I recently joined fellow Nonprofit Radio contributor Amy Sample Ward (CEO, NTEN) in conversation with host Tony Martignetti about what we expect to see in the new year. Listen to the podcast here.

Our Esteemed Contributors kick off 2026 to share what they’re looking out for in the New Year. We talk about increased hesitation around AI adoption; mitigating the risks of political, legal and PR attacks; your board’s role in protecting your nonprofit; increased collaborations between nonprofits; data protection; overcoming fears; and, a lot more. They’re Amy Sample Ward, our tech contributor and CEO of NTEN, and Gene Takagi, our legal contributor and principal attorney at NEO, the Nonprofit and Exempt Organizations Law Group.

Here are some of my notes associated with our conversation:

Different Types of Risks

• Important for organizational leaders to assess an organization’s risks and its general risk tolerance as it may need to be weighed against its mission, values, and activities.
• Helpful to differentiate different types of risk including legal, political, reputational/PR, financial – also important to identify whether the risks are to the organization’s continuing existence, ability to do its work, and/or its overall purpose (beyond its own existence).
• But note that these risks overlap and one type of risk can easily translate to other types of risk.

Staying on Mission, Vision, Values

• The preservation and advancement of the mission, vision, and values should be treated as paramount with an eye to both the present and the future.
• Purpose-driven board leadership (PDBL) is a great framework for boards to consider when assessing and managing risks.
• [Listen to Tony’s story about his decision as a consultant to withdraw from a project where the board made a decision to delete a provision in its bylaws embracing the value of diversity and intent to make the board more reflective of the communities served by the organization.]

Mitigating Risks

• Collaboration is key. In staying informed. In advocating for shared missions, visions, and values. In community power-building. In more sustainable fundraising. And in protecting each other.
• Taking care of basic compliance, including timely completing all filings (e.g., Forms 990, state charity registrations) and paying all required fees and taxes (e.g., payroll taxes).
• Data collection, retention, and destruction policies should be reviewed, modified, and implemented as makes best sense to protect the vulnerable (including personally identifiable information of employees, volunteers, board members, and charity beneficiaries) and to preserve valuable community information if the organization were to no longer exist or be able to operate.
• Employee antidiscrimination laws must be dutifully observed (including no racial preferences in hiring or in any beneficial or adverse employment action).
• Racial preferences in charitable programming should consider and mitigate the risks associated with Section 1981.

Difficult Decisions

• Investing in security even if that means reallocating budgets away from current service provision.
• Investing in strategic thinking, adaptability, and shifts in approaches based on the current environment and what is reasonably foreseeable in the future even if that means reallocating budgets away from current service provision.
• Making shifts in staffing in a respectful manner consistent with the organization’s values if such shifts are best for the organization and its ability to advance its mission.
• If the situation arises where the organization’s viability is jeopardized for financial reasons, making sure that the organization invests in a respectful termination consistent with the organization’s values in a manner that allows programs and data to be used by another charity and that considers protection of individuals beyond the organization’s existence (e.g., data management, tail insurance) by not depleting every dollar to maintain staffing and current programming.

Moving Forward

There is a lot of rhetoric and fear tactics being used against nonprofit organizations to chill their First Amendment rights. While certain mission areas and program areas or values (e.g., DEI) may be subject to threatened action, this does not necessarily mean that specific organizations with such missions or programs are targets or that they are vulnerable to losing their tax-exemption of having their assets frozen or seized. There are also risks associated with giving in to such threats (extortion?), particularly if they significantly impact an organization’s ability to advance its mission or provide services to its communities consistent with its core values. Organizational leaders (including board members) should ensure that they are making well-informed decisions not solely based on fear, not only defensive, and not without soliciting some feedback from their communities.

2026 Outlook

• the need and demand for nonprofit services are going to increase dramatically and will be more widely felt
• the closing down of many nonprofits and the downsizing of many, many more nonprofits – mostly for financial reasons led by the impact of decreases in federal funding and economic uncertainties felt by donors and funders (also tax law incentives led some donors to bunch donations for 2025, which may lead them to forego giving in 2026)
• greater collaboration of nonprofits – small-moderate uptick in mergers, substantial increase in programs and assets moving between nonprofits (e.g., in connection with a dissolution or for asset protection purposes), steady increase in coordinated services and strategies among nonprofits (including with respect to advocacy-related activities)
• greater investment and participation in nonprofit get-out-the-vote and voter registration drives
• greater use and misuse of nonprofits to support electioneering of candidates for public office
• more joint ventures between nonprofits and for-profits – many of which will be greatly beneficial to advancing their common charitable purposes, but more than a few which will be designed more for the benefit of the for-profit and its stakeholders than to advance their common charitable purposes (due to complexities and ignorance of the applicable laws and power imbalances among the co-venturers)
• the decline in the health (including mental health) of our communities (including those who work for nonprofits) because of governmental policies; the complexities of living and working in this information age; and also because of vulnerabilities to the economy, including those created by economic policies, deregulation, the instability of legal precedents and norms, increased global conflicts, attacks on education, and climate change – on the staffing side, this will create more leadership turnover and greater instability in operations (but this may be an opportunity for younger leaders to move into position with new ideas and energy)
• continued use of government agencies and Congressional letters to attack progressive nonprofits, but only an extremely few organizations will have their tax-exempt status revoked and only a handful, if that, will have their assets seized or frozen for ideological reasons under the pretext of supporting terrorism
• rise of social movements, community power-building, and progressive advocacy, which will also attract more violence in response for which nonprofits must also consider by investing in protecting their staff and their communities
• rise of organizational champions in the sector investing heavily in reimagining strategies, structures, policies, and practices to continue to work towards their organizational visions with adaptability and clarity of the current political/legal environment (which needs to be understood as far more pervasive than many consider) – this includes a need to invest in changing the narratives that underly movements to diminish the power and rights of all but the most wealthy even at the expense of using resources that could alternatively be expended to address current needs
• fundraising strategies refocusing on smaller donors from diverse communities who may be key to sustained and consistent fundraising revenues – see, e.g., When Donor Meets Purpose (Atinuke O. Adediran, 70 UCLA L. Discourse 376 (2023))

Amy had so much more to add, particularly from a technology perspective, so please listen to the podcast to see what Amy and Tony had to say. And if you’re interested in our group’s 2025 Outlook from January 2025, see Nonprofit Radio: Looking To 2025: Is It Paranoia Or Prudence?

Other Resources

Trista’s 2026 Philanthropy Predictions (Trista Harris, FutureGood Blog)

The Nonprofit Sector Is At An Inflection Point. 2026 Is The Test. (Cat Ward, Forbes)