The social sector as we knew it fractured irrevocably in 2025. Regardless of whether you view the changes in our country and their reverberations around the world as good or bad, the truth is that things are different now. Many of the tangible systems, mental frameworks, and common practices that had shaped our sector’s realities for years suddenly came to a halt, became visibly irrelevant or inadequate, or disappeared entirely in the span of 12 months.
Taken together, the myriad crises and challenges referenced in the box below have brought substantial and incredibly fast changes to our day-to-day lives. In the midst of what feels like chaos, we’re left looking for lenses and frameworks that can help us make sense of what we’re experiencing. The past year’s events raise questions about philanthropy’s role in society and its purpose. With its future so uncertain, it is no wonder that individuals in the sector are beginning to describe these events as “existential threats.” Mike Scutari cited the term in an Inside Philanthropy article from March 2026, and it was also raised in a January 2026 study from the Center for Effective Philanthropy.
Acknowledging that the sector is facing existential threats is foundational to understanding how we can (re)define our purpose. In this blog, we will lean on existing concepts in psychology to explain existentialism, acknowledge that responding to existential threats may invoke personal and organization-level trauma responses, and suggest approaches that organizations can use to address both. We urge the sector to move beyond naming what we are collectively experiencing and to take action, borrowing best practices from other disciplines.
COMPOUNDING CRISES
Many institutions are documenting the challenges and ruptures facing our sector — and their long-term implications. The following resources highlight efforts to capture job and funding losses, rising burnout, threats and fear experienced by nonprofit leaders and donors, growing animosity between the sector and the federal government, and more.
Understanding Existentialism
In psychology, existential theory (existentialism) can be used in therapeutic settings to address “fundamental human dilemmas—such as death, freedom, isolation, and meaninglessness — by helping individuals confront these existential concerns to foster authentic living.”
As described in Psychology Today,
Existential therapy focuses on free will, self-determination, and the search for meaning… The approach emphasizes a person’s capacity to make rational choices and to develop to their maximum potential… This type of therapy is often useful for patients who experience existential threat or dread when security and identity feel in peril.
Existentialism leads you to ask, “Who am I? What’s my purpose? What’s my legacy after I’m gone?” — especially in moments of real or perceived disruption. These are uncomfortable questions, but they are also part of being human. Sometimes these questions are driven by major events such as the loss of a job or the end of a relationship. Other times, they stem from the seeming stagnation of our lives — feeling stuck, bored, or thwarted. Either way, we don’t know how to move forward.
Philanthropy seems to be experiencing both. We are wrestling with events beyond our control and with internal stagnation that threatens our ability to do good work for communities and with one another. And while we are a united sector, we are also millions of individuals and nearly two million organizations. To answer “Who am I? What’s my purpose? What’s my legacy?”, we have to face these questions at scale.
Further, we must answer them within the context of a serious conundrum: it is in our (professional, financial, personal) interests that this sector exists, yet it is also in our (moral, aspirational) interests that it doesn’t continue to exist.
How do we balance the two and still find meaning, safety, prosperity, and connection over time?
Understanding the Sector’s Trauma Response
With the sector’s existence in question, and even a sense of foreshortened future, it’s no wonder many organizations and networks are exhibiting signs of another psychological concept: trauma response.
As written in Trauma-Informed Care in Behavioral Health Services,
Trauma can affect one’s beliefs about the future via loss of hope, limited expectations about life, fear that life will end abruptly or early, or anticipation that normal life events won’t occur (e.g., access to education, ability to have a significant and committed relationship, good opportunities for work).
Further described in Psychology Today and in Simply Psychology (the following list combines direct quotes from both sources), individuals respond in a variety of ways to traumatic events or threats, including:
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Fight: Responding to a threat by aggressively confronting or standing up to it. “If I control everything, I’ll be safe.”
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Flight: Escaping or avoiding danger by physically removing yourself from the situation. “If I stay busy or keep moving, nothing can hurt me.”
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Freeze: Becoming immobile or unable to act when faced with a threat. “If I go numb or disappear, maybe I’ll be safe.”
- Fawn: Trying to please or appease the threat to avoid conflict or harm. “If I make everyone happy, I won’t be rejected.”
In each of these cases, individuals are trying to preserve their sense of identity and purpose.
These trauma responses have been visible in the philanthropic sector as well.
