Gene Takagi & Amy Sample Ward: Looking To 2025: Is It Paranoia Or Prudence?
Our esteemed contributors share what they’re looking to next year, with the uncertainty of a new president and administration. On the table is HR 9495, which some call the NonprofitKiller; government agencies no longer given deference by the federal courts, with the Supreme Court overruling the long-standing Chevron Doctrine; and, uneasiness around the economy rippling out to preemptive nonprofit budget cuts. Our legal contributor is Gene Takagi at NEO Law Group. Amy Sample Ward, CEO of NTEN, is our technology contributor.
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And welcome to Tony Martignetti Nonprofit Radio. Big nonprofit ideas for the other 95%. I’m your aptly named host and the pod father of your favorite abdominal podcast. This is our last show of the year. I’ll have more to say about that. Oh, I’m glad you’re with us. I’d bear the pain of a para nia if you pointed out to me that you missed this week’s show. Here’s our associate producer, Kate with what’s up this week? Hey, Tony, we have looking to 2025. Is it paranoia or Prudence? Our esteemed contributors share what they’re looking to next year with the uncertainty of a new president and administration on the table is hr 9495, which some call the nonprofit killer government agencies no longer given deference by the federal courts with the Supreme Court overruling of the long-standing Chevron doctrine and uneasiness around the economy rippling out to pre-emptive nonprofit budget cuts. Our legal contributor is Gene Takaki at Neo Law Group, Amy Sample Ward CEO of N 10 is our technology contributor on Tony’s two. Our last show of the year and timely holiday wishes were sponsored by donor box outdated donation forms blocking your supporters, generosity, donor box, fast, flexible and friendly fundraising forms for your nonprofit donor. Box.org here is looking to 2025. Is it paranoia or Prudence? It’s a pleasure to welcome back Gene Takagi and Amy Sample Ward for our final show of 2024. Gene is our legal contributor and principal of Neo, the nonprofit and exempt organization’s Law Group in San Francisco. He edits the wildly popular nonprofit law blog.com and is a part time lecturer at Columbia University. The firm is at Neola group.com and he’s at GTC A AMP award, our technology contributor and CEO of N 10. 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. They’re at Amy Sample ward.org and at Amy RS Ward Gene and Amy. Thank you for your contributions through the year and welcome to the final show of 2024. We made it sounds like drudgery. No, I’m just saying like it, you know, here we are, we made it all the way to the end of 2020 four. All right, thanks. OK. She says it, they say it with a smile. So thank you. Thank you. It sounded like uh it might have been a laborious chore, but no, hopefully not. I’m I’m sure not. All right. And one thing maybe Tony that, that will spur talking about what we might foresee in the future is that change in social media handles. As many of us are migrating to blue sky and to other. Exactly. But just thought, I chime in with that quickly, we can, we can talk about the, the, the seasonal migration. I, I am slow to adopt new networks. But uh yes, I, I’ve started being active on uh on blue sky as well. Indeed. All right. Uh We wanna start with something that, uh, both of you have seen me post about and has been getting a lot of attention, uh, for months before I joined, before this, uh, came within my ken if you will, uh, which is ho House Resolution hr 9495. Uh, in the Senate. It is, uh, 4136. It is the stop terror financing and tax penalties on American Hostages Act. Uh, J uh, I don’t know, terror financing and not penalizing people who were held hostage for paying their taxes late. I mean, those, those both sound like very worthwhile endeavors for the government to do. Uh, especially I’m thinking of hostages who may not have filed their 1040 on time. I mean, I think, I think being held hostage is, uh, uh, a legitimate reason for not having paid your taxes and then the penalties that would have ensued on top of that. So, II, I think that’s a fair, uh, but it’s the, uh, it’s the stop terror financing part that is, uh, rankling nonprofit organizations, the nonprofit community generally. Um, what, what is it about this house resolution? It passed the house. It’s now in the Senate, I guess I’ll just set up the, the, the, the, uh, timing of the thing. So, uh, it’s unlikely to be taken up in the current Senate. I mean, it’s possible but it’s not likely, uh, having passed the house. Uh, but we have a new Senate, uh, beginning on, um, January 3rd and, uh, that Senate could very well take up hr 9495 Senate 4136. What’s, uh, what, what’s the, uh, what’s the issue here for the nonprofit community? Gene? So, II, I think when we take a look at the name of the bill, this is the game of politics that some of us get frustrated with. Right. So who could be against stop terror