2026 Outlook

Tony Martignetti
Hello and welcome to Tony Martignetti Nonprofit Radio, big nonprofit ideas for the other 95%. I'm your aptly named host and the Podfather. Of your favorite hebdomadal podcast. Happy New Year! Woo! We'll have more to say about this coming up. Yes, excitement for next year. No, what am I saying? Excitement for this year. Well, it was next year when we're recording, but it's this year now. It's this year. This year. Happy New Year for this year, and I'm glad you're with us. You'd get slapped with a diagnosis. You'd. You'd get slapped with a diagnosis of neo-anaphobia if you feared our New Year show. Here's our not new, well-seasoned associate producer Kate with what's up this week.

Kate Martignetti
Hey Tony, happy New Year!

Tony Martignetti
Thank you.

Kate Martignetti
Would you call me well-seasoned?

Tony Martignetti
Yeah.

Kate Martignetti
Got me. Here's what's up. 2026 Outlook. 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, increased collaborations between nonprofits, Data protection, overcoming fears, and a lot more. They are 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, on Tony's Take Two.

Tony Martignetti
I'm excited for 2026.

Kate Martignetti
Here is 2026 Outlook.

Tony Martignetti
It's a genuine pleasure to welcome and say Happy New Year to our 2 esteemed contributors to Nonprofit Radio. Amy Sample Ward is our technology contributor and the CEO of NTEN. They were awarded a 2023 Bosch Foundation Fellowship, and their most recent co-authored book is The Tech That Comes Next: about equity and inclusiveness in technology development. You'll find them on Bluesky as Amy Sample Ward. Gene Takagi is our legal contributor and principal of NEO, the Nonprofit and Exempt Organizations Law Group in San Francisco. He edits that wildly popular nonprofitlawblog.com. The firm is at neolawgroup.com, and he's @GTak, as he has been for many, many years. Happy New Year. Welcome, Amy. Welcome, Gene.

Gene Takagi
Happy New Year.

Amy Sample Ward
Happy New Year.

Tony Martignetti
Thank you.

Amy Sample Ward
I really appreciate the level of enthusiasm that you bring, Tony, and I will feed off of it to have a Have a smile on my face as we have this, what is likely very intense conversation about this.

Tony Martignetti
All right. Intense, yes. Intense but valuable. And valuable, not but. Intense and valuable and informative. All right. I'm happy to spread enthusiasm. I hope— I'm glad it's infectious. All right. So we're talking about the outlooks. You know, what What are we anticipating paying great attention to in this new year, 2026? Gene, let's start with you. You're concerned about risks to nonprofits in terms of our political people. I almost say foes, but a lot are foes, but not all are foes. Political folks. Yeah. Legal attacks, the community, the sector, we're still as we were in 2025 at risk, you believe?

Gene Takagi
Yeah, amidst all the rainbows, lollipops, and roses that we should all celebrate, yeah, there are a few troubling aspects of 2025 that will probably linger through 2026 and beyond that we have to think about. I think, you know, just to start us off, it's good to sort of take the risks into different buckets a little bit. And so, you know, there are the legal risks, of course, and those have long been in existence, and people and organizations can manage around that. But there are political risks now, and a lot of what is coming out from the federal administration and those that support the federal administration are politically driven risks that line up with the administration's agenda. So there's that bucket of risks. Then there's the whole public relations risk, as we are kind of in this very polarized society, and there are people taking sides and various ways of attacking not just organizations but individuals within organizations. And so you've got all of these areas of risks to think about. And I, you know, I think the overall goal where I'm hoping to continue to see those, you know, raindrops, rainbows, and lollipops and roses is just to, to be calm and sort of just say, hey, we're all mission-driven organizations. We know the game. It's a changed playing field over the last year. But we still know what our goals are. We still know what our mission is. We still know what we need to do, and we're going to keep trying to do it because that's what we always do. And just to keep our eyes open on that, yes, the playing field has changed. We've got risks to think about. But let's look to, you know, sources like Tony Martignetti Nonprofit Radio so we can help manage those risks. And And stay calm and stay focused and on task.

Tony Martignetti
All right. So Amy, Gene is helping, you know, wants us to be grounded, like, you know, grounded in our mission.

Amy Sample Ward
Yeah.

Tony Martignetti
Are you, are you on board with that?

Amy Sample Ward
Absolutely on board. You know, in December, I had the privilege and opportunity to be at a couple different gatherings, one focused on cybersecurity, one focused on a regional gathering of nonprofits, so all across different mission areas. And 2 conversations from those spaces kind of carrying into our new year outlook here, and maybe this idea of being grounded, is that I think there's When it feels like every single thing needs work and every single thing is hard, it's so easy to be overwhelmed and be like, okay, well, it's not even worth doing anything on security unless we can do everything. And that's just not the case, right?

Tony Martignetti
Yeah.

Amy Sample Ward
Being grounded in that same feeling of, as Gene said, like, we know what our work is, we know what our mission is, is bring that same attitude to all of these pieces of technology and data and security that might be on your list, might be things you know you need to work on, is doing one of those things is better than doing none of those things. And just as much as you know your mission, and so you're not going to get distracted by the politicization of every single one of our missions right now, you're going to stay focused. I think that's the perfect framing for making these decisions around technology or security or data. You know your mission, and if your community, your constituents, your service recipients are not safe to receive those services from you, then you're not able to meet your mission. So if you have to make a decision about, should we collect this data? Should we store it over here? Should we have a web form for this? You can go back to that frame and say, would this form make our community members unsafe? If so, how do we get rid of the form? Right? Okay, our funder requires that we report the number of people in our services that are in the county because the county is our funder, right? Great. You can collect if someone is in the county. You don't have to store that checkbox or their home address in their profile in your database, right? That, that data can live in different places, and that protects those community members if you ever had a subpoena or a request for that data, right? So if you can come back to this, we do know our mission. We are not being distracted from it and we are going to keep our people safe. It really is, I think, a strong and practical for every single staff person, not just someone on a technology team, to make a choice about technology systems or how you're implementing data. That's one bit of grounding I wanted to offer.