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Fight: Organizations responding with a fight response may become more defensive, increase efforts to reassert authority or control, communicate more aggressively, and retaliate to a threat. We’ve seen universities like Harvard adopt a “fight” approach, suing the Trump Administration over federal funding freezes. The National Council of Nonprofits has also filed a series of lawsuits against new federal policies and funding freezes.
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Flight: Organizations with a flight response tend to actively avoid or distract themselves rather than face a threat. For example, some foundations may be experiencing more pressure from grantees to increase payout rates alongside public and federal attacks on what is perceived as the concentrated wealth of major endowments. Rather than directly engaging with the overwhelming feedback from grantees, organizations experiencing a flight response replace action with distraction, avoidance, and busyness. Avoidance could include pushing discussions about increasing the payout rate into the next fiscal year to align with strategic planning. Busyness could include creating a task force to make recommendations about the payout rate but never implementing the recommendations.
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Freeze: Organizations with a freeze response become paralyzed in the face of pressure, conflict, or uncertainty. Unlike the fight and flight responses, organizations experiencing a freeze response become so overwhelmed by the complexity or gravity of the situation that no decisions are made. As an example, an organization may be forced to choose which of two community programs to close due to funding cuts. During a freeze response, leadership may be unable to decide which program needs to be discontinued due to the overwhelming impacts that cuts will have on staff and the local community. The decision may be avoided or delayed at the expense of the organization’s financial health.
- Fawn: Organizations with a fawn response try to appease, people-please, or over-accommodate someone in a position of power to avoid conflict or harm. With this response, organizations prioritize pleasing the more powerful party over advocating for their own needs. At the start of 2025, many philanthropic organizations had diversity, equity, and inclusion policies. After a series of executive orders targeting DEI, some organizations discontinued their policies to appease the new administration and protect their stakeholders and future funding opportunities.
Finding Philanthropy’s Purpose Again
Responding to Existential Threat
Fortunately, psychology also suggests strategies for emerging from existential threats. Ultimately, individuals must find new meaning and purpose. According to an article from the University of Pennsylvania’s College of Liberal and Professional Studies (Penn LPS), “a sense of purpose helps to buffer against the negative effects of stress, enabling us to cope more effectively with life’s difficulties.” The article further suggests that individuals should approach existential questions with curiosity rather than fear.
As the philanthropic sector looks to the future, we can take a similar approach, allowing ourselves space to be curious and to develop actionable strategies grounded in existential psychology.
Self-Reflection Exercises That Align Actions With Values
Self-reflection exercises are one technique individuals can use to find meaning and purpose. Penn LPS states, “setting aside time to ask yourself meaningful questions can provide valuable insights into what drives you and allow you to begin uncovering patterns that point toward your deeper purpose.”
“Do your organization’s mission and values still resonate with current realities and audiences? Do they state clearly and accessibly what you’re trying to do so that others can join you?”
Using this guidance, philanthropic organizations should revisit their core missions and values. Do your organization’s mission and values still resonate with current realities and audiences? Do they state clearly and accessibly what you’re trying to do so that others can join you? If not, it may be useful to rearticulate your organization’s purpose and the reasons for its existence to ensure your decisions align with your mission and values.
Visualizing the future is another self-reflective exercise that will allow organizations to explore their meaning and purpose. Visualization helps individuals identify their goals and dreams for the future, leading to more clarity, action-oriented decision-making, and tangible outcomes.
At an organizational level, both strategic planning and scenario planning are ways to visualize the future. Forbes reminds us that strategic plans “serve as road maps that guide nonprofits, ensuring actions align with an organization’s mission and goals. Additionally, strategic plans function as accountability tools, providing a framework for decision-making, developing timelines and resource allocation.” It may be useful for organizations to revisit or update their strategic plans to ensure they are still relevant and applicable.
Organizations should also engage in scenario planning if they have not already done so. The Stanford Social Innovation Review highlights the benefits of scenario planning, stating:
In contrast to traditional strategic planning, scenario planning typically works on a longer time horizon, well beyond an annual or three-year plan. It also encourages participants to acknowledge the possibility that the future may hold circumstances that are not necessarily the most probable, but are plausible and include less desirable or even negative outcomes.
Stakeholder Re-engagement
During an existential crisis, it is important to maintain a connection with those around you. Penn LPS emphasizes the importance of finding purpose in connection, stating, “Meaningful connections with others can help us feel that our lives matter… It is through these connections that we often find opportunities to contribute, support, and grow.”