financing? Of course, nobody wants to, it’s worthy and it’s worthy and benign. But what does it actually say about how we stop terror financing? What are the checks and balances? Can anybody just say you are supporting terror and that’s it. You are like, shut down. Do you get executed for doing that? I mean, so we, we need to look into the bill and I think the first time this bill came across was actually, um, late last year, Tony, it was under a different name. Uh, it was hr 64 08 in the house and it passed 382 to 11. So I don’t think a lot of the legislators got past the name of the bill and then they decided, hey, we’re going to pass this because how can our constituents see us oppose a bill against supporting terror? Of course, we are, are for, you know, stopping terror financing and the hostages too. Don’t forget the, the, the late, the late filings for the, for the hostages. And that’s the other part of politics, right? Is we bundle things together so that you’re trapped, right? There’s no kiss to, to, to promoting that bill. But here’s, here’s why it’s, it’s scary for, for the nonprofit sector. The addition in the bill, the, the part that’s not to do with hostages is about the Secretary of the Treasury having the discretion alone to strip the tax exempt status of an organization because they feel like they are supporting a terrorist organization, they are providing material support or resources to a terrorist organization. And if they deem that to be the case, they give 90 days notice to the organization, they should supply some evidence of that support um, or resources unless it’s a national secret or it’s not in the best interests of the government to do so. In which case, it could all be done in secret. It could just be, we’re taking away your 501 C three status because we’ve decided that you are supporting terror a terrorist organization, give us 90 days to prove that you’re not in return any money that, that, you know, you sent out to the terrorist organization that we might not really tell you much about. Um, and what is all of that mean? I mean, so now as we sort of dig into how this might be impacted and how, uh, an executive branch might use this particular bill to attack organizations or even if they don’t use it broadly how it will just chill free speech across the sector. There’s already organizations terrified with this bill and afraid to speak up on things like, um, the Palestinian people in Gaza, which is sort of what prompted the bill in the first place. Right. But, you know, now they’re thinking, oh my gosh, can we speak about reproductive rights? Can we speak about other things? Are we going to be called a terrorist organization or a supporter of a terrorist organization? And what if the organization we were supporting wasn’t branded a terrorist organization at the time, but later was declared by some other entity or some other agency to be a terrorist organization. Now, do they go back and do they ding us on that as well? And I won’t go too far down the line. But humanitarian aid is another huge issue to, to talk about later. But let me, let me stop there. Well, even even on the domestic side, suppose you are supporting the, uh, the civil rights or the legal rights of people who protest openly in the streets, uh, about anything that, that we have a right to seek redress from our, from our federal government around. So you’re, then those protesters are perhaps arrested, um, and charged and you give legal support, you give material legal support to those, to those charged. Are, are those, are those folks deemed domestic terrorists? That’s another thing, the bill does not distinguish between federal or domestic, sorry, between domestic or foreign. Uh, are you now giving material support to domestic terrorists who were exercising their first amendment rights of assembly and speech in the streets? And so now you’re, now you, this legal aid society are a, uh, terrorist supporting organization. So there’s an opportunity. Um, it’s just the, the, the bill is vague on standards. In fact, I think it’s, it’s silent on the standards for being deemed a terrorist supporting organization. It’s, it’s at the Secretary of the Treasury’s uh discretion, what is deemed a terrorist supporting organization? And that vagueness is critical. I don’t want to overstate it, Tony, because I’ve seen on various other podcasts. People are making more into this bill than is actually there. So to be a terrorist supporting organization that could be subject to being stripped of tax exempt status. You have to be accused, uh, or, or charged with, um, the designation that you are supporting a terrorist organization. And the terrorist organization is defined in other sections of the bill, the bill is very hard to read because it starts to refer to other places in the code where you could be described as a terrorist organization. So if you give support, material support or resources to that terrorist organization that’s typically been defined by somebody else, some