We are living through an extraordinary moment. At the Johnson Center, we don’t take lightly what today’s pressures mean for the people doing social sector work, from the nonprofit executive weighing whether a program can survive another fiscal year, to the funder trying to make sound grants amid volatility, to the community leader holding together a coalition under strain. This is a difficult and challenging time for our sector and the causes it champions, and it deserves to be named as such.
It’s also, we believe, a moment that calls for something the Johnson Center has always tried to offer: research and resources that help people see more clearly when the path forward isn’t obvious. That has meant developing tools and frameworks to help organizations facing financial distress consider their full range of options before assuming that closure is inevitable. It has meant equipping community foundations and funders with sharper ways to understand local capacity and need. And it has meant continuing to steward The Foundation Review as a space where practitioners and researchers alike can access evidence-based thinking, not just theory or intuition.
As part of Grand Valley State University, we hold a particular responsibility — and privilege — in this work. A university exists on the premise that learning doesn’t stop at graduation, that inquiry and adaptation are lifelong disciplines. That commitment shapes how we approach our role in the sector: not as an institution that has already arrived at the answers, but as a partner in the field’s ongoing learning, working alongside practitioners to test ideas, sharing what we find, and ensuring useful research and learning actually reach the people who can put it to work.
None of this is only about weathering a difficult period. It’s also about what becomes possible on the other side of it: the hopeful future we are all working toward. We are seeing real appetite in this sector for innovation, for new kinds of partnerships, and for smarter and more efficient ways of doing the work, and we are as energized by that opportunity as we are clear-eyed about the challenges that surround it. Acknowledging hard truths and pursuing better futures are not, in our view, in tension. They are the same commitment, seen from two angles.
Thank you for the work you do, and for trusting us to be a resource in doing it.
Elizabeth J. Dale, Ph.D.
Acting Executive Director and Frey Foundation Chair for Family Philanthropy
Dorothy A. Johnson Center for Philanthropy
at Grand Valley State University
© 2026 Dorothy A. Johnson Center for Philanthropy. All rights reserved.
201 Front Ave SW, Suite 200, Grand Rapids, Michigan 49504 | (616) 331-7585 | jcp@gvsu.edu
