Three Patterns Disrupting Nonprofit Culture and Sustainability

A year ago, I closed a chapter as Executive Director at Cause Effective and stepped into a liberating journey—one where I’ve doubled down on my purpose in the nonprofit sector and how I can serve in the most honest and meaningful way.

Throughout this period of building my consulting and coaching business, it’s become clear that the challenges around nonprofit cultures are a mirror to the intolerance, division, polarization, and cancel culture we see across society today. And sadly, these systemic and toxic patterns are quietly eroding the nonprofit sector from within.

We are in a time where modern tribalism, empathy without discernment, and cancel culture are shaping nonprofit workplaces more than values.  Nonprofits are using language of equity and justice while replicating dynamics that silence truth, punish leadership, fracture trust and dehumanize people who have helped to build nonprofits for years.

It’s time we ask ourselves:

Are we purpose-driven? Or are we just performing?

As I moved into this new chapter, I have spent the past year reading, researching, and engaging in candid conversations with people across the nonprofit sector. There are many issues we need to confront, and I plan to explore more of them in future communications and in workshops. But three specific patterns have emerged repeatedly in these behind-the-scenes conversations. The patterns are creating toxic cultures inside organizations, yet almost no one is talking about them in public forums. These truths are shared quietly over coffee, in private group chats, on Zooms with trusted colleagues. Rarely do they reach the people who need to hear them. 

I’ve identified three systemic patterns that undermine mission integrity and deepen division across nonprofit organizations.

PATTERN ONE: Empathy Without Discernment

In far too many nonprofit organizations, someone raises a concern that is sometimes valid, but too often not about a woman of color in a leadership position. And instead of addressing it with care or holding space for all sides, staff members and even board leaders respond with unquestioned empathy for the person making the complaint about the woman of color.  That empathy, unchecked by discernment, turns into alignment without accountability. Without facts, context or most importantly, open and transparent conversation the “othering” begins. And before you know it, a woman of color leader is isolated, vilified, and sometimes pushed out of her role entirely.

This dynamic is happening across the sector. It’s what Vanessa Priya Daniel so powerfully named in her book – “Unrig the Game.”  Nonprofit professionals and board members are often calling themselves values-driven, but when conflict arises, especially involving power and race, many default to cancel culture dressed up as allyship.

People join the mob to show solidarity out of fear of being seen as disloyal or complicit. Empathy becomes weaponized, and the leader is judged without even the most basic communication.  It escalates when the board, eager to avoid controversy, brings in legal counsel. Before long, a woman of color who often stepped into the role to lead change is gone.  Not because she failed, but because the organization failed to pause, listen deeply, ask real questions, and hold complexity.

This is empathy without discernment.

What is performative?

Claiming to care about equity and justice while participating in the same racialized dynamics that silence, isolate, and exile the very leaders we say we want at the helm.

What’s purpose-driven is being brave enough to:

- Step back and seek understanding.

- Make space for hard and honest conversations.

- Recognize how bias and internalized racism can show up even in our "empathy."

- Stand with women of color in leadership because they deserve the same grace, rigor, and support as a white leader in the position.

Before we rally to “believe someone” at the cost of someone else’s humanity—especially when power, race, and leadership are in the mix, we must ask:  Are we honoring our values, or avoiding the possibility of being uncomfortable?

Nonprofit organizations often pride themselves on being mission-driven, but too many lack a management culture rooted in ethics, fairness, and integrity. When we respond to conflict without creating space for open conversation or owning accountability, we don’t just undermine individuals—we weaken the organization’s credibility, erode trust, and compromise its ability to lead effectively.

Is my empathy grounded in discernment?  Or is it just another way to avoid discomfort, complexity, and responsibility?

PATTERN TWO: Modern Tribalism and the Isolation of Leadership

Across the nonprofit sector, executive directors are becoming increasingly isolated.  They are holding the financial pressure, the staff dynamics, the fundraising deadlines, the public-facing responsibility and often doing it without the board’s active support. They’re navigating complex needs from every direction, while being expected to lead with perfection, calm, and constant availability.

Meanwhile, staff expectations are rising. They want more autonomy, more flexibility, more boundaries (all important), but often without the same level of shared responsibility. It’s not unusual for team members to resist coming into the office, avoid responding to evening emails, or disengage from anything they see as "extra." Their needs matter. But when those needs are treated as fixed rules rather than part of a shared and evolving responsibility, the process to cultivate and build a sustainable team breaks down.