other branch of the government, um, usually with a little bit more, you know, some people have been mistaken about this saying that the legislature had to define you as a terrorist organization. That’s not quite true. There are other sort of members of the executive branch that could still define you as a terrorist organization. If they have, then the secretary of the Treasury has the ability to say you supported them, but they’ve got to be on some list of a terrorist organization. So protesters on the street, if you’re supporting them in their legal aid, unless they are deemed part of a terrorist group that’s been identified as a terrorist organization, then that won’t apply. It’s time for a break. Imagine a fundraising partner that not only helps you raise more money but also supports you in retaining your donors, a partner that helps you raise funds both online and on location. So you can grow your impact faster. That’s donor box, a comprehensive suite of tools, services and resources that gives fundraisers, just like you a custom solution to tackle your unique challenges, helping you achieve the growth and sustainability. Your organization needs helping you, help others visit donor box.org to learn more. Now, back to looking to 2025 is it paranoia or prudence? Suppose they’re supporting Black Lives Matter in their local city and Black Lives Matter has been deemed a terrorist support, a terrorist organization. I mean, we, we, uh, by some, by some other agency as you’re, as you’re describing, that doesn’t seem outside the realm of possibility. The, the claim could be that Black Lives Matter members as if there’s as if there’s like a, a strict membership list or something. But let’s just use the, the worst possible instincts of uh the federal government uh are, are, you know, they, uh they, they uh they create crime in mayhem and they burn buildings. Well, it sounds like a domestic terror organization to us that other agency has determined. And now the, the uh the legal aid society uh is providing uh material support to a terrorist organization. Doesn’t that, isn’t that within the realm of possibility and plausibility? It kind of is Tony, it’s not really kind of projected right now that this is going to be focused on domestic terrorism. It seems like the executive branch doesn’t actually want to identify domestic organizations as terrorist organizations because many of them support the, the, the current administration, uh those who, who were responsible for the insurrection, for example, on January 6th. So the focus here right now is on foreign terrorism. That’s sort of the identified groups, um, that, um, if you support foreign terrorist organizations that seems to be the focus but it doesn’t mean that they couldn’t go down the route that you’re talking about. Terror. Does the, does the bill? I thought the bill was silent on foreign versus domestic terror. It doesn’t define it except through references to other sections of the code which are focused on foreign terrorist organizations. So, you know, it doesn’t mean they can’t expand it. It doesn’t mean that maybe the Secretary of the Treasury couldn’t interpret terrorist supporting to, to give themselves a little bit more power to say, hey, this is a terrorist group as well. But I, I think that would be something that, that would not be, I, there’s, there’s lots of law already where the executive branch can do far worse than under what they have in 9495. So the first thing to know is 9495 takes away tax exempt status. It does not stop you from operating, it just takes away 501 c three status or 5014 C four, whatever. But doesn’t stop you from operating, they have tools that can stop you from operating. They can criminalize you if they say you’re terror supporting same words, terrorist supporting. There are other laws which is why we go, well, why this law, why did this law come up? There’s already other laws that prevent you from supporting terror and the reason in my mind is they’re going to use this not as the hammer but as the chisel to silence dissent. So they’re gonna chisel away at certain organizations scare everybody else at it. And that’s, that’s gonna be the impact. So rather than like take down all these protesters or like a whole movement of civil rights organizers think they’re going, what they’re going to do is they’re going to the target. Why this bill came about was because of what’s happening in Palestine and Gaza and the support that um some of those organizations have given to the Palestinian cause they’re gonna use that and they’re gonna scare everybody else from, from speaking out on it. And I think that is the danger, the real danger of 9495 because there are other laws where they can strip away your 501 C three status for acting against public policy. There are other laws that say, hey, we can criminalize your leaders for supporting terror. There’s a whole bunch of worse things they can do. This is the lighter touch, which is a terrible light touch, but this is