Tony Martignetti
Okay. Let me— before you go to your next, it's very consistent with the last time you were on.

Amy Sample Ward
Yeah.

Tony Martignetti
Which was like, I don't know, September or October last year. And, you know, take one step at a time. It's better to do one step than to do no step. It's better to take one thing than ignore all 3 because they all seem so big. And what we're really adding is, and I think this is also consistent with the last time the 3 of us were together, you know, it's not only our mission that grounds us, but now we're, you know, we're more focused than We were in 2024 on protecting those on our team, those those we're helping, those getting our services. I mean, it's not that we ignored that in the past, but it's a it's a greater area of focus now. You know, protection around data technology security, protection of those folks is is just more of a focus. So I you know it's yeah it's like you have this through line. You know, it's still. Consistent.

Amy Sample Ward
Yes, totally. I appreciate you naming that. The other piece I wanted to carry forward from these recent conversations I had at these conferences are folks were, you know, I may be talking about data privacy and how vulnerable data is in our organizations. And folks said, okay, well, so what's our— how do we change our policies for these next 3 years? And I just do not think that is the approach I would ever recommend. I think it is, how do you improve your policies forever? Why would you ever want to say that your data is knowingly more vulnerable, right? And I also think that you're going to have far less staff fidelity to your policies if you present them as a temporarily changed policy. And then we're going to change them back. How am I going to remember? I'm just going to do the one I know.

Tony Martignetti
And then in 2029, we're gonna become what? Less secure? We're gonna go back to our less secure policies?

Amy Sample Ward
Right, because this is, I really think, not a matter of who is in office, in any level of office or anything. In a beautiful, equitable world that I know we're all here to build, I would want my data completely under my control no matter where it is, right? So why would I say, well, Until we get there, let's go ahead and have these really bad data policies, right? No, let's build those policies now and manage them, train staff around them, and build the confidence in our constituents that if you share data with us, oh my gosh, like we are protecting it at all costs. We are making sure that program history or service recipient access is anonymized away from your address or your demographics, right? Right. we're really protecting you if your data is with us. That should always be trust that you want to be building, right? Yeah. So, as people are maybe building some of these data retention or data cleaning policies for the first time or updating them because of these more urgent priorities, really don't think of it as a, we're just going to do this right now. Like, this This is building your policies towards the world you want them to be and as strong and safe as they can be.

Tony Martignetti
Yeah.

Gene Takagi
100% on what Amy is saying. And I'll just add that I neglected to talk about financial risks as well. And where it comes to Amy's point is the stuff that you need to do requires an investment. And this is at a time when a lot of nonprofits are very resource constrained. A lot of grants have been pulled. A lot of funders are deciding to get more conservative at this point where we hope that they would actually step up, but not everybody is. There are some notable exceptions out there, but we need more funders and we need more advocacy for those funders as well. But in light of those resource constraints, nonprofits have to make really difficult decisions of saying, and I'll just put it bluntly, Yeah. We may not be able to give the same level of service and support to our beneficiaries now, but we need to do that so we can protect them in the future. We need to protect our mission. We need to protect kind of our, our team so we don't lose everybody. We need to protect their safety and make them feel comfortable. We need to protect the whole infrastructure and support system so we just don't vanish. Which would hurt our beneficiaries much more. But those are difficult decisions because that may mean pulling back on some of the services you can give or not expanding or even contracting who you can help. So really tough decisions. I don't want to make light of that at all, but these decisions have to be made. Otherwise, there are some really, really sort of bad places that the organization can go at the detriment of the mission, which is why the organization exists.

Amy Sample Ward
I want to build on something that Gene's talking about here and connect back to, I think, previous times when the 3 of us have talked together, you know, also talked about the board's role in all of this. And I think this financial piece Gene's bringing up often gets to be the front and center piece of board conversations, right? Their financial or fiscal fiduciary duty and, you know, making sure that the organization is financially stable or able to move forward. But in that same way, I think our duty of care as board members requires that— not that board members are taking action and logging into this database. Like, I don't think board members need access to your technology systems, but board members should absolutely be asking, what is our data retention policy? I want to be sure I understand it as a board member, and I understand the risk of our constituents Based on what our data retention policy is. And I want to know that staff are implementing it and deleting records when they should be deleting them, right? Mm-hmm. I want to know that we have a staff cybersecurity plan, that staff know what to do if you showed up to work and nobody could log into their email because your account had been taken over, right? Would staff know what to do? Again, board members don't need to be doing anything in it. They don't need to be deciding all these things, but If you are a board member or if you're a staff person who staffs the board, these might feel like technology conversations, but the board should know them and should be able to say with confidence they know what's happening with data, with security in the organization's systems, just the same way that maybe they really ask hard questions around financials.

Tony Martignetti
Financials or human resources? That's right. Do we have a nondiscrimination policy? That's right. How are we protecting, preserving People's workplace, equity, et cetera. Yeah, no, it's good. Thank you for reminding us of the board's role. Gene, you talk to a lot of boards, Gene. What are you hearing from those key volunteers?

