Survival deserves to be celebrated. Survival is not a passive thing. Survival is the standing in the room when everyone has left. It is what happens when people decide, repeatedly and deliberately, to remain strong in conditions that were not designed for them to thrive. Standing requires strategy under constraint; adaptation without surrender.

It wasn’t a year of clean arcs or easy momentum. It was a year of recalibration, humility, courage, and rebuilding. A year that asked harder questions than usual and didn’t rush the answers. As we start the new year, I’ve been thinking less about what I accomplished on paper and more about what the work itself taught me.

Let's not sugarcoat it: 2025 was a brutal year for the nonprofit sector. Federal funding cuts sent shockwaves through the nonprofit sector, creating what I'd call a 'reverse trickle down effect'. Organizations that had long relied on government dollars suddenly found themselves locked out and forced to pivot toward foundation and corporate funding to stay afloat. The result? An unprecedented surge in competition for private foundation dollars.