Let’s stop blaming individuals and organizations for systemic problems

Original title: We need to get off the gaslighting, victim-blaming hamster wheel of bullshit (GVBHWBS)

A few weeks ago, I was listening to a panel of funders give advice for nonprofits on the best way to approach their foundation, since funding has been harder to obtain. At another workshop at the same conference, a presenter gave tips on how to personalize communications with donors by tailoring impact stories to boost engagement, possibly by using AI. Meanwhile last week, a colleague called me to vent about her board getting on her case because her organization didn’t meet their various goals for the fiscal year.

Everyone is stressed out. It seems the whole sector is overwhelmed. I mean, our field has never been easy, but I’ve never seen it like this, a time where multiple crises—funding cuts; fascist administration; a normalization of and exponential rise in hate and bigotry; open and gleeful vitriol against nonprofits and DEI; and so on—converge all at once and with such force.

Everyone is trying to find the solutions for their orgs and their work to stay afloat.

The problem is that our “solutions” continue to be grounded in the philosophy that it’s individuals’ and organizations’ lack of skill, dedication, or whatever that is to blame for their failures, when really, the problem is that we are forced to work with and in terrible, ineffective systems that actively prevent us from succeeding. I can’t say it better than my colleague below, who wishes to remain anonymous:

“I'd love to see a conversation where nonprofit leaders get to openly discuss the systemic forces reshaping our sector while also acknowledging how often we're gaslit into believing the problem is our storytelling, our data, or our fundraising strategy.

“For decades we've been told to tell better stories. Meanwhile, we're expected to operate organizations with chronically inadequate operating support while navigating federal policy shifts, changing compliance expectations, political sorting of philanthropy, institutional risk aversion, inflation, declining household discretionary income, shrinking donor participation, and algorithm-driven communication channels that increasingly require paid reach.

“And that doesn't even begin to touch on how board members absorb this sector messaging and then unintentionally weaponize it against staff.”

The conflation of systemic challenges with individual/organizational performance—especially by funders, donors, board members, and others with disproportionate power and resources—fuels burn out, drives people out of the sector, and often worsens the societal problems we’re trying to solve because we’re not getting to the right solutions or we're using horrifying "solutions" like AI.

And because it’s so subtle, we often don’t even recognize we’re doing it or internalizing it or how it’s affecting us.

At the funder panel (which we really need to just stop having), the six or so program officers were each giving advice on how nonprofits could best “approach” them. I looked around the room and several people in the audience were nodding and taking notes. A funder said something about how they get hundreds of applications every year, and that for applicants to “stand out,” their proposal should be to the point, with strong data. Another funder added, “And even before you apply, do your homework to make sure you’re even aligned with our strategies.”

That sounds like good advice. Who can argue with that? These things have been repeated over the year and we just accept them as true and reasonable. But the subtle message being reinforced is that if a nonprofit doesn’t get a grant, it’s entirely its fault, because it didn’t take the time to do the research into the foundation, or it doesn’t have good data, or it rambles too much. So the "solution" is for the nonprofit to get better.

Pinning grant success and failure on nonprofits’ skills and efforts then prevents conversations, such as on why it’s ok for foundations to waste the time of hundreds or thousands of organizations each grant cycle. It prevents nonprofits from thinking and getting angry about the fact that foundations are still only giving out 5% of their assets each year when they’ve experienced significantly higher than 5% growth the past few years. As this article on a study of foundations states,

“The average 2025 calendar year return on these endowed funds for the 171 participating private foundations was 14.1 percent, up from 10.3 percent reported in the 2024 Study. Similarly, for the 114 participating community foundations, the average 2025 return was 14.7 percent, up from 11.0 percent in 2024. This marks the third year in a row that both foundation segments have reported double-digit returns—the longest such streak in Study history—following the lowest average returns on record in 2022.”

What the fuck? During the last several years of hell, when nonprofits have been scrambling for funds due to federal funding cuts, and being told obvious lies like “there’s only so much funds to go around,” foundations’ assets have grown nearly 15% on average and yet most have continued giving out only 5%?! But yeah, let's continue placing the blame on nonprofits for being under-resourced because their grantwriting skills suck.

After the workshop on personalizing thank-you videos and annual reports to individual donors, a colleague walked beside me, shaking her head, her face a combination of exasperated and defeated. “How am I going to find time and energy to collect different impact stories, segment out different donors, map out who receives which stories, mail-merge their names into personalized annual reports, etc.”

Making fundraisers believe they could just raise more funds if they develop MORE skills and do MORE things and feel guilty and inadequate when they have no time or energy to do it places the blame and responsibility on individuals and organizations when it’s a  systems problem. A system that allows a select few to build their wealth through inequitable means, avoid paying taxes, hoard their riches, buy off politicians to nix any possibility of regulation, and in the process perpetuate the very problems they’re contributing to nonprofits to help address.

I think about recycling. Sure, all of us can cut down on plastic and we can reuse and recycle and upcycle and whatnot more. But this is a systemic problem, where corporations, controlled by greedy asshole billionaires, shifts the blame onto individuals and makes everyone feel bad and that it’s their fault for not doing enough, when it’s corporations that have been polluting the earth and lobbying against environmental regulations. Having a bunch of workshops on how to recycle better or having grants that groups of neighbors can apply to get resources to organize neighborhood clean-up days may help a bit but will not resolve the systemic issue of corporate greed and malfeasance destroying the planet.

Ten years ago I wrote a post called “We need to stop treating nonprofits the way society treats poor people.” Reading it again is frustrating, because little has changed since a decade ago. If anything, it’s worsened. Not to say that amazing funders and donors don’t exist—they do—but the blaming and internalizing of individuals and organizations for systems-level problems is still the default in our sector. Just as society still blames people for being poor and force financial literacy classes, work requirements for basic needs like food, and other bullshit on them, our sector still internalizes the idea that nonprofits are to blame for not having enough funds, not being stable, not being able to meet community needs, when whole systems seem designed to ensure they never actually succeed (except the right-wing ones, who received 20-year general-operating grants).

I’m not saying individuals and organizations should never take responsibility for their own success and failures, or should never develop their various skills in fundraising, communications, programming, advocacy, or whatever, and that it is always the system to blame.

But the pervasive default assumption that nonprofits fail because of their lack of skills or whatever is not good for our sector or our ability to address entrenched societal issues. It wastes a lot of time, energy, and resources that we could use to solve these problems. It pushes us into short-term thinking. It makes the adoption of awful things like AI more seductive, which in the long run will only make things much worse.

Anyway, to everyone out there who feels like crap during this time and you think it’s your or your organization’s fault for not telling the best story, writing the best grant proposal, putting on the best programs, or whatever, please understand that you’re working within a ridiculous, capitalism-based system designed to ensure you never get the resources or support you need to successfully tackle problems in society. Try your best. Learn and develop skills where you can.

But spend less time feeling guilty and inadequate and blaming yourself and your organization for systems-level problems, or letting others make you feel that way, and more time thinking critically, getting angry, organizing, and throwing wrenches into the machine when you can.

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