Gene Takagi
Well, I'm hearing quite a bit of concern, in some cases fear, about whether their organizations need to scrub their websites, whether they need to change their programs. Whether they need to stand up and double down on their messaging, whether they can include things like DEI or abortion in their name or mission, whether they need to change how they report things on their Form 990s. So all sorts of things that boards are considering right now. And just to add on Amy's point and All of those decisions are so important for the board. But getting back to the financial piece, what boards can do is say, yes, you know, the financial sort of governance is part of our job, but we also need to think about how the financials are going to support this other stuff that we do. It's not just about supporting our beneficiaries for right now. It's about, are we setting up systems to protect our beneficiaries From things they may not even be thinking about, but all of their privacy data, you know, like all of that, that takes an investment to have a data retention plan and sort of implement it and enforce it. That takes some work. That takes HR time. Like, so just making sure that the board is down with it, that maybe you can't quite do things just the same way you have been and you can't go back, to Amy's point. Right. You're going to do things moving forward in a stronger, healthier way, but maybe you're going to have to do less of that while the money situation has contracted. So those are the tough decisions that a lot of organizations are facing, and some won't make it. Some, you know, with the collapse in funding and the political and legal environment right now, there are some organizations that definitely won't make it. Right. But how does their mission go on? How do they make, you know, take advantage of others to be able to continue to provide services for their beneficiaries even if the organization itself doesn't exist? Those are things boards need to be thinking about if they are kind of in that zone of insolvency right now. They've got to really be thinking very strongly about protecting their beneficiaries and advancing their mission even beyond the organization.

Tony Martignetti
I have sort of a poignant story that happened to me last month. And we're talking about boards and Gene mentioned, well, you both mentioned equity and, you know, and I only told this story. Yeah, I can anonymize it. I only told the story to one person, told it to my wife. Oh, okay. That's it. But I think it's instructive. And because I, you know, I didn't tell anybody else because it's not a story that like I'm looking for, like self, you know, I'm trying to self-aggrandize or something. But it was a client, I was at a client, I was away in another state. I traveled to a client board meeting to present about planned giving. And I went to a terrific social the night before the board meeting, met all the board members informally over drinks and apps. Yeah. It was lovely. I did some training that afternoon, again, the day before the board meeting with the staff. It was fun. It was like 8, 7 or 8 of us. It was fun. And, you know, I try to have fun trainings. And then the board meeting came the next day, 9 o'clock in the morning. And they went through a bunch of agenda items, the votes, votes, all unanimous, you know, sort of pro forma votes. Right.

Amy Sample Ward
Approve the minutes, do the updates.

Tony Martignetti
Yeah. And some other things that, you know, approve this transfer for a scholarship, etc. And then came the— and then came the— then came a bylaws vote. And they have a— they had a sentence in their bylaws that said that the It was either the board or the board— what's it called? The recruiting committee. The

Amy Sample Ward
governance committee?

Tony Martignetti
Yeah, no, nominating committee. It was either the board or the— thank you. It was either the board or the nominating committee will make best efforts to ensure that the board is non-discriminatory, is equitable and You know, they would make best efforts to have a—

Amy Sample Ward
Have a diverse—

Tony Martignetti
Have a diverse board. That's the word. Okay. Have a diverse board in terms of— and then they mentioned a bunch of characteristics, you know, gender and income and age and location and things like that. And the vote was to eliminate that sentence, that single sentence from their bylaws. Because they believed it's now contrary to federal law. I don't know whether that's true or not, but that was the explanation. And I'll never forget seeing that sentence. I mean, it was the bylaws page was projected on the screen so everybody could see it. And there were 2 remote board members at the meeting, but the vast majority of the board was in person, but it's up on the screen. Yeah. And it's highlighted in yellow and it's struck through, strikethrough font. You know, that sentence about ensuring diversity on the board, highlighted in yellow and struck through. This was not pro forma, and it did have a fair number of comments. Only one board member spoke in opposition to the motion. And I couldn't see that person. They were one of the two that was virtual. So it passed. It passed unanimously. Even the board member who spoke in opposition, that person either— well, they might not have voted. Either they didn't vote or they voted for the motion. I hope they voted against— I hope they didn't vote, but they didn't vote against it because there were no no votes. Hmm. So it passed, as far as I could tell, unanimously. And I was just, I was struck as they were having this conversation. I, like, my head was in my, my, my palms, and I was, my heart was pounding. And I was, I was just thinking, you know, if this is, if this is what they're going to do, it's going this way. And then it did happen. And I thought, you know, this is like, this is a, this is a horrific moment. If I don't, if I don't— Yeah. If I don't stand up, then I'm acquiescing in this vote. And I got up and I just quietly, I walked over to the person who was my primary contact at the organization. And he was actually leading the meeting too, as the staff person leading the meeting. I mean, the board chair led the meeting, but he was the staff person sitting right next to them. And I just, I went over and I whispered, In light of this vote, I can't work with you anymore. And I wish you the best for your planned giving program, but I can't be with you anymore. And I shook his hand and then I quietly exited. I didn't say anything to the whole room. There's no speech, no grandiose thing. I just whispered this to him. I mean, it was obvious I was the one person in the room standing up now after this vote had just passed. And then I said the same thing to another person who I had worked closely with for the 5 or so months that we were working together. I said the same thing to that person, and then I just quietly walked out of the room. You know, it's— and I sent them— I owe them money. I sent them a refund check for the balance of the retainer that they had paid me that I hadn't earned. You know, so it's just, you know, you cannot— Yeah. You cannot be witness to this. I mean, maybe I'm a hypocrite, but do I check every board's, every nonprofit's bylaws to look for an equity and diversity statement in their bylaws? No, I don't do that. I don't. I don't. But when it was right there smacking me in the face to vote, so I couldn't, you know, I just couldn't continue. And that was it. Yeah. So I don't know, what's the value of the story? I think we have to take a stand, you know, make a stand. Again, maybe I'm a hypocrite because I don't check this for all the clients that I work with. I don't. But when you're smacked in the face with the elimination of the diversity initiative on the board, you know, I just think, I mean, that was just a— it was too far. And so we all have our boundaries. We all have our lines. That this is not a prescription for anybody else's. But if you feel that something is not right, I mean, you have to, you have to, in your quiet way or loud way, you do it any way you want. In your way, you have to, you have to object.

