(Photo By Deposit Photos)
By Marnie Webb
From the frontlines of disaster relief to the forefront of technological innovation, civil society organizations are navigating a rapidly changing landscape. As traditional funding models shift and societal needs evolve, nonprofits are being called upon to adapt and innovate to create lasting change.
We work each day to serve more people while combating interrelated threats to democracy and the well-being of both our communities and our planet. All of this is further compounded by the simultaneous threat and opportunity of changing technology.
What does this mean for civil society in the coming year?
Mounting Pressures
Our sector will face increasing political and societal pressures. Democratic backsliding and restrictive laws will pose challenges to nonprofits’ operations and the safety of their beneficiaries. We see restrictions playing out in Paraguay and the United States. In Uganda and Myanmar. Hungary and Iran.
It is not just the changing legal landscape affecting organizations. They are increasingly a vector attack, used as pathways for bad actors to get into government or foundation information technology (IT) systems. The attacks against them can also be disinformation and doxxing campaigns that endanger their staff and boards, all of which prevents these organizations from providing services in their communities.
Political pressures are not the only growing challenge facing civil society. The escalating effects of climate change are also placing unprecedented strain on communities and organizations worldwide. As extreme weather events and natural disasters become more frequent and severe, nonprofits are facing greater demands for their services, particularly in disaster relief and humanitarian aid. This increased need is coupled with a potential shift in funding priorities, as philanthropic organizations and governments allocate more resources to address climate-related emergencies.
This could leave nonprofits working on other critical issues, such as poverty alleviation and education, with limited funding and support. Additionally, climate refugees will be increasing stress on fragile systems. Nonprofits and their staff will be among those traveling across borders to escape the consequences of climate change. This will reshape the world and the sector. Consequently, nonprofit leaders need to be prepared to adapt their strategies and operations to address the growing challenges posed by climate change while advocating for continued support for their broader missions.
In addition to the operational challenges posed by climate change, nonprofits are also grappling with a rapidly shifting funding landscape. Civil society’s future will be shaped by evolving funding models and donor expectations. Traditional funding sources, such as government grants and philanthropic donations, are becoming increasingly unpredictable. This can be driven by regime swings or by the need to reallocate money to meet unexpected needs, often related to disasters driven by climate change.
At the same time, newer funding models are emerging. These models often build on impact investing as well as novel technologies such as blockchain. These new models are driving a proliferation of platforms. These shifts require nonprofits to be innovative and adaptable in their fundraising strategies. Additionally, donors, particularly younger generations, are demanding greater transparency, accountability, and measurable impact. Civil society organizations must be responsive to these evolving expectations and demonstrate their effectiveness in achieving social and environmental outcomes.
Equity In A Tech-Driven World
The rapid advancement of artificial intelligence (AI) and other technologies increases the digital divide within the nonprofit sector. Organizations with the resources and expertise to adopt and leverage these technologies effectively will likely see significant gains in efficiency and impact. However, those lacking the necessary skills or funding might struggle to keep up, leading to a widening gap between tech-enabled nonprofits and those left behind. This could exacerbate existing inequalities and limit the ability of smaller or less-resourced organizations to fulfill their missions.
This gap will not be evenly distributed. Rather, it will affect smaller organizations and those in resource constrained environments more.
While the digital divide poses a significant challenge, the ethical implications of AI present another critical concern for the nonprofit sector. AI and other advancing technologies also bring with them an opportunity to amplify biases. While AI has the potential to improve decision-making and resource allocation in the nonprofit sector, it also carries the risk of perpetuating and amplifying existing biases.
If AI algorithms are trained on biased data or designed without careful consideration of ethical implications, they can lead to discriminatory outcomes, particularly for marginalized or underserved communities. Nonprofit leaders must be vigilant in ensuring that the use of AI is fair, transparent, and accountable to avoid unintended harm.
This can (it does) sound grim. However, looking at these pressures gives us an opportunity to shape ourselves into a collaborative network of organizations who build a future that optimizes for thriving communities.
Moving Toward A More Collaborative Sector
There is increased opportunity for international collaboration and engagement across civil society. When I was assigned this article, I opened up a shared document to more than 200 of my colleagues. People around the globe shared tens of thousands of words. GenAI allowed me to parse their input. Looking at it from different directions, shaping it, helping me make sense of it. It means this article doesn’t just hold my opinion; it holds meaningful input from a wide range of people with a diversity of lived experience.
