How Nonprofits Can Navigate Uncertainty and Emerge Stronger in 2025

Welcome to the Go Beyond Fundraising Podcast, brought to you by Allegiance Group Plus Persuant. We are a passionate team of strategists, practitioners, and technologists who believe in the power of nonprofits to create positive change. Each episode, we host insightful conversations, practical tips, and inspiring stories from experts on our team and change makers around the globe. Together, let's explore how to go beyond traditional fundraising and unlock the full potential of your mission. Hey, Trent, how are you? I'm great, Leigh. It's good to be with you again. I know. We last spoke right at the end of 2024. We are now in late March of 2025, and it feels like it's been six years already. On the one hand, it flies by, on the other hand, like, think of all that's happened since the end of 2024 and how 25 has begun, like goodness. Yes, we recently had one of our webinars that we do every half of the year. We were recently set down to review Q3 and Q4 of 24, and it was like looking at something from another century. People's minds were not where they were four or five months ago. The Unite wanted to sit down and just acknowledge the elephant in the room that a lot of nonprofits are staring at, which is there's a lot of noise right now in 2025. Let's start there. A ton of noise. And I think part of the reason why I was eager to get together and talk about this to you in our audience is that much of the noise at the beginning is a new administration, and that's politically charged and emotionally charged. But even setting that aside, and I think that's what's important. We need to set aside our emotions, recognize that kind of causes some unsettling, but on top of that, we got a lot of other noise related to economy and other environmental elements that's just creating some uncertainty. So I wanted to get together and talk about like in working with both some of our own clients that's in talking to other organizations in the space, there's this hesitation it feels like that's happening. We're going to figure out what to do next, but there's also a lot of uncertainty about what could happen, which is creating this white space. And that means really this is the time to lean in and not pull back during this time of uncertainty. Absolutely. And that we know that uncertainty often creates both challenges and opportunities. Let's unpack what's really going on. Where do we see the challenges and then maybe discuss where some of the opportunities might be? So I think for our audience, if you're out there, my guess is that you are feeling this anxiety, right? I think many of you have fiscal years that might end June 30. And so you pretty far along in your planning for your fiscal year 26. Some of you probably have fiscal years that begin October 1 and then a good number probably are on the calendar year. So you're in a different phase in planning. But no matter where you're at in your phase in planning, in particular for our fundraising friend out there, all of these signals are creating a thinking anxiety and different signals if you will. I think when I was like back to being in the market for a long time myself, dating myself, of course, we've been around long enough to have seen lots of different administrations, lots of different economic cycles. I think we've been, I was going to say, lucky, I don't know if that's the case. The right word is it relates to not necessarily hitting a deep recession again, but many of us that are on this, listening to this podcast, I will even remember back to the great recession, which we're coming up. What the boy has been 17, 18 years now. So a long time ago is pretty, pretty deep trough. So I think there's things that we can learn from history. It tells us that where there's uncertainty, and I think back to the great recession, specifically, their organization has been stage steady through the great recession. Did the smart things with donor acquisition, stewardship, focused on their mission, got through that time with flying colors and actually probably took away the lack of a better phrase market share from what might be in their competitive donor landscape. And I think that's what we want to talk about today. How do you actually push forward and not pull back on things while you're waiting? So being bold during this time. But let's spend a little bit time, because I think at first it's also important for us to remove our emotion, what's happening in the environment that's causing some uncertainty. I saw a headline yesterday that consumer confidence was, I think, the lowest it's been in four years. And we also saw some research that said that it was in the fourth month of the decline. I didn't realize that. Again, that's, could be driven by politics in a definite matter. I'm going to pause there because again, I want to remind our audience that you could say, that's Trump's fault. So that's Biden's fault. So that's why local council person's fault. It doesn't matter whose fault it is, we have to deal with the uncertainty that consumer confidence is down. And what does that mean for our donor or our supporter or our volunteer or any other constituent or even our mission recipients, because our mission recipient audience might grow during this time of lower consumer inflation continues. So we're still around 3%, but we've got tariffs on the horizon that should impact that. Speaking of tariffs, I think that this is another area of uncertainty. This administration is posturing in many ways. So what they might say they're going to do may not necessarily be implemented, but it can rattle markets and it can rattle consumers and how they behave otherwise. That can increase costs, employment concerns. When we think about governmental impact on that or the economy in general, there are expectations that are pretty 12 year low. And if they in general, the combination that, how do you feel, Leah, as a consumer yourself, do you feel uncertain? I know. Oh, definitely. My husband and I are super lucky and that we're both employed. We're staying home and eating out less and being conservative with our spending and not necessarily wanting to take big lavish trips or do anything like that. And I think that we're seeing similar