Gene Takagi
Yeah, I appreciate that story so much, Tony. I hope individual board members can kind of take that as an example. I'll let you know that I'm not so put off with the sentence in the bylaws, which is a rare one to see. Very few organizations would have it. But as you said, when you vote to eliminate it, there's like one of two reasons. One is fear, and I think that was probably misplaced fear because a statement of exercising like good faith and best efforts to have a diverse board. There's nothing illegal about that. It's the rhetoric that's coming that's scary, and media misrepresentations— not maybe not intentional in some cases, but just summarizing more nuanced language that sometimes comes out of government agencies, or even the executive orders that are summarized in Simplistic ways that make it sound like everything like DEI-related is illegal.

Tony Martignetti
Yeah, but illegal, illegal diversity is right for you and I talked about. Maybe Amy, you were with us. Illegal diversity, but that doesn't make all diversity illegal.

Gene Takagi
And certainly not that bylaws provision. But if it's not fear, then it is throwing out perhaps what many believe to be a core value of the organization. And that is a reason for somebody who's very, you know, tied to that value. And I appreciate, you know, that, that you are, Tony, that, you know—

Tony Martignetti
Well, I hope some board— you know, I hope some of the board members— I mean, there was the one board member who spoke in opposition, you know. To me, you know, I would resign that board. I would resign that seat.

Gene Takagi
Or educate that board to understand that if it was fear-based, that it was misplaced fear. Like, and get back and in touch with their values so that their values and mission-driven, not just purely like the statement in our, in our, our 990 mission statement controls everything what that we do. It's our values. And the fundamental value that I think every charitable nonprofit has is to preserve the dignity of the individuals that they benefit and that work for them. And preserve the dignity of everybody involved. We don't just like serve food like in a trough and say, just, you know, this is the way we can maximize the amount of food that we can get out to people. That's ridiculous. Dignity is at the core of every organization's, you know, values that I would believe in anyway. And if you're throwing that out, you know, I understand why, you know, a board member particularly should walk away from that.

Kate Martignetti
It's time for Tony's Take Two.

Tony Martignetti
Thank you, Kate. I am indeed excited for 2026. First, it looks like we're going to have a new sponsor coming shortly. Uh, could still fall through, you never know. You know, like, the ink is not on the— the signature is not on the agreement, but it looks very promising. We'll leave it at that. If they don't come through, The show is canceled. No, of course we continue without sponsorship. No sponsorship. I mean, we're grateful for sponsors, but without them, of course the show continues. We haven't had a sponsor all of 2025. Ended the sponsorship there ended in like March or something. So February, March. So that was DonorBox. So yeah, let's see what happens. Looks promising. And I am publishing a book this year. September. September is going to be the publication of my book. Here's the title, Planned Giving Accelerated. Finally, someone wrote a cut-through-the-shit, no-nonsense, practical, step-by-step guide to launch long-term legacy fundraising at your small to mid-sized nonprofit. Wow. Simply in one week, and you start with bequests. The title may be longer than the book. That's okay. You're going to be hearing more about this. It's, uh, I think that's a pretty self-explanatory title if you were able to stay with it. You know, if you got distracted, it's easy to get distracted in the middle of the title. You might not have heard the, been conscious of, or, you know, actively been listening to the entire title. Um, but you should have gleaned out of that, like, title is so long it needs a takeaway. The takeaway from the title is that it's about launching planned giving at small and mid-sized nonprofits. There you go. And I will, of course, be talking more about it. Again, September is the publication date. I'll have some early release info for listeners, of course, discounts on advanced sales and stuff like that. So you'll, you'll be hearing about this through the year. So yeah, so I'm excited for 2026 for potential new sponsor and a definite new planned giving book. And that's Tony's Take 2. Oh, and Happy New Year again. How come we can't say it enough times? Because, you know, because I'll— this, this, this will offset all the holidays that I forget about until the following week. I forget the associate producer doesn't remind me. And they go unnamed until the following week, which is bad. So multiple Happy New Years as offsetting to the late holidays that— the late holiday announcements that will come undoubtedly throughout the year. Happy New Year. That is Tony's Take Two. Kate.

Kate Martignetti
Happy New Year to you too, Uncle Tony, but also congratulations on your new book, or about-to-be new book.

Tony Martignetti
About to be. 9 months, but it's coming. Yeah, thank you. It's, uh, it's on its way. Thank you very much. Uh, and it was very good to see you over Christmas, you and the family in New Jersey. That was great fun. Great fun for several days.

Kate Martignetti
Because I'm not a new associate producer, Am I safe to assume that I will get a signed copy of this book?