the lighter touch that might be more useful to an administration that wants to attack dissent, prior restraint on speech, self censorship, correct. Amy. What, what are you, what are you thinking? Yeah, I think that we’ve seen a lot of organizations feeling concerned about this. Um Actually for Gene’s point, not necessarily for the, you know, your organization is or eradicated and no longer exists. But what does this mean for how organizations position themselves, talk to their community, who they talk to, you know, the, the feeling that this is kind of um chilling the sector on building power and trying to work together. Versus um as jean said, there’s, there’s already options that if, you know, the government wanted to completely remove an organization, there are already ways that they could do that. Um But this feels both the, the timing where it’s come from, you know, how, how it came in response to organizations really trying to make more visible conversations about um Palestine, even not about Palestine, but even just organizations trying to say, you know, our, our government is complicit in so many harms around the world. Um And that, what does that mean for nonprofit organizations who felt like that is maybe not their explicit mission? Like to your example before they’re not a legal aid organization, they’re not a humanitarian aid organization, but they wanted to be um in the conversation with their community and acknowledging that there’s a lot going on in the world and even trying to acknowledge that maybe feels like it’s risky for them or what does it mean to be in a partnership with a lot of other organizations? Again, even on a different topic? But what does that association mean? And, and are we not able to collaborate across the sector because of perceptions, you know, gene, anything more we wanna say about uh 9495. Maybe, actually, instead of the substance, maybe some things that some of the organizations that are speaking out against the Bill Council on foundations, uh independent sector, the National Council on nonprofits. Those three and one other organization have a joint statement against the Bill. The advice that I’ve seen a lot is contact your senators. Thanks Tony. It’s since it’s passed the house, I think that’s sort of where the immediate fight is, is with the Senate. And um even if the the majority of the Senate changes, um uh next year, as you, as you noted, Tony, um there are, you know, possibilities of a filibuster by the democratic senators if they so feel like this is something that they can stand up on again again, the rhetoric and the naming of the bill. Um and how much constituents are paying attention to the actual details. I know a lot of nonprofit folks are, but, you know, the general population may not be looking past the title of the bill. And so if their representative is saying I’m voting against this when the exact same bill was there before with like a 95 or 97% vote for it, trying to, to explain that um might be hard. So while there’s hope for, you know, for some that the Senate uh might have a filibuster and not approve this, um or listen to the public if there’s enough of an uproar um across party lines, um, that, that, that maybe they don’t do it. So the, the immediate thing is yes, advocate against the bill. The second thing is make sure you’re informed about what this bill does and doesn’t, again, really a lot of misinformation out there right now and people are scrambling, they’re like trying to create subsidiaries, they’re trying to create LLC S to throw, you know, assets in just in case they lose their 501 C three status because they’re thinking that this bill will shut them down completely. Uh Again, not just lose 501 C three status and prevent them from operating, freeze their assets. That’s not what this bill does. Again, there’s other tools that, that the federal government or even state government already have that can do that, but they haven’t used it in the past. So it’s hard to say Tony, we, we may be in for New Times and really just egregious uses of these, these laws. Um but it may be premature to make huge decisions unless you’re really well informed about them. So I, I would say for, for people looking at this bill, don’t just listen to all the sort of the talk that’s out there right now, like sit down and really get well informed about this, listen to nonprofit radio because we will thank you because we will continue talking about it. Of course. Yeah. All right. Um, good, thank you. Context, context understanding. Let’s talk about, uh, something else that’s on your mind for, uh, watching in 2025 something that came out many months ago. Uh, Gene, which was the, uh, overruling of what, what’s commonly called the, the Chevron Doctrine where government agencies get a lot of deference in the courts when the issue is interpretation of regulations, uh, rules, uh, that, that doctrine of, of deference to those government experts uh was overruled by the Supreme Court was the middle of