hesitation in the market as well. I think for a lot of people, philanthropy is seen as a luxury. In times of uncertainty, they tend to pull back on. And I think that's where I like to bring up that we still live in the most generous country in the world and people give two difficult times. I think what we saw through the great recession was there was statistics and I came from the specifics. So I apologize we can look them up and maybe put them in some more people that might have otherwise been giving to eight to 10 organizations. And let's say I'm just going to use numbers that were giving $100 to 10 organizations. They were giving $1,000 over a year. So they might have cut back to giving $7 or $800. They were giving it concentrated to three or four organizations. And those are the ones that also on the other side of the economic downturn that they actually continued to give. So what happened there? Three or four organizations actually got a larger share of a smaller wallet. Think about that for a minute. Somebody went from giving $1,000 to giving $700. But they were giving the $700 to three or four organizations as opposed to $1,000 to 10 organizations. And they became more deeply connected to those organizations that they continue to stick through. So what we continue to preach, how do you become a philanthropic priority of your givers? Because to your point, well, people might pull back. They don't necessarily pull out altogether. And so we've got to continue to lead through. And in the nonprofits faced most of our dollars that support us are middle to higher income, households. So confidence does matter. Somebody might look at this and say, geez, inflation keeps tracking up and my raise doesn't keep up with it. And I feel like I don't have much money. If I'm going to cut back and put the same amount in my 401K, maybe I shouldn't give as much to the organizations that I support, or maybe I should cut a couple. And that's okay. To think through, we think about it as consumers. That's why I asked you. I think I'm in that same boat. I've re-evaluated organizations that I've given to over the years. The consistency and the frequency thereof. That's still an important part of the fabric of the individual that I am. So I think the bottom line of our list is, we are right now in a storm. And I've used this internally in my team a lot. Our job is to figure out which way the winds might blow and make sure that our organizational clients are putting the sales up and the right direction so that the wind that's blowing can move us faster. I can't control the weather. I can't control the winds. And I can complain about them and I can blame and I can get emotionally fired up about it. That's not going to help much. I got to just figure out which way the wind is blowing and then try to lead strong and through that. I think that's a great segue to our next point, which is constraints can often inspire creativity. So when you are experiencing uncertainty, there's a tendency to constrict, to pull back, to go back to what feels safe. But a lot of times those are the most optimal times to use that crisis to be able to break through into something that may not have been possible before. And we talk about that in a few different ways. One of those is the breakthrough thinking model. If you were a leader at a nonprofit right now, what advice would you be giving your team and what strategies would you be adopting? I love that because I think COVID was another over the last say 15, 20 years that we could say the external environment created a crisis that required leaders to objectively look at the brutal facts. I'm a big fan of good to great and Jim Collins and he talks about the brutal facts. If you are ignoring those facts and you aren't adjusting your business strategy around what's really happening around you, whether those are caused by your organization, sometimes the brutal facts are caused by external factors like we're talking about. Sometimes they're internal, they're an unprofitative based scandals, for instance. Okay, the brutal facts might be worrying crisis because of this, what are we going to do about it? Good strong leaders will take a look at that. So what sort of things might we need to consider? How might we need to show up? During COVID is a great example. Isn't it crazy to think five years ago around this time? Talk about uncertainty. Week to week. Like now it's been so long I've forgotten, it was 10 days to slow the spread, two weeks to slow the spread, whatever they were saying, two weeks to weeks. So in the nonprofit, like, are we going to be able to do our gala on April 20th? Are we going to be able to do our walk event on May 21st? Nobody knew and you literally were day to day. There was no boogey man necessarily to blame right now. There's a lot of boogey man. even if it's like an administration or the economy's bad because of that boogie man, I can COVID it was kind of like, oh, there's not a boogie man. So let's just figure out how we as humanity can solve for this. And we did. We were very resourceful as a nonprofit organization. People also became quite generous through it. But think back to that. For our listeners to think back to where were you in COVID five years ago and talk about uncertainty, this is nothing compared to that, right? It relates to where we've once otherwise been. So I like what you're saying. Think about what's possible. If we couldn't do our event in person, what are some alternatives so we could still raise the money we need to raise and hit the goals we need to hit. Could we do something differently? It activated different sort of thinking in an objective way. And I think that's what we really need to do today. I think that strong leaders rise above the political environment or whatever else may be going on economically. It doesn't do us any good to complain. But just looking at it and saying our mission has to advance through this season of crisis here is fact. It's what I love about working with the nonprofit space, the leadership and nonprofit are very passionate about their product, which is their cause. And in the for-profit space, people are passionate about their product. Of course, some may will persevere through, but nonprofit space, man, resilience is a cornerstone