Advancements in AI translation and community moderation tools will facilitate increased global collaboration. It is up to us to build trust and safety into these so they can be used by all of us. Nonprofits will be able to form partnerships and work together on a global scale more easily, leading to increased efficiency, resource sharing, and a broader reach. This reach strengthens us as individual organizations and collectively as we bend the future in the interest of our common cause.
The same technological advancements that threaten us can lead to increased efficacy and impact. As organizations working on some of our most important societal issues, we hold a vast amount of data. There is an increasing amount of public data telling us stories about the communities in which we live and work. AI can support us as we look for insights in this data.
Starting today — not in some far-off future — we can use climate models alongside current temperature and weather data to locate libraries and community centers that we should invest in so that they can be used as cooling centers when we need them. We can leverage the same tools to look across a wide variety of interventions to identify those that are most successful and under what circumstances. These tools can help us interrogate the wealth of information we have, no matter its form, and come together to make critical decisions about the allocation of increasingly scarce resources on an increasingly fragile planet.
This is precisely the function of civil society and it’s precisely the type of project that we, big, “civil society We” need to get moving on immediately.
We have an opportunity to embrace a wide variety of people coming together to make change. The world we are facing does not need only one kind of organization, poised to do good. It needs many. We must find ways to embrace and support proximate organizations who, for whatever reasons, are not able or prepared to organize as official civil society.
Governments can continue to provide one way to valorize organizations. But we need to be clear eyed about the fact that this is a conservative reading of civil society and subject to a wide variety of pressures. Opening up to other forms as legitimate for support and resources, including financial resources, helps to ensure that we can provide support as a sector in a wide variety of situations.
These are all hard problems without an obvious solution. They require that we think about the needs of individual civil society organizations and also the workings of the philanthropic supply chain. They require that we embrace new technologies and understand their limits. They require us to open up new kinds of funds to meet the needs we know and direct philanthropy to the needs that will emerge.
Above all, they require us to work in concert, running towards these problems on behalf of our missions and our communities. So that we might be running toward a more inclusive and equitable future.
*****
Marnie Webb is chief executive officer of TechSoup, based in San Francisco, California. Note that Google’s Gemini was used to help organize feedback and identify themes from a wide array of input on this article. Humans took it from there.
The post The Hard Problems: A Resilient Civil Society To Face What’s Next appeared first on The NonProfit Times.
Source From Non Profit Times
The Hard Problems: A Resilient Civil Society To Face What’s Next
(Photo By Deposit Photos)
By Marnie Webb
From the frontlines of disaster relief to the forefront of technological innovation, civil society organizations are navigating a rapidly changing landscape. As traditional funding models shift and societal needs evolve, nonprofits are being called upon to adapt and innovate to create lasting change.
We work each day to serve more people while combating interrelated threats to democracy and the well-being of both our communities and our planet. All of this is further compounded by the simultaneous threat and opportunity of changing technology.
What does this mean for civil society in the coming year?
Mounting Pressures
Our sector will face increasing political and societal pressures. Democratic backsliding and restrictive laws will pose challenges to nonprofits’ operations and the safety of their beneficiaries. We see restrictions playing out in Paraguay and the United States. In Uganda and Myanmar. Hungary and Iran.
It is not just the changing legal landscape affecting organizations. They are increasingly a vector attack, used as pathways for bad actors to get into government or foundation information technology (IT) systems. The attacks against them can also be disinformation and doxxing campaigns that endanger their staff and boards, all of which prevents these organizations from providing services in their communities.
Political pressures are not the only growing challenge facing civil society. The escalating effects of climate change are also placing unprecedented strain on communities and organizations worldwide. As extreme weather events and natural disasters become more frequent and severe, nonprofits are facing greater demands for their services, particularly in disaster relief and humanitarian aid. This increased need is coupled with a potential shift in funding priorities, as philanthropic organizations and governments allocate more resources to address climate-related emergencies.
This could leave nonprofits working on other critical issues, such as poverty alleviation and education, with limited funding and support. Additionally, climate refugees will be increasing stress on fragile systems. Nonprofits and their staff will be among those traveling across borders to escape the consequences of climate change. This will reshape the world and the sector. Consequently, nonprofit leaders need to be prepared to adapt their strategies and operations to address the growing challenges posed by climate change while advocating for continued support for their broader missions.
In addition to the operational challenges posed by climate change, nonprofits are also grappling with a rapidly shifting funding landscape. Civil society’s future will be shaped by evolving funding models and donor expectations. Traditional funding sources, such as government grants and philanthropic donations, are becoming increasingly unpredictable. This can be driven by regime swings or by the need to reallocate money to meet unexpected needs, often related to disasters driven by climate change.