this year or so. Can you uh explain why this is concerning? Yeah, so it doesn’t, it’s kind of this sort of lawyer geeky thing that goes on, but it’s, it’s important to take a step back and say, hey, the legislator makes statutory laws, right? But the laws are full of like empty spaces for there to be, there needs to be regulation about how to implement these laws. And so like the different agencies including like the Treasury Department and the IRS um start to make regulations. Um and these regulations interpret the law in ways to enforce the law in a practical way. And it’s a lot of law uh and agencies like the EPA the Environmental Protection Agency will take kind of the meaning of the law and sort of all of the legislative history behind it and try to create regulations. They put out the regulations for notice and public comment and then they draft final regulations after that, taking into account those comments, hopefully taking those into account. The courts feel like these regulatory agencies use scientists like the EPA or, or experts, policy experts in creating these regulations. Um And now when a company like Chevron wants to sue uh and say these regulations are unfair, the court used to have to defer or provided deference under the Chevron deference doctrine that hey, we are going to defer to the expertise of the agencies when they created those regulations. And that’s why that is the deference. You have to prove to us if you’re the company saying, hey, no, this doesn’t really pollute or this doesn’t really affect our public health. Let’s let’s like con continue to produce this stuff um because we need it for other things. Um So now this deference is lost. So the courts can’t give deference and now they have to just weigh everything out in balance. The courts are not scientists, right? They’re not scientific experts, the scientific experts were consulted with in creating the regulations, which is why you defer to them. Now, we’ve lost that. So this is a big thing. Another reason why people were very concerned about the composition of the Supreme Court because there seems to be more or or less deference to kind of what, what public agencies see and more susceptibility to what corporations and people of wealth have, who can actually fight these and go to court all the way to the Supreme Court because they have a huge litigation war chest to work behind. It’s time for Tony’s take two. Thank you, Kate. Here we are. End of December. It’s the last show of 2024. It, it, I don’t know, it doesn’t creep up. It just, it just comes fast. I think end of the year, I hope your end of the year fundraising all important is, uh going well. Hope you have a bang up last couple of weeks of the year. I hope you get where you need to be fundraising wise. And then I hope you can take time off for family friends and yourself, you need rest. Here comes the finger wag. Take care of yourself. You gotta take care of yourself before you can take care of others. So I hope you will do that over the holidays, whatever that looks like for you, do it, take care of yourself so you can come back refreshed in the new Year this time. Uh Unlike Thanksgiving, good holiday wishes, whatever holiday you celebrate Happy New Year, these holiday wishes come on time. Not uh not the week after like uh like we saw with Thanksgiving. Unbelievable. I hope you enjoy your time off. I hope you enjoy your holidays. Happy New Year and we will see you in 2025 K happy holidays. Everyone spend it with family and we’ll see you in 2025. We’ve got VU but loads more time, here’s the rest of looking to 2025. Is it paranoia or prudence with Gene and Amy? The presumption of expertise in the, in our vast federal agency bureaucracy uh is, is no, is no longer. And so that it’s, it’s interesting, the, the standard uh one standard was, is arbitrary and capricious that uh that the interpretation or that the regulation is arbitrary and it’s so arbitrary that it, it, it uh is contrary to what Congress intended. And so that regulation should be ignored. And you know, we the company challenging it shouldn’t be held to its standards. Now. It seems like arbitrariness is, is welcome because any interpretation uh has potential validity in the courts, if you can persuade a judge and maybe in some cases, a jury, I think a lot of these would be bench trials with Ju ju with judge judges. But whatever, if you can, if you can persuade the finder of fact that uh that your interpretation, however arbitrary it might be is more appropriate than you could prevail. So it’s bringing arbitrariness and capriciousness into it’s welcoming arbitrariness and, and uh fringe theories as having potential merit. Now, they may not prevail but they’ll, they’ll, they’ll at least get a hearing. Now. Think about this too, Tony. The company that wants to bring the lawsuit to challenge the validity of the regulation might get to choose the court in which to file the complaint right. So they often go to Texas, um and they get a court that is