for who we are. So you can't react to headlines. You've got to react more to what's to your point. Good leadership during this time. I think I need to gather your team to get and say, team, hey, you're in a lot of chatter and complaining and it might not be fair and it doesn't matter. Reality is this is what we're faced with. This is how it's going to affect the people that we serve. So let's think mission first. And then let's talk about how it might be affecting our constituency that supports our mission to make sure that we are still thriving through this time. I think the other thing that we learn through COVID was that to me, in occasion with our donors is critically important. They don't expect you to have the answers, but they do want it to be informed. When I think back to COVID and just the authenticity and the transparency of saying, we don't know exactly how this is going to affect us yet, but we need your help. And here's what we're doing. So those of you that might be uncertain related to grants or government impact on your organization or your constituency, I think it's okay to say, boy, a lot is unfolding and we are on top of the impact every day, but our mission holds true through this and we still need your help. And by the way, we appreciate the help that you've provided in the past. The strongest leaders did be apolitical when it comes to those aspects. Even if a current administration, whether that be left-leaning or right-leaning, there's always ways that those winds will blow the little light to amplify message in a certain way that can create urgency, capitalize upon that, but your commitment to growth for your mission shouldn't change to that. And I think it's a good segue to just saying, lead with purpose, not with fear. And I think through the recession and through COVID, there were organizations that paused, lean back, and were communicating effectively in other organizations that were in that competitive landscape to them, kept going and took away some supporters for sure. Something that you brought up is this idea of trust. And one of the biggest challenges that we are dealing with as just a society right now is a fundamental lack of trust in institutions. There was a lot of conflicting information that came out around COVID afterwards. There was already a destabilization of trust in institutions. One of the side effects of that deteriorating trust in institutions was a distrust of nonprofits. And so an additional challenge that I think a lot of nonprofit leaders are grappling with right now is people I think bandy about terms like disinformation or misinformation so quickly nowadays that it's hard for people to be able to tell up from down. So as a nonprofit, I think when these times of uncertainty arise, I think it's also equally important to figure out what is the best way to be authentic with your donors at a time when just trust in any kind of organization that has the ability to communicate their agendas is probably at its lowest. You hit some keywords that I hammer in on right authenticity, vulnerability, as we talk about Big Burned Brown fan right and if you think about that as leading your organization vulnerability. Communication being consistent is really important. And I think that this trust sometimes comes not just from misinformation, sometimes misinformation, we go back to COVID. People say, oh, that was misinformation or I think sometimes people are communicating with the best information they have at the time and that changes over time. That's okay too, so long as you're being transparent and consistent with your communication. Okay, things have changed. So when we think about for nonprofit organizations, one of the areas that I think is irresponsibly cut or in some cases eliminated, I've heard some of that lately and I just totally disagree with that. Our donor acquisition and stewardship, oh, I'm going to buckle down. We got to cut some budgets. We're going to go deeper with those that already are passionate about our cause. Important, but yes and when I talk about stewardship, it's about to your point to build trust and it's about integrity. It's about doing what you said you were going to do. I was with a hospital organization not long ago and then we're talking about how they can improve their stewardship because there was a lack of connection between those larger gifts, major gifts and even transformational gifts to make sure that those donors will communicate it with effectively with what was happening and the stewardship of their gift. That's true at the top of the pyramid and very true also down to the bottom of the pyramid, right? If you support a food bank and you have care and cause for food insecurity, all these things we talked about are going to impact that. Everything from the economy impacting more people that might need the services of the food bank to the government policy that may impact snap benefits. I'll leave it to that. It's much more complex than that. With that, how can I be in a very positive way communicating with my supporter constituent that thank you for your support of us in the past? Your help is more important than ever. Here's what we're navigating through and that's going to change by the way and when it does you can be transparent about that as well. And then as you're talking about prospective new donors to say, you may not have considered supporting this cause, but here's why it's important now more than ever. Consistency, transparency, authenticity, vulnerability, integrity, all of those things are critically important in your communication with your supporters. And like I said, the theme of this podcast today, it's more before than ever in time of uncertainty. I love that you shared that trend. Something that I think is really important for nonprofits to remember is that people give to people and featuring the stories of the beneficiaries of your support is almost always something that's going to build trust. If you're doing it with integrity and care. So do you have any additional thoughts about that? I love that. We always talk about being constituent or mission-driven centric as opposed to organization centric. And there's times when it's, oh, the organization's living in a fear-based area. Here's why we need your help. It's