“We have had to be agile, flexible, and optimistic in ways that I haven’t experienced before.”
Elizabeth Lindsey, who leads the Washington, DC area location of the youth-empowerment nonprofit Genesys Works, has spent most of her career in the nonprofit sector. In her words, there are always ups and downs — but this past year has been “particularly challenging.”
In CEP’s recent report on the state of nonprofits, my colleagues elucidated what that challenge has meant for nonprofits, revealing stark increases in concern about burnout among nonprofit leaders, a sense that they are operating in an environment rife with fear and uncertainty, and a growing proportion of nonprofits reporting a deficit or concern about their future financial stability.
In the following conversation, I asked Elizabeth to share more about what it’s like to be a nonprofit leader right now and to give us a first-hand view of how those concerning data points are showing up in her — and other nonprofit leaders’ — realities.
CG: Your experience is reflective of our findings in “State of Nonprofits 2026,” where we share how almost three quarters of CEOs report experiencing an increase in demand for their organization’s services, yet nearly 60% say it’s been harder since January 2025 to secure foundation grants. What impact have you seen this dichotomy of increased demand and decreased funding have on your peers? What are you seeing within your nonprofit ecosystem, and how has it impacted your work?
EL: I’ve seen an impact across the board. Many nonprofits are having to cut staff and service. At Genesys Works, we connect young adults, rising high school seniors, with amazing opportunities and paid internships, and we have partner organizations who’ve needed to reduce the number of internships and amount of support they’re able to provide. We partner with corporations to actually pay our interns, so we have a mixed revenue model, and what we’ve seen, especially in DC, is that companies are very, very wary of making any kind of investment.
Financial uncertainty and political uncertainty are making a huge impact. Like other organizations, we’re having to lean on philanthropy more to try to support our young people. Genesys Works is just one example, but these types of retractions or regressions have impacts for years to come. We work predominantly with first-generation high schoolers and high schoolers from diverse communities — the fewer opportunities that they have, the less likely they’re able to go to college or build a network. These are impacts that might seem small now but absolutely have an effect on their future. And we are just one organization, so if you magnify that with the cuts that are happening across the sector, it’s quite disturbing.
CG: Our report discusses how a factor of CEO burnout is concern over the well-being and safety of those they seek to help, as well as the impact this has on their staff. How have you and your staff been affected by fear and stress over the impact of the current climate on the students and community you serve?
EL: We have seen our students struggling significantly in ways that in 2024 weren’t a thing. For example, at our National Capital Region site, we’ve had at least one student whose parent and primary breadwinner was detained by ICE. This young person, who’s 17 years old, became the only financial support for his family. We were able to support him with a grant that we have, but that’s not an endless supply of money, nor do many nonprofits have that. We also have a celebration event every year and, last spring, many of our young people and their parents didn’t come because they were afraid. That type of fear, that loss of resources and support, is just unimaginable.
On the other side, in the nonprofit sector, we do this work because we want to support our communities and try in as many ways as we can, but our resources are really limited. I think this is a perfect storm of, again, political disruption, attacks on communities, and then the retention-retraction of funding that is leading to stress for the providers as well as for the communities that we support.
CG: How has this changed your thinking about the way you collaborate or partner with other organizations in your ecosystem?
EL: I think collaboration is the only way that we’re going to be able to make it through this challenging time. I feel lucky that Genesys Works, National Capital Region, is part of a collaborative with four other organizations called the Talent For Tomorrow Alliance. We come together, problem-solve together, refer our participants to each other, and even have had funders who have supported us as a collective.
There’s such a huge role to play for philanthropy to actually support collaboration. This is the first experience I’ve had where foundations are saying, “We really want you all to collaborate. We’re not going to just take the money we usually would give you and give you the same amount.” Talent For Tomorrow has foundations that are funding us as individual organizations and separately as the collaborative — having that type of coordination not only is better for our communities because we’re talking to each other, but also because we’re learning best practices from each other. It’s also nice as leaders in the nonprofit sector to have a group of colleagues that we can turn to ask advice from or just commiserate about the challenges that we’re facing.
CG: What other types of support would you like to see more of from funders? What kind of support do you and the sector need?
EL: I’m still shocked by the number of funders who have continued giving out small, restricted grants, or grants that require you to apply every year for $10,000 or $15,000, especially given the uncertainty that the sector is facing. It’s really difficult to be able to plan, to make advance investments, or to even know if our doors are going to be open next year without having more consistent sources of funding and multiyear funding.
This is a conversation we’ve been having with philanthropy for many, many years now, and I think some foundations get it, but there’s still so many who I wish thought of the sector more like we think about investing in businesses. When you invest in a company, you’re usually not saying, I’m going to invest in your business $5,000 a year, and you must come back every year. Instead, you invest in research and development, in building up their capacity, in their productivity. That’s what we really need from the foundation sector: trust-based philanthropy and the necessary resources so we can use our precious time to support more people or to make our work more efficient.
In terms of non-financial support, I think foundations can play a great role in facilitating collaboration and connecting organizations with each other to share what really works and what they’ve learned. Overall, I doubt you would ever talk to a nonprofit executive director who wouldn’t say that multiyear unrestricted funding is what we really need.
CG: Before we wrap up, I want to ask: what is the primary thing that you want funders, or even folks outside the sector, to take away from this moment for nonprofits?
EL: I would really like people to understand that, in the United States, our society really needs nonprofit organizations. We have seen over the past 18 months how nonprofits have had to step up to ensure people are able to have housing, have food, and be safe walking down the street. We’re at a point where every day, we don’t know what is going to happen. There is so much uncertainty and so much disruption. Nonprofits are, for the most part, stable. We exist as a sector because we want to make the world a better place. We want to support people.
If the last few years have taught us anything, it’s that we cannot rely upon just the government, and we cannot rely upon just the private sector. Nonprofits play a critical role in our society. My wish for the future is that everybody understands that, and that foundations really understand how critical nonprofits are and that we should be invested in, just like any other amazing part of society — this, we know, is necessary for our success.
Caroline Gasparini is a coordinator on the Research team at CEP. Elizabeth Lindsey is executive director of Genesys Works National Capital Region.