Tony Martignetti
With your payment, yeah, absolutely.

Kate Martignetti
If I buy the book, you'll sign it?

Tony Martignetti
Of course I will. Yeah. It'll be available for you as it will for millions of others on Amazon and Barnes& Noble and wherever fine books are sold.

Kate Martignetti
Okay, guys, I will be auctioning off a signed book by Tony Martignetti on my Facebook.

Tony Martignetti
What an exploitative capitalist. You're going to— I don't know how much more that's going to be worth. It might actually detract from the value.

Kate Martignetti
Oh, because it's tampered with.

Tony Martignetti
It's tampered, right? It's defaced. It's defoliated. It's spoiled. It's jaded. It's cashed. It's spent. Those are all good words. I don't know if they all quite fit the meaning, but it's all close enough. All right.

Kate Martignetti
We've got beaucoup but loads more time. Here's the rest of 2026 Outlook with Amy Sample Ward and Gene Takagi.

Amy Sample Ward
I really appreciate, well, Tony, you sharing this story and taking action. I do want to absolve you of any obligatory guilt, as you've named, you know, well, I don't go and check all these things. There's no way in our Human capacity. We only have so many Beyoncé hours in the day, right? So like, you, you— it is not reasonable to expect that you've had access to or the time to find information on every, every single organization that maybe you give advice to, because you also just give advice to people even if they weren't a paid client, you know? And so that's not a reasonable expectation for any of us. And as you said, When the opportunity to stand by your morals and values came up, you did stand by them, right? It's not, okay, well, I guess you should have, that's disqualified until you go back in your history and you double-check every client you've ever had. That's not reasonable, right? When the opportunity was there, you took action. And I appreciate, Gene, you bringing up values and helping folks Think about that. Well, also in that same sentence, talking about fear, because we, we know from both a nonprofit, like marketing and advocacy perspective, but also a political advocacy perspective, fear is so influential because people become immobilized and irrational when they have fear, right? And that's why fear is the operating model of the last 12 months, Because it's so much easier to influence scared people than it is thoughtful, powerful, calm people. If we can use Tony's story to say that maybe there's a conversation in your organization, whether it's with your board or with your staff or both, and hopefully it's not the same as Tony's story and you're thinking about eliminating A sentence like that or doing something similar. Whatever it is, I think part of operating differently right now, as it has been in 2025 but will continue in 2026, is not believing that anything is so urgent you have to operate in fear. That you can take the 30 seconds to walk away from your machine. To take a deep breath and to say, okay, what what's actually important as I deal with this potentially phishing attack or deal with this funder who's just sent us another decline or you know whatever type of fear-inducing scary message you're getting or or conversation you're about to have. There is no reason you can't take ten seconds for that breath to ensure that you're not operating in fear because you're just. You're not going to serve your mission. You're not going to serve yourself. You're not going to serve your community, especially if all of us are operating in fear. The more of us who can take that breath before we make a choice or take a vote or make a proposal, that's going to add up to a lot more calm, confident choices than irrational, scared choices.

Tony Martignetti
A big part of that is why the— that's a big reason why The community needs to stand together.

Amy Sample Ward
Yeah.

Tony Martignetti
Because that will help— that helps reduce fear when we know that we're not alone, we're not isolated, you know.

Amy Sample Ward
That everybody's taking a breath before we come back to this decision.

Tony Martignetti
Yeah. And regardless of what your mission is, I mean, I wouldn't care if it was— I'm not a big supporter of guns, but I wouldn't care if it was the National Rifle Association. I would stand up for their right to exist as much as I did for the Corporation for Public Broadcasting, um, and, and Planned Parenthood.

Amy Sample Ward
Yeah.

Tony Martignetti
You know, I don't care what the mission is. It's, it's, it's, it's the right to exist. And, and the community is so much stronger when it is united, united. And, you know, I think we saw that in the, um, the whole GoFundMe chaos week in— it was October. Uh, the community came together, this beautiful, diverse community came together and said, this is too far. You know, this is corporate greed. It's overreaching. We don't know where our data— who gets the data. We don't like the fees. And, you know, it played for me largely, and a lot of people played out on LinkedIn. That's where I was posting about it and others were as well. And our big diverse community came together and spoke with one voice. And They removed the pages or they deaccessioned the page, you know, whatever they did, they deactivated the pages. They didn't remove them. Yeah. The 1.4 million that GoFundMe created. So, you know, there was an instance of the community coming together in a united voice saying this is wrong. Right. And I would say it took too long for GoFundMe to react, but I wouldn't say it was too little too late. It was just too late. They actually did what we asked. They just did it— Yeah. Several days later, but they did come around. And, and I think that was a, that was a, a big, a big win. It was, it was something that the community should, should celebrate that we came together around that.

Amy Sample Ward
Yeah. And there's value in carrying that energy through the rest of the year. You know, I really, I think from the start of 2025 to the end of 2025, there was such a notable and noticeable, and to me, very welcome, even if late, shift in the sector of saying, oh, we don't maybe just want to click accept on every single one of these AI tools. Oh, maybe we don't just want to enable every one of these AI products to suck up all of our data. Like, people actually really came around this year from Oh my gosh, adopted as quickly as possible, which had been carried over from 2024 into, hey, I want to read these terms before we actually use this tool. And I hope like that same momentum of if it's bad for you, it's bad for all of us around GoFundMe carries forward into folks collectively across the sector saying, hey, unless our data is actually private, which I can tell you like It's not. We're not using the tool, and and we use our voice not just vocally, but also through not having those accounts. Right? Our adoption and participation in technology is actually more influential than any money we put at it because as a sector, there's also lots of programs to give us free access, whatever. Right? And so just not adopting some of these tools until they can meet the needs. Like we said at the very beginning of this conversation, of keeping our mission and our constituents safe and that data safe, I think we have nothing to lose in saying we demand that before we're going to use these products.