favorable to, to maybe to, to corporate powers and, and uh not believers of climate change and, and you know, so they can choose the forum and forum shopping can be really problematic and, you know, with, with the end of Chevron deference, more arbitrariness, you can, you can file your case in any of the federal districts throughout the country that you think would be most favorable. That’s absolutely correct. Amy’s head, their head is bobbing with disbelief and I mean, I can only hit it against the desk so many times per day, you know, without a crude, the bumps aren’t showing a hat on, you know. Well, you have your hat protection but it’s also, it’s early in the pacific time, still several hours left in the day. Like the Grinch right now, Tony. No, there, there’s, there’s cause for concern. Um, the, the, the, uh, the composition of the court, the Supreme Court has enormous sway over, uh, over our, our laws, our culture just, you know, our, our lives. So these are a couple of instances we’re gonna turn to Amy. I’m probably not going to make anything sound better than g, well, it’s not a competition. I know I just, all arbitrary. I thought you were like wanting to pick up the tone, you know, but all arbitrary and capricious opinions are welcome. Your, your opinions are not neither arbitrary nor capricious. Um but uh you are hearing from folks about their concern about the, the, the potential of a, of a, a changed economy, uh marketplace and uh potential fundraising impacts. What, what are you, what are you hearing from folks? You, you have your ear to the ground? Yeah, I mean, you know, I think everyone, at least in the US, I’m sure you have listeners elsewhere thanks to the internet but have spent, I don’t know how much of our lives over the last election cycle. Constantly hearing about the economy, constantly hearing about tariffs, constant, all of these things about the market. And it doesn’t matter if any of them are real or not or have already happened or maybe one day gonna happen, it doesn’t matter. It means there’s now a real air of uncertainty about what’s gonna happen to the economy. And unfortunately, in the nonprofit sector, we know that the winds of the economy shifting also shift philanthropy and how they may have a more conservative view over their own um corpus and, and what they want to spend. And of course, that means then for the nonprofits, you know, are we competing even harder for fewer funds? Are funders kind of back to the first piece of this conversation in 9495 are funders not wanting to be seen resourcing organizations who talk about certain political situations. Um, you know, it just has created a lot of uncertainty and what, you know, we’re hearing from organizations is, um, of course, when there was a lot of uncertainty in 2020 the pandemic was shifting, everything, organizations didn’t, you know, know how to adjust organizations were laying staff off or sh you know, all of those big shifts meant the things that were really quick to go was no professional development spending, no technology spending, no training. And those were also the resources that would have allowed organizations to adjust and to be nimble and to know how to continue moving through these really um confusing or, or unpredictable times. And so I think because folks who already experienced that once they’re starting to feel like, oh my gosh, if funding is uncertain, if how we’re operating is uncertain, we can’t let go of some of our tools and training and resources that allow us to think and adjust and, you know, make really, really maybe quick but strategic choices instead of reactionary choices that maybe we experienced before, you know, and had to learn the hard way that, oh, we don’t just do everything on zoom or whatever it might be, you know. Um And I think coupled with that, with some of these uh talked about threats to a lot of different communities. Organizations are also feeling like, you know, are our system secure. Do we know what data we have and which communities, it might compromise if it was either demanded of us from the government. Or hacked and stolen from us? You know, what, what duties do we have as an organization that serves communities who are in the process of, you know, getting documentation or a path to citizenship? What if we have data on these folks because they’re in our services and in our programs, are we vulnerable as an organization? And also are we maybe making them vulnerable by having their data? And how do we think about that? You know, how do we prepare our systems to be um ready to navigate maybe threats or challenges that come up? So I think it’s a lot, it’s also December and everybody is tired and wants to put up that out of office on their email and just like take a break, which absolutely you should do, you are entitled to, to take that break. But I think folks are feeling really worried about what’s ahead and not totally prepared, you know, to know how to, how to navigate it yet. Yeah, uncertainty. We, we