When the Money Moves On

Years ago, I was part of a major national funding effort focused on “organizational effectiveness.” It was important work, well-supported, and for a time very much in favor.

Then the funding world moved on. Climate change became the new priority.

The work we had been doing did not suddenly become irrelevant, but the market for funding it changed dramatically.

So we wound it down.

I have thought about that experience a lot lately, because we saw a similar cycle in economic and social justice funding during and immediately after COVID. Those issues received extraordinary attention and resources at the time, but that moment has clearly passed.

But the community needs have not.

The underlying work still needs to happen. In our work that means neighborhood investment, small-business development, housing, community ownership, civic participation, institutional accountability, and the slow work of building local capacity.

Community development is still a priority. (AI generated)

The problems have a much longer life cycle than the funding categories created to address them.

That creates a hard question for nonprofit leaders:

Which work should end when the money ends, and which work is important enough that we have to find another way to sustain it?

There is a nonprofit funding market, whether we like to describe it that way or not. Ideas rise and fall. New language emerges. Funders reorganize portfolios. Organizations can chase the next category, keep trying to sell yesterday’s language, or get very clear about what part of their work is truly mission-critical and adapt around it.

Funding booms can also hide an uncomfortable reality. When money is plentiful, it is easy to confuse strong demand from funders with a durable model for the work itself. When the boom ends, organizations have to ask who will pay for the work now, and whether philanthropy was ever going to be a permanent answer.

Community development is especially interesting because so much of it keeps getting renamed. Racial equity. Economic mobility. Place-based investment. Community wealth building. Inclusive growth. The terminology changes faster than the neighborhoods do.

That is why I increasingly think one of the real measures of nonprofit strength is not how well an organization performs when its issue is in favor. It is what the organization does when attention moves elsewhere.

Sometimes the right answer is to shrink. Sometimes it is to partner. Sometimes it is to change the revenue model. Sometimes it is to end the work.

And sometimes the work matters enough that you keep going, even after the money has moved on.

With our work at CFN, we are living this question now.

We don't think of sustainability as finding another grant to keep every existing program alive. Instead, we are asking what capabilities neighborhoods will continue to need regardless of the funding cycle, and then changing the organization around those needs.

Some work is becoming more scalable through technology. Some is moving from programs into planning, financing and community ownership. Some long-standing work remains because decades of experience tell us it still matters. And some things will inevitably end.

We are finding new ways to preserve the work that still needs doing.