Tony Martignetti
And Amy, clearly artificial intelligence is something to keep an eye on in 2026. It's only accelerating. Are you seeing— so you're seeing greater skepticism?

Amy Sample Ward
Yeah, for sure.

Tony Martignetti
Now than you were earlier in early 2025-ish?

Amy Sample Ward
Yeah, for sure, more skepticism. And also, you know, not that it is or is not skepticism, but it's just a separate kind of space where organizations are saying, you know, I, I want to know what's going to happen before we do this. And I think that it isn't worth adopting at all costs. Like, if we have a bunch of data on folks receiving You know, refugee status services and entry. It's not worth the risk to say that our staff are going to use some AI tool to help them write messages to those people, right? Like, it's not worth it. And how and again, it's not because I think there's a lot of folks across the sector who would identify as a as a quote unquote AI expert, and I don't I don't believe there are any, but. It's not because people feel they have expertise at the technical level. I think it's because there's been enough education and kind of those calm, let's take a breath and think about this moments where across the sector folks are saying, huh, I don't think this is serving us. And I think there's something in this that is gonna— we're gonna have to be accountable and these platforms are not. And that's giving me some pause, you know, back to board and risk and All of those pieces that Gene's already outlined, AI is really, I think, prompting folks to say, we just need to have a little bit more information because this is on us if we, if we put the data in there.

Tony Martignetti
That's very gratifying to hear. I think that's enormously healthy.

Amy Sample Ward
Yeah.

Tony Martignetti
And it goes to what Gene was saying, you know, grounded in the mission. I mean, let's take a pause and let's make sure that we are Focusing on what is important to us. And that includes in evaluating whether this not-so-new but very shiny object really suits us or does it not.

Gene Takagi
And it's decision-making again, right, from the leaders, not necessarily the board here, but from the leadership of the organization of this AI tool can make things a lot more convenient. You can do a lot with this AI tool. But on the other hand, many of the leaders of the biggest AI companies now, and like the head of— the former head of NASDAQ has said AI is an existential threat to human existence.

Tony Martignetti
Oh,

Gene Takagi
I

Tony Martignetti
didn't hear that. Okay,

Gene Takagi
that has got to like weigh in to say, well, maybe we need some guardrails here. And if the nonprofit sector is not identifying those, the for-profit sector is probably not going to do that. So like, this is like really key for organizations to start to think about convenience on one hand, existential threat on the other hand. Where do we stand on our values here? You know, how are our beneficiaries going to ultimately be helped by saving a few minutes each day by using AI tools? where we're just checking the box, agreeing to give up all of our privacy rights to it and not even know what we're doing. Yeah.

Amy Sample Ward
Just to weave together some of the earlier points with this and not as a super scary alarm bell, but I do think that a number of organizations don't realize that the amount of your data content writ large are in systems held on servers owned by companies that don't even have to disclose to you that they got a subpoena to turn over your data. And then you think about AI facilitating that extraction automatically and rapidly. Hmm. You know, as far as us thinking about keeping our people safe and really protecting that data, It's it is kind of like a web and not just you know a circle that you're that you're operating in because again you're thinking about that data in your database but is your database stored through a vendor that again they have a policy they government could just send the subpoena to them and they don't even have to disclose to you that they're sharing the data out of it right so really. If we're doing resolutions, 2026 is maybe like truly read the user agreements on the tools that you have so that you know to what degree you even can contain the data or the impact or where it's going.

Gene Takagi
As we're recording this as well, you know, news came out from the federal administration that there's a plan to require tourists to give up their rights to their social media posts, to have them reviewed on entry for 5 years, and also have to give up all of the names and contact information of their relatives, including their children, as a condition to be able to enter into the country.

Tony Martignetti
Damn, I didn't hear— I heard about the social media. I didn't hear about you have to give up all your relatives. That's part of the

Amy Sample Ward
same

Tony Martignetti
To come visit here?

Gene Takagi
So this is still planned. This is not— so it could be rhetoric. And, you know, the tourism industry certainly, as World Cup is coming, is certainly going to be alarmed by this. So maybe this is a case where the for-profit sector will push back on it. But can you think about how AI would be integrated in with such an order and what a nightmare scenario this would be? I don't know if anybody's watching There's this television series on right now where it speaks a little bit to kind of like ultimate threats of where this could lead to. And again, not to, not to be an alarmist too much, but there are lessons to be learned from extreme situations and say, well, let's not go down that road. Let's go down this more beautiful road instead.

Tony Martignetti
Damn, but that— it seems, it seems not infeasible, but it seems on such a scale. Like, we have, we have—

Amy Sample Ward
well, that's why you'd have to use AI to do it. And

Tony Martignetti
yeah, because we have tens of millions of visitors to this country. Maybe it's 100 mil, I don't know. Tens of millions of visitors to this country each year. All those rel— all their relatives, and they have to give it It's encompassing everybody in the world. Tens of millions of people times— we all have like 3 or 4 family members at least. We all have parents. I don't know. Okay. It seems like at a scale that's just— I don't know. Sounds like Stephen Miller didn't think through that initiative. I had heard about the social media part. I didn't know about the relatives, giving up the relatives to come visit for a— go to a A week in the Pacific Northwest with your family. See, I picked Oregon. I picked the Pacific Northwest. I didn't say, no, you go to New York City for a week. I didn't even say go to San Francisco for a week, both of which are fine destinations, but I chose the Pacific Northwest. All right.

