.

I only ever learned to fundraise one way — community-first, relationship-first, treat the $10 donor the same as the $10,000 donor — and I never knew there was another name for this type of fundraising.

The experience that shaped your leadership probably isn't on your resume. For a lot of us — especially first-gen, immigrant, and caregiving professionals — the most valuable skills came from work no one counted, jobs we didn't choose, and roles that never had a title. It's time the nonprofit sector started recognizing that.

The call comes in like an emergency. Funding collapsed. A key leader resigned. Staff are leaving. The board is panicking. They need help — now.

But here's what I've learned after years of doing this work: the emergency is never the beginning. It's the ending. The crisis that looks sudden almost never is.

Our nonprofit sector just trained everyone not to talk about it until it was impossible to ignore.