Greetings, readers, 

This week we are facing the fallout from two massive sources of bad news for our sector: the Trump administration’s “Big Beautiful Bill,” and the Republican-led budget that funds massive tax cuts for the ultra-rich by borrowing against our future and screwing over the most vulnerable Americans. 

The BBB is bad for almost everyone. It is also, it turns out, bad for nonprofits, too. While it does create a way for non-itemizing individuals (that’s most people) to still deduct charitable donations—that’s good!—it also contains other provisions (new taxes on private foundations and university endowments, a minimum floor for corporate donations, and other measures) that are bad for the sector. The upshot is the bill “risks reducing charitable giving,” as the Brookings Institute concluded. 

But the threat to the sector is much greater than that: The bill’s measures hurting vulnerable Americans—massive cuts to Medicaid and food assistance, to name a couple—mean a coming tide of even greater need, “putting greater pressure on nonprofit organizations to help meet these needs,” as the National Council of Nonprofits’ Diane Yentel said last week. 

This week’s Leadership newsletter starts with the news of the passage of the BBB in the Senate. Then, a new survey by The Highland Project explores Black women voters’ critiques of and solutions to the present state of affairs. Then, the third installment of our series on Liberatory Leadership, all about designing for collective liberation.  

And last but by no means least, we invite you all to take part in our new campaign, #WeTheCivic. 

#WeTheCivic aims to highlight, promote and support the work being done by the heroes of our sector—that is, the nonprofit sector but also civil society as a whole—to preserve and even enhance the fabric of civil society at a time when forces private and governmental seek to purposefully erode and tear down the institutions that advocate for and protect all members of our society.

We humbly ask you to join us in uplifting these critical voices by highlighting them in your own social media posts (as I recently did the National Council of Nonprofits and Democracy Forward for their work suing the Trump administration over federal funding freezes) under the hashtag #WeTheCivic. Let the voices of your own organizations, as well as those you support, or depend upon, be amplified for the often unsung work they do to protect democracy, freedom, and expression in the United States and beyond.  

The Nonprofit Stat of the Week is on holiday this week.

As always, we love to hear back from you. Email Leadership Editor Isaiah Thompson at [email protected].

Thank you and sincerely,
Isaiah Thompson
Leadership Editor, NPQ