Amy Sample Ward
Can I bring us back to data, as I always do? But something that I know Gene spoke of very briefly earlier, and I think is maybe prepared to speak on more, and that we did talk a little bit about when the 3 of us previously met a couple months ago, but part of this contraction in the sector, organizations losing funding or feeling unable to operate or being attacked and closing, you know, there's all different reasons, but there are continuing to be organizations that, that close. And a piece of that from NTEN's side of things, where we're looking at the technology and the data, is what it means for program effectiveness to know that these models did work, even though that organization is closed now. To know what data that organization had been seeing in that county where they provided those services, and now that data's gone. Right. To, to again say what was the level of need in our county before, right? And that's not to say that I think, you know, everybody should just sell or turn over or give away a bunch of data about people, but I do think that as organizations are thinking about dissolving or closing or kind of letting go of their own independent organization and becoming a program of another organization or something, that What to do with, with the data, not just constituent data, but like your impact data, the proof that your programs were effective. All of those different pieces, I hope, can be part of those planning scenarios so that we could say, okay, well, we're closing and we work on housing in Clackamas County. There's another housing organization. Again, we're not turning over people's names and addresses, but could we at least Transition data that showed these types of programs had these types of effectiveness so that they continue the work and, and that we don't lose on the knowledge that is ours as the community members in that county. That is our knowledge, that's our data. And if an organization closes and deletes the data, right, then it's gone. And, and really thinking about that as a public good, that there can be places where we continue to hold that. story of your work, but also the kind of impact evaluation program data, anonymized and whatever. But I'm really seeing already the impacts of losing that information in communities.

Tony Martignetti
Yeah, that's terrible. I mean, what a loss of institutional knowledge and community. Yeah, you're right. The data is of and for the community.

Amy Sample Ward
Right. How would we as community members advocate if we can't point to the data that said these were services we used?

Gene Takagi
That's where the boards need to come in as well. If you let your organization operate till its very last dollar and there's nothing left to create that transition because there is a cost to this, you need people to help you sort the data, get it over, move it, transfer it. Protect the private information. Like, this all takes time. You can't do this when you're on your last week of operating funds, right? You have to make sure you're paying your staff. You can't tell them at the end of the day, oh, we ran out of money so we can't pay you. And there are all sorts of additional problems that would happen there too. But organizations at this time, there's so many that are kind of in this zone of insolvency Right now, that hard decisions need to be made. And so that's kind of just another big thing. The other thing I wanted to get across really quick, Tony, is just because we started with risk mitigation, I think I threw us down different rabbit holes. But do the easy stuff. Make sure your filings are in on time. Like, document your board minutes, you know, your meeting minutes. Make sure that you have them. Yeah. If you're doing stuff that you're not quite sure could lead into issues, explain before anybody has audited you why you're doing something for charitable purposes, why it, you know, you're doing this for your mission, so somebody's not later accusing you of, yeah, you're funding this illegal sort of demonstration and you've intentionally funded trespassing and all of these other violations. If you have it in your file that goes, this is what we were funding, a peaceful protest, like that's— if you have those in your books, audits and things go by so much easier. And it's not a regulator going, you just made that up because we asked for it. No, it was already in your file. So just a quick few steps on risk mitigation.

Tony Martignetti
Yeah, that brings together all the areas you talked about at the opening, Gene. Political, legal, financial, public relations. They all spin out of one of the 4, can lead to all 4 being a crisis at the same time. Something political has legal implications, which gives you bad press. Right. and your donations stop. And there's all 4 implicated. Do you want to talk? We have some more time, Gene. Do you want to talk more about these collaborations on the positive end, acquisitions maybe on the opposite end, and maybe mergers in the middle? Yeah, I want to add a question. Closings would be at the closing, like to your last dollar. That's the That's the bad end of the spectrum. And then, and then it continues from there. I'm sorry, Amy, please.

Amy Sample Ward
And I just wanted to add to your kind of spectrum of scenarios that Gene's maybe offering some insight to. At NTEN, we continue to get phone calls from folks who aren't necessarily identifying one of those scenarios. They don't even know what scenario they would look at. And they're, they're calling because they're like, We've been put on a list. What are we supposed to do? Like we didn't we didn't do anything to get put on this list, but now we're on this public list, and I've of course given them the technology side advice. But I'm curious again. Yes, those scenarios Tony outlined, but also people that don't even know if they're facing one of those scenarios because they're really just coming to this as well. Now our organization's being targeted. We've been put on a list. What are we supposed?