Common executive director tensions:

- The executive director who’s answering emails late at night is now -- "not respecting boundaries."

- The executive director who asks for support during a critical fundraiser is -- "asking for too much."

- The executive director, who is holding organizational risk starts to feel resented, rather than supported.

These tensions happen across the board, but they especially impact women, and even more so women of color, who are navigating not just the role, but the identity-based projections that come with the role.

This is how modern tribalism plays out inside organizations.

Staff begin to align not around the work, but around emotional affiliation—trauma bonding, victim identity, and blame culture.  Group narratives take shape, and the executive director becomes “othered.”  What could have been a moment for dialogue becomes a silent rupture, which is a break in trust and connection that no one names, but everyone feels.

What’s needed is a shift from polarization to partnership.

When we recognize that everyone—leaders included—needs room for humanity, we create the conditions for mutual accountability.

That means holding boundaries with compassion, naming harm without collapsing into blame, and making space for courageous conversations. The goal isn’t perfection; it’s collective integrity.

PATTERN THREE: Disconnection Around Fundraising and Shared Accountability

If there's one pattern, I’ve seen in nearly every nonprofit I’ve worked with is this: despite the nonprofit sector's deep commitment to community, care, and impact—the work to bring in the financial resources to make impact possible is treated like someone else’s job.

Here are common fundraising tensions:

- Program teams say, “That’s development’s job” when asked for data and stories to support grants.

- Board members avoid fundraising conversations—or disengage altogether—even though they were told that giving and fundraising is governance.

- Staff don’t see themselves as ambassadors of the mission.

- Lack of Staff and Board engagement on social media, while visibility suffers.

And meanwhile, one- or two-person development teams are drowning. Executive directors are stretched across strategy, HR, programming, fundraising, board management, and weekly crisis response.

Fundraising must be an organizational practice.

It requires:

- Vision from leadership

- Engagement from the board of directors

- Collaboration from program staff

- Participation from everyone who believes in the mission

Nonprofits are still operating in old management models where development is a function, not a value. But the truth is, if you’re not helping to bring visibility, energy, or resources to the mission, you are limiting what’s possible for you and the organization.  The mind shift needs to happen from thinking that you are being asked to do more to working collaboratively to serve the mission.

It’s about building a culture where:

- The development team isn’t chasing program teams for data and content.

- Staff feel equipped and proud to share the organization's impact.

- Board members understand their role in governance and fundraising is part of that.

- Fundraising isn’t feared—but seen as an extension of the mission itself.

And it’s important to name that for people of color in leadership, especially women of color, these fundraising tensions are magnified.  Expectations are higher, grace is thinner, and the pressure to “just figure it out” is relentless.

This isn’t just a resource issue.  This is a values issue, which reflects the larger societal moment we’re in: one of division, disconnection, and disinterest in collective care.

What we need instead is a culture of shared responsibility. Not just to raise the money—but to raise the mission, together.

These patterns—empathy without discernment, modern tribalism and internal echo chambers, and disconnection around fundraising and shared responsibility are not isolated challenges. 

They are symptoms of something deeper, which is the nonprofit sector that says it values equity, justice, and impact, but struggles to practice those values internally.  We are clinging to the language of change while resisting the labor, honesty, and collaboration required.

This is about reckoning with the nonprofit cultures we’ve built and asking if they are aligned with the missions we claim to serve. 

Nonprofits leaders must commit to dedicating hours upon hours to workshop training to strengthen the culture of their organization and the future of the sector. 

It means stepping away from the deadlines and calling in the entire team to be in community together on a regular basis. 

Nonprofits must:

- Build workplaces where nuance is allowed.

- Welcome and engage in brave conversations.

- Embrace fundraising as a shared organizational practice.

- Respect leadership when it seeks to effectively serve the mission.

- Work in alignment with shared values.

We are at a crossroads. The nonprofit sector cannot keep using the language of equity and justice while operating with the mechanics of harm. If we want to be agents of change, we must do the internal nonprofit cultural building work—together.This means telling the truth, rethinking how we lead, and co-creating cultures that are rooted in equity.

So ask yourself, your team, your board: are we purpose-driven? Or are we performing?

And if the answer makes you uncomfortable—good, because real change begins on the other side of our discomfort.  We must come to terms with the fact that the future of the nonprofit sector depends on how we truthfully respond and how committed we are to doing the work that follows.