At the same time, newer funding models are emerging. These models often build on impact investing as well as novel technologies such as blockchain. These new models are driving a proliferation of platforms. These shifts require nonprofits to be innovative and adaptable in their fundraising strategies. Additionally, donors, particularly younger generations, are demanding greater transparency, accountability, and measurable impact. Civil society organizations must be responsive to these evolving expectations and demonstrate their effectiveness in achieving social and environmental outcomes.
Equity In A Tech-Driven World
The rapid advancement of artificial intelligence (AI) and other technologies increases the digital divide within the nonprofit sector. Organizations with the resources and expertise to adopt and leverage these technologies effectively will likely see significant gains in efficiency and impact. However, those lacking the necessary skills or funding might struggle to keep up, leading to a widening gap between tech-enabled nonprofits and those left behind. This could exacerbate existing inequalities and limit the ability of smaller or less-resourced organizations to fulfill their missions.
This gap will not be evenly distributed. Rather, it will affect smaller organizations and those in resource constrained environments more.
While the digital divide poses a significant challenge, the ethical implications of AI present another critical concern for the nonprofit sector. AI and other advancing technologies also bring with them an opportunity to amplify biases. While AI has the potential to improve decision-making and resource allocation in the nonprofit sector, it also carries the risk of perpetuating and amplifying existing biases.
If AI algorithms are trained on biased data or designed without careful consideration of ethical implications, they can lead to discriminatory outcomes, particularly for marginalized or underserved communities. Nonprofit leaders must be vigilant in ensuring that the use of AI is fair, transparent, and accountable to avoid unintended harm.
This can (it does) sound grim. However, looking at these pressures gives us an opportunity to shape ourselves into a collaborative network of organizations who build a future that optimizes for thriving communities.
Moving Toward A More Collaborative Sector
There is increased opportunity for international collaboration and engagement across civil society. When I was assigned this article, I opened up a shared document to more than 200 of my colleagues. People around the globe shared tens of thousands of words. GenAI allowed me to parse their input. Looking at it from different directions, shaping it, helping me make sense of it. It means this article doesn’t just hold my opinion; it holds meaningful input from a wide range of people with a diversity of lived experience.
Advancements in AI translation and community moderation tools will facilitate increased global collaboration. It is up to us to build trust and safety into these so they can be used by all of us. Nonprofits will be able to form partnerships and work together on a global scale more easily, leading to increased efficiency, resource sharing, and a broader reach. This reach strengthens us as individual organizations and collectively as we bend the future in the interest of our common cause.
The same technological advancements that threaten us can lead to increased efficacy and impact. As organizations working on some of our most important societal issues, we hold a vast amount of data. There is an increasing amount of public data telling us stories about the communities in which we live and work. AI can support us as we look for insights in this data.
Starting today — not in some far-off future — we can use climate models alongside current temperature and weather data to locate libraries and community centers that we should invest in so that they can be used as cooling centers when we need them. We can leverage the same tools to look across a wide variety of interventions to identify those that are most successful and under what circumstances. These tools can help us interrogate the wealth of information we have, no matter its form, and come together to make critical decisions about the allocation of increasingly scarce resources on an increasingly fragile planet.
This is precisely the function of civil society and it’s precisely the type of project that we, big, “civil society We” need to get moving on immediately.
We have an opportunity to embrace a wide variety of people coming together to make change. The world we are facing does not need only one kind of organization, poised to do good. It needs many. We must find ways to embrace and support proximate organizations who, for whatever reasons, are not able or prepared to organize as official civil society.
Governments can continue to provide one way to valorize organizations. But we need to be clear eyed about the fact that this is a conservative reading of civil society and subject to a wide variety of pressures. Opening up to other forms as legitimate for support and resources, including financial resources, helps to ensure that we can provide support as a sector in a wide variety of situations.
These are all hard problems without an obvious solution. They require that we think about the needs of individual civil society organizations and also the workings of the philanthropic supply chain. They require that we embrace new technologies and understand their limits. They require us to open up new kinds of funds to meet the needs we know and direct philanthropy to the needs that will emerge.
Above all, they require us to work in concert, running towards these problems on behalf of our missions and our communities. So that we might be running toward a more inclusive and equitable future.
*****
Marnie Webb is chief executive officer of TechSoup, based in San Francisco, California. Note that Google’s Gemini was used to help organize feedback and identify themes from a wide array of input on this article. Humans took it from there.
The post The Hard Problems: A Resilient Civil Society To Face What’s Next appeared first on The NonProfit Times.
Source From Non Profit Times