Gene Takagi
Yeah, it's a great question, right? And there are all sorts of lists that are out there, but ultimately, you know, at the end of the day, there are probably only a few hundred organizations out of 1.9 million that are on some list that has got like the attention of someone in power. So there are a few organizations out there that have the ear of congressional members and They're scary. It's scary to be on those lists or on lists of letters coming off from Representative Hawley or some senator's office. Those lists are scary. But right now they're mostly sort of, will you give us this information, request letters. They're not even like, you've done something wrong, we're going to get you letters, like the rhetoric that sometimes comes out of President Trump's mouth about like— Right. You know, we're gonna go after like these organizations because they've done something illegal. There are actually laws and there's a whole bunch of bureaucracy to be able to take, you know, a 501 status away. And taking 501 status away does not freeze your funding or prevent you from operating. So there are a lot of misconceptions out there. The freezing the funds and stopping you from operating are largely state-level, you know, actions. Now, there are a lot of states out there that may not be friendly if the federal government is pulling your 501 status away, but there are many other states where you probably won't expect the same type of repercussions if it was a political— it was clearly a political reason why they tried to take your 501 status away. And when I was speaking about the bureaucracy again, oftentimes when we speak about like federal bureaucracy, or like the IRS is like such a headache, it takes forever to get anywhere. Now consider this with a huge loss of staff members and a lot of expert staff members and some portion of remaining members who are a little bit resistant to what the federal priorities are, and think about how dysfunctional that may end up being. So if you're on a list What is ultimately going to be the outcome of that list? For most organizations, nothing, right? For most organizations, it goes nowhere. They're going to try to scare you. They may ask for documents. You may not give them to them. Will they follow up on it? Sometimes they will, but they don't have a lot of staff. So like if you gave them 1,000 pages of documents or even 100 pages of documents, The likelihood anybody reads them is like really small. What about their algorithms and stuff? Their systems are super antiquated, which is again reasons for criticism in the past, but like that, there's some good side to that right now as well. If you're— so one thing is we can't live in complete fear. Now, some organizations may get targeted and may go down. Yeah. But it's not the vast majority of organizations that are worried about it that are actually going to go down. The ones that they're going to target, probably a few big ones that, that are, that, you know, have, have the wealth to fight back, and then just some random small ones. But the easiest ones to pick off are the ones that have low-hanging fruit. And by that I mean they forgot to register in time. So Texas decided to take away their right to operate there. Because of that, all of the crowdfunding platforms say, oh, you've been taken off from this state because you did not comply with their laws. You can't use our platform in multi-state situations anymore. Other states could follow as well. So like, don't give them low-hanging fruit. Like, late filing. They're probably not going to get you because you said DEI on your website, or that's part of your mission, or abortion is in your mission. All of those things are legal, right? So what is illegal DEI? Well, employment discrimination is illegal DEI. So you can't say, I'm just going to hire a Black person, or I'm just going to hire a white person, or an Asian person, or whatever it be. You can't say that. There are some private actions that we talked about before about making and enforcing contracts, the Fearless Fund situation, Tony, if you remember, kind of private funding. And I think Ed Blum has gone after someone else now. Ed Blum funded the Harvard-UNC Supreme Court affirmative action litigation that ended affirmative action in higher education.

Tony Martignetti
In admissions, yeah.

Gene Takagi
Yeah, he is continuing to fund organizations that fund plaintiffs. They look for plaintiffs to sue not just nonprofits but for-profits or anybody that has any sort of affirmative action type program that uses a contract. So not using contractual language in those type of situations can really help, but they don't have the resources to sue everybody. So again, like if there are 100,000 organizations that, that have these type of programs, yeah, maybe 5, maybe 10 get targeted. So Are you going to stop pursuing your mission because of a 0.001 chance that Ed Blum is going to get a hold of it? Probably not, but you can take steps to avoid the risks. So just sort of be on the lookout. There are a lot of resources out there, and this is why collaborating with people and saying, hey, what good resources do you have out there? Like those things are really good just to say, oh, the National Council on Nonprofits, they've got some good resources. The Alliance for Justice, they got some good resources. There are— if you Google nonprofit legal defense, you'll find a bunch of good resources. NTEN, fantastic resource, right? So there's a lot of organizations out there that can help collaborate so you don't feel like you're by yourself trying to find every resource by

Tony Martignetti
Amy, I'll give you the— give you all the final word because Gene opened us. So—

Amy Sample Ward
Yeah, I just wanted to build on what Gene said and reinforce, you know, going to your state nonprofit association or the National Council, or, you know, call the Boulder Advocacy Support Line or, you know, NTEN groups. But one piece that I think you'll find no matter where you turn is that folks will say, you're not alone. Hey, we have a whole community of folks just like you. And to your point at the beginning, Tony, and Gene too, like, all of us are probably scared. And if you're not scared, you're not paying attention or whatever, right? But that we don't need to be alone in figuring anything out. We are stronger, we're calmer, we're better, everything together. So don't feel like, okay, I'm gonna find a resource and then I'm gonna keep it. If you find a resource, make sure you turn around and tell somebody else, right? So that we are constantly helping in a networked community way, because that's how the most number of our organizations will survive. That's how the most number of our communities will continue to have access to our services. Like, no organization is alone in anything that you're facing. Right. None of us can help you face it if you are— if you think you are alone, right?

Tony Martignetti
There, Amy Sample Ward, our technology contributor, CEO of NTEN. With them is Gene Takagi, our legal contributor and the principal of NEO, the Nonprofit and Exempt Organizations Law Group. Thank you very much, Amy. Thank you very much, Gene. Happy New Year.

Amy Sample Ward
Happy 2026.

Gene Takagi
Happy New Year.

Kate Martignetti
Next week, be human and be yourself for best fundraising. If you missed any part of this week's show,

Tony Martignetti
I beseech you, find it at tonymartignetti.com. Happy New Year again.

Kate Martignetti
Our creative producer is Claire Meyerhoff. I'm your associate producer, Kate Martignetti. The show's social media is by Susan Chavez. Marc Silverman is our web guy, and this music is by Scott Stein.

Tony Martignetti
Thank you for that affirmation, Scotty. Be with us next week for Nonprofit Radio, Big Nonprofit Ideas for the Other 95%. Go out and be great.