don’t, we don’t, we don’t do well in uncertain environments whether they’re financial, physical, whether, you know, we don’t uh it doesn’t matter. We, we um uncertainty is unsettling. Um I will say some of what you described. I, I don’t, I don’t want to uh promote paranoia, but some of that introspect, introspection and self evaluation, you know, it has value too, 0 100% and data security resilience, right? And those are not new things you know, any day of the year, any year it is. If you came to N 10, we would say, hey, do you know what data you have on your community? And do you know where it’s stored? And do you know if it’s secure, you know, these aren’t new things for us to talk about. But I think they are very new things for some organizations to think about in their systems and actually like put into place, you know, even if they’ve maybe had a more theoretical conversation about, oh, you know, do we wanna answer community questions through Facebook D MS? You know, that’s probably not safe, let’s not do that but didn’t then have the rest of the conversation of OK, well, what data do we have on those folks? What, which systems is it in? Do we know how we’re maintained? You know, and the uncertainty of what’s the common kind of threats to so many different communities that, you know, are maybe part of a lot of different missions is forcing I think folks to think about the whole rest of the equation instead of just that first part that that’s maybe where they focused in the past. I thought a lesson that came from the the pandemic was that we, we not make financial decisions that are short sighted, like, you know, cutting professional development and technology, but rather that we go to our supporters with our needs and how the, how the uh the, the missions may have grown, the, the program work may have expanded because of, in that case, the pandemic. Uh and you know, our need is so much greater rather than making the, the short sighted, you know, cuts. I think that we could say there are a lot of lessons from 2020 that we should still have and that we can point to people on learning investments in racial equity investments in equitable practices, investments in staff. Yes, absolutely. I heard many promises in 2020 about all of these things. I heard many folks say they learned those lessons and here we are folks, you know, one of, one of the biggest job areas that has turned over is any equity related title, right? People have eliminated those positions or eliminated the people in those positions. Like there are lots of lessons that I wish were deeply learned and you’re talking about one of them. But I think what we’re hearing is that organizations haven’t deeply learned that and folks are already feeling the crunch of ok. Well, we probably can’t come to the conference. We probably can’t do that course we pro because we know that’s gonna be what gets eliminated from the budget. What are you, what are you thinking? I would just add kind of on the funding issue. You know, we’ve got um um Lan and Vivek who are supposed to like get rid of $2 trillion of the federal budget, they want to eliminate head, smart head start. Um And uh just so many other programs they want to cut down on Social Security and Medicare. So, you know, there’s a lot of people who um justifiably are scared right now and um and know that their missions will, that are already operating in more demand than they can meet, it will only accelerate. Yeah, and not a lot of answers yet. So, um I, I offer everybody my own. Not that it means anything but a little bit of grace at this period because it’s, it’s, it’s tough times right now and a lot of, lot of fear and I think I don’t have a solution necessarily. I don’t think that Gene or you Tony are trying to say there’s a solution or one right path through all the uncertainty just to acknowledge like if you’re maintaining a lot of plates of anxiety, we see you, we also are spinning those plates and like it’s really difficult that actually the only thing is to wait and see what we need to do with them. You know, there, there isn’t some magic ball that tells us. Oh, actually, this is gonna be the one thing that happens. We just don’t know and that’s not comforting or helpful when we’re trying to be thoughtful in our organizations and anticipate what all of those options might be, you know, OK. Uh uh somber but uh but justified, you know. Um there there is a lot of uncertainty and on the legal side, on the uh economy and fundraising side, uh I mean, you said it, I mean, you know, we, we don’t know but it’s the uncertainty that is uh unsettling. Yeah, we know as a sector we can do hard things. We have faced hard situations, we know that we can do it. The, the real, I think tension in the air for the sector now is that we don’t know what the hard thing is we’re gonna have to do, you know. And so we’re like, you, you’re packing for a trip where you don’t know where you’re gonna go and you’re like, well, do I need a swimsuit? Do