not we need your help. It's the people who are supporting that need your help. So I love to eat on there. How can you tap into these stories of your mission recipients more now than ever? And when you're asking yourself during this uncertain environment, the impact of these things that are happening economically, politically, and otherwise, or just the uncertainty that's still ahead, how does that impact your mission recipient? And how do you tell that story that exemplifies your help has made an impact? It's more important now than ever before. And we appreciate your continued partnership with us to fight for this cause. You're an ambassador of our organization. How can I empower and equip you as a constituent to continue to support? I think if we're more reactive and we think about the organization, that's going to lose momentum. And what we want to actually do is capitalize with consistency, build on our momentum, to overcome this fear-based mentality that we both have as an organization, and that our constituent might otherwise have. Back to when I asked you how you're feeling through this. If you're getting the type of messaging for a cause that you've consistently cared about, and they're doing so in an authentic way, you're likely still to say, "Hey, this is still an important priority for me and my family." Even if it's only a hundred dollar check, it's a post-150 dollar check, it's still an important priority for me and my family. So let's go ahead and make that part of our budget mentality, if you will. If I'm not hearing from you? Or it's a boo-hoo about the boogeyman or what's wrong, or because we didn't get this grant from over here, we're having to cut back and we need your help to help us. No, it's about helping our mission, right? So I think there's an important aspect of not letting your emotions override your mission and the consistency is more important than ever. Don't always remember how you show up during these times of crisis more so than anything else, right? And if they feel like all we're doing is asking, then they will begin to I think tune that out particularly if they're struggling with their own uncertainty. Does that make sense? Leah? It does. And it also speaks to another challenge facing the non-profit space right now is with so many seismic changes happening around how some non-profits receive their funding. There are suddenly a lot of organizations that are needing to go out and acquire new donors and they needed them yesterday because there are some non-profits that have already had to face cuts both in their programs and in their staff in response to some of the changes. And I think there's a fear out there that donors are going to be inundated with asks all of a sudden. So some organizations may be not going out and asking for that support or communicating well with their existing donor base because they don't want to just be more noise and kind of an already crowded communication space. What are your thoughts there? I think that's a great point. I think that focuses more on And so we think about constituent supporters in general. There's different ways that they can help you bring anytime, right? They can give, so donate, they can advocate for your cause, they can volunteer, they can participate in events, they can amplify your message. There's lots of different things that they can do. And to your point, I think that there are organizations who have been reliant upon government grants or otherwise that may need to be focused more on private foundations or individual donors to bridge that gap or they're going to have to reprioritize someone, their mission. That's real. For those of you that are part of organizations that I just said, that is real crisis for you. And to leave this point, if your instinct is, we're going to have to go out and just find a bunch of new donors to close that gap. Donor acquisition in this day and age is harder than ever. There's more noise than ever. We're seeing list acquisitions from traditional direct emails. Those lists are brooding. I saw something I don't have in front of me right now, but it's in a double digit decline for the size of lists from the major list brokers in order to tap into the usual suspects. So if you were a particular organization that was wanting to do a list right all to do traditional mail acquisition, those pools are getting smaller. Why is that? The traditional list donor is a little bit more aged and that age is waning. We're getting fewer and fewer of those folks if they are passing away. They also have less resources to give. And as you can imagine, in an uncertain economic environment, they likely will give less. So it's harder to get new donors to traditional methods. Right? I think that's more broadly. This is a time to think about investing in your brand and perhaps in some integrated media solutions outside of traditional acquisition. I'm not saying it's dead. It's a both-hand though. You really are going to have to open your mind up to integrated media solutions that could include search, social, etc. We at the lead in group and pursuant finding great success there, love doing it, but it takes commitment. This is again, through uncertainty. Now is not the time to pause and say, "What's waiting to see? Nothing's shaked out and we'll see if we can invest in that later." Now is the time to make sure you're reprioritizing some of your resources to go those areas. Investing in your brand and not just in your ask is critically important. It goes back to stewardship. Getting more from your existing donors is probably more likely than getting a lot of new donors. We talk about coverage ratio. The number of dollars that you lose, are you getting as many or more new donors to cover your attrition? That could be becoming increasingly more difficult. Our market has shown that there are fewer donors giving more. We are seeing dollars given to organizations going up, but it's coming from fewer people. You know I had this conversation before. I tend to question that a little bit because I think it's harder to get to all the sources from donor-advised funds, social media channels, and the others. I think there's probably more anonymous donors than ever where it used to be pretty easy to source the donors. I don't