In a recent piece published in Nonprofit Quarterly, Third Plateau Co-Founder and Principal Jonathan Kaufman makes the case that nonprofits can no longer afford to treat today’s crises as temporary storms to wait out. Political upheaval, financial uncertainty, a global pandemic, fractured public trust, and targeted attacks have made volatility the new baseline, not the exception. The real differentiator between organizations that sink and those that thrive isn’t operations or resources, but culture. Leaders must stop planning for calm seas and start building organizations that can navigate the waves.
At the heart of Jonathan’s guidance is a call to shift from an outcomes-focused culture to a learning culture: one that encourages bold experimentation, values insights from failure, and builds the organizational muscle to navigate not just one crisis, but all the ones that follow. When learning from both successes and setbacks becomes part of an organization’s DNA, teams are better equipped to preserve what’s working while exploring new approaches. Jonathan outlines four concrete steps to make that shift:
- Be purposeful in your learning. Experimentation must stay tightly connected to mission. Unfocused pivots, like a food pantry abandoning its core model to launch income and job training programs mid-pandemic, can cause organizations to lose their identity and effectiveness.
- Foster learning at all levels. Frontline staff closest to the work often spot problems and solutions that leadership misses. Creating safe spaces for their ideas, and giving them real autonomy to test new approaches, is essential to building a truly adaptive organization.
- Lead with transparency and trust. When leaders openly share what they know and don’t know, including their own challenges and missteps, teams move faster and more effectively toward solutions. As Jonathan puts it, transparency and vulnerability cost nothing and can be implemented immediately.
- Inspire with possibility. Resilience isn’t about grinding through hardship. It’s about having the courage and optimism to look up from the day-to-day and think expansively about what truly matters, even in the hardest moments.
Whether your organization is navigating a funding crisis, a shifting political landscape, or staff burnout, Jonathan’s message is clear: culture-building isn’t a luxury for when things calm down. It is the critical infrastructure that determines whether you can weather what comes next.