Philanthropic organizations can re-engage their stakeholders and networks to strengthen relationships, build trust, learn from others, and re-establish a sense of meaning or purpose. Do not be afraid to speak to your board members, community members, and staff during self-reflection exercises and strategic planning. These opportunities will create spaces for transparency and a shared sense of purpose.
Further, organizations need to retain connections with others in the sector. Penn LPS states,
Mentorship can be another powerful way to find purpose. As a mentor, you have the opportunity to share your knowledge, skills, and experiences to help someone else grow… As a mentee, seeking guidance from someone you admire can help you navigate your path more effectively and connect you with a deeper sense of direction.
“Now is the time for philanthropic organizations to lean into networking and affinity groups. These venues create spaces for existential reflection and mentorship.”
Now is the time for philanthropic organizations to lean into networking and affinity groups. These venues create spaces for existential reflection and mentorship. They provide opportunities to learn from organizations about what tools and techniques have been helpful or hurtful in times of existential threat.
Reinvention and Innovation
We can also learn from other industries that had to navigate their own existential crises. In many cases, organizations in threatened industries had to embrace reinvention and innovation to regain a sense of purpose, relevance, and meaning.
For example, in the 2000s, retailers like Amazon and eBay leaned heavily into e-commerce. Online convenience, price transparency, and accelerated internet adoption created an existential threat to brick-and-mortar retail. This threat was further exacerbated by the COVID-19 pandemic, as more consumers shopped from home.
As a result, major brick-and-mortar retailers collapsed (e.g., Circuit City, Sears, shopping malls). Those in the traditional retail space that survived were forced to reinvent themselves. As identified in a study by Deloitte, “Progressive malls are building strategies to create mixed-use spaces that bring together residential, office, entertainment, leisure, health and wellness, and other novel experiences.”
Philanthropic organizations should lean into opportunities for innovation and reinvention as they assess how best to address existential threats. If your organization, for example, owns and operates a community theater, ask what else you can do with the building beyond staging productions. What other organizations or groups might benefit from access to a building? Who can you partner with to support your space?
Recognizing and Addressing Your Organization’s Trauma Response
When an organization is under existential pressure, trauma responses such as fight, flight, freeze, and fawn may unconsciously drive decision-making. Therefore, it is essential to recognize both you and your organization’s trauma response to ensure you can respond to challenges and opportunities intentionally rather than reactively. By taking a mindful approach to an existential crisis, you can answer the following questions:
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How are we responding to perceived threats? Is it with defensiveness, distraction, overwhelm, and/or appeasement? Are we rushing, delaying, avoiding, or over-promising?
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“Do we notice that we respond differently in different situations or with different people? How have these responses affected our relationships or our ability to handle stress?”
- Are our responses aligned with our organization’s mission, values, and strategic plan?
“[R]ecognize that employees, as individuals, may be responding to changes in the broader environment with varying levels of joy, fear, confusion, apathy, and frustration.”
Answering these questions may help your organization make more informed decisions and take action. It may also be helpful to recognize that employees, as individuals, may be responding to changes in the broader environment with varying levels of joy, fear, confusion, apathy, and frustration. Their responses may align with or diverge from an organization’s response. In these situations, adopting a pluralistic approach towards divergence may be beneficial. As described by the National Center for Family Philanthropy, pluralism is “an active commitment anchored in a recognition that our differences can tear us apart or they can be an asset we draw on to make progress—in our everyday lives and as a society.”
Finding Hope in Existentialism
While many organizations may be questioning their purpose, and existential threats to the sector may seem overwhelming, we need to acknowledge that change is inevitable. This is not the first time the sector’s purpose has been in question. In the past 100 years alone, existential crises have arrived in the form of the Great Depression, World War II, an era of “stagflation” and recession in the 1970s and 1980s, the Great Recession, a global pandemic… and many more. Each has caused tremendous strain on society and brought about both short- and long-term changes to philanthropy and nonprofits. As disruptive as they were, we emerged from those periods with lessons learned; some new structures, regulations, or models in place; and ultimately, an evolved purpose.
Just as the sector can find hope in history, we can find similar hope by observing other disciplines and industries. Navigating out of existential threat will require patience, self-reflection, strong connections, and a willingness to move with agility and embrace change. As existential psychologist Viktor Frankl (2006) writes, “When we are no longer able to change a situation, we are challenged to change ourselves.”