I need a hat? Like, I don’t know, I don’t know what resource to put in here because I don’t totally know what’s ahead and I think that’s what makes it really difficult, not that we’re not gonna be able to do it, you know. Yeah, I mean, look at what we have overcome uh September 11th, uh a pandemic. Uh well, before the pandemic was the great recession. And then the next milestone that I can think of is the pandemic. Um And I, I know that we are stronger as a community. If we are United, if we stand up for each other and for the community at large, we, we can overcome whatever uncertainties and challenges are ahead of us when, when we remain united, steadfast you know, all, all for 11, for all that’s uh it, it comes from the three musketeers, but it uh it applies in lots of uh lots of situations and, and this is certainly one of them. Um We’re strong, we’re strong when we’re united. I think community power building is kind of what the my optimistic hope is. Um as we face tough times, um nonprofit leaders and their supporters, um they band together, they, they work through the problems as you mentioned to, we worked through many before. Some of them have been super challenging when we look back generations before us um going through wars and other crises and nonprofits. We’re really like the, the strength and the humanity of the country when they look to the people they served. And hopefully we’re, we’re getting to that again. We’re not making decisions without the community. We’re, we’re making it with the community now. All right. Any other closing thoughts? The last thing I wanted to say because, you know, me, I’m always compelled to have recommendations um for things that people can do. And I too am a human that likes a to do list. Um And I will offer that to others. But yeah, I know we’ve talked about this so many times, Tony, you and I over the years about community committees and you know, ways of building transparency around your technology projects or, you know, having a tech committee that helps you prioritize But to Gene’s point, if you don’t already as an organization have a mechanism, whatever that might be to hear feedback from your community, not like an evaluation for somebody that was in a program or something like that. But I mean, a community committee, a committee of community members that you talk to once a quarter or a town hall event or whatever type of process you might wanna have, this is the time to have it because I think when things are really difficult, we can as staff feel like every single thing that is in the news or every single thing that could be on our community members, minds are on their minds and that they are like judging us for it. But if you have a way to, to really be in conversation with your community directly, you’ll be able to say, ok, the only thing our community wants to know from us is this and we can answer it and we can tell them or hey, our community is really worried about this thing that has nothing to do with us, but they’re really worried about it. So maybe that’s an opportunity for us to partner with an organization that does work on that and show that we’re listening and that we’re part of helping them have access to the resources they care about or whatever it might be, right? Um Because it’s a lot harder to call on a community that doesn’t exist when you’re in need than it is to be in community with people all the time. Um So, you know, if, if there’s anything to put on your January to do list while so much is still uncertain, it’s really to make sure you have some space to be in conversation directly with your community in me. Simple word. They’re at Amy Sample ward.org and at Amy Rs Ward and Jan Takagi, the firm is at Neo Law group.com and he’s at GT and we will convene again. Uh maybe not January, mid February, mid to late February, I think. Uh Well, let’s see what, let’s see what happens in the month of January, but certainly uh latest, you know, February, we will convene and uh and be in community again. Thanks Tony for always making this space. Big hugs Jean. Thank you, Tony right back at you, Amy. Happy New Year. Happy New Year. Happy Holidays. Next week, there’s no show and there’s no show the week after. We’ll be back fresh on January 6th, 2025. Happy New Year. If you missed any part of this week’s show, I beseech you find it at Tony martignetti.com. Happy New Year were sponsored by donor box, outdated donation forms blocking your supporters, generosity, donor box, fast, flexible and friendly fundraising forms for your nonprofit donor. Box.org. Happy New Year. Our creative producer is Claire Meyerhoff. I’m your associate producer, Kate Martignetti. The show social media is by Susan Chavez Mark Silverman is our web guy and this music is by Scott Stein. Thank you for that affirmation, Scotty. You with us next week. No, you won’t be with us next week. You’re with us in January 2025 for nonprofit radio, big nonprofit ideas for the other 95% go out and be great. Happy New Year.