fully buy into the number of donors out there because we're seeing the dollars going up, which is good. But if that's the case, if you were to buy into that argument, you'd still have to say, "I need to get more from my existing base and amplifying your brand is more important now than ever in ways that's going to hopefully lead to the gift when in fact we are making our ask." I love that you brought up brand because as a marketing person, that's my love language. Absolutely. Ask me about a brand and I'm going to start salivating over fonts and colors. But yes, so I love that you brought up brand because especially when we think about the next generation of donors, brands are, I think, something that younger people think about all the time. Partly for materialistic reasons, I go to the gym and I see that everybody's got a certain water bottle or a certain type of leggings or a certain type of shoe on or something like that. I see so much how younger folks identify brands with morality and it's why you see so many more corporations wanting to put moral statements out there. Some of them are starting to pull back on some of that. But they've latched on to this phenomenon where people want to support brands. They feel aligned with their own personal values and they want to display those brands in such a way. So, how can a nonprofit shore up trust in their brand to harness that desire that's already out there to be aligned with brands for profit and nonprofit that they feel aligned and provide evidence for their own moral standing? I love that question. And I think it's evolved too because you're right. The next generation thinks differently. Old school fundraising background position tactic might have looked like, hey agency, let's rent some lists and let's put together our control package that you know, and we'll do a test against it. We might have a premium in there and we'll send it and we'll get this response rate and this average gift is all important. Not saying that's dead. I'm saying that's an older school way of doing it. I think the newer way is like you talked about earlier, when we tell great stories, people love to share great human interest stories. So whether you're social media managers with an agency internally with marketing with fundraising, who cares? Hear me out on this for a minute. If you've got great stories, tell them in a great way and make sure you're telling them social media because what will happen is your brand associated with that story gets out there and gets amplified. I'm still, I'm of that generation where I'm in the kind of middleing of social media. I don't contribute a time but I consume more and I understand that I'm getting some of my information from social media channels. So, take something like Instagram. And I see a great story of a nonprofit that made big impact to a particular mission recipient. It's either there for an ad or it's close to my interest or somebody shared it. So think about all the ambassadors that you have up there. If you're telling a great story and people share that story and your brand's associated with that great impact story, then when you do get a piece of mail in front of them or there is an event that's local or there is an ask via email or a social media or search campaign online, people have had some brand exposure to you and the impact that you've made. That's very different than the old school way of fundraising that might have otherwise been. I'm going to send you some address labels that might get you to open up the package and then maybe you'll read the long form letter that will get you compelled to write a $20 check that's partially guilt to pay for the address labels that you've got and because you're somewhat connected to our cause. I'm not sure though but now you're a new donor. Now I'm going to put you in my new donor welcome series and as part of the new donor welcome series, you may or may not give a second gift unless I give you another privilege. Look, premiums are important. What I just described, I do not mean to marginalize whatsoever. But next generation fundraising, do you have an opportunity to get your brand amplified out through good storytelling so that when you do ask people are willing to support that your brand is top of mind. If I use a consumer example for a minute, it's instead of sell, sell people to your point. Most people buy because over time they've been conditioned to say, this is something I need. I might have wanted it now. Now I need it. I'm 56 years old and I get ads served up on Instagram about aging, greens or this or that. Interesting. Maybe I need that. Maybe I should click through. But that was conditioning that took place over a period of time to talk about health, whether it's supplements, working out skin care, whatever it might be. They're conditioning that. So what can we do as nonprofits in that? How can we take a cue from that? And it's the same way I think with storytelling. People love human interest stories and let's face it, we don't see enough of them on the news anymore. Everything's quick, bait about the terrible things that are happening, right? As opposed to watching our nightly, local news and there was always the heartwarming story or something to end the newscast out. We don't see as much of that anymore. So that's my advice like marketing and as a brand, marketer yourself, you can appreciate that your mission doesn't cause. And just because we're going through spirit uncertainty, now more than ever is the time for you to be amplifying the stories of your impact up. Final if you will. I think it's actually great segue to the second of innovation. That's a piggybacking that one of the things that I see really being really successful with brands and it's basic, but it's actually having merchandise and that can actually be really powerful, especially for helping spread the word with younger donors, especially if you can come up with some cool designer slogan that can be actually really powerful. Well, think about that for a minute. Love it. First of all, because at least it's a call to action. It's a revenue generator. It may not be the margins that you're otherwise looking for from a donation, but to your point, let's say a younger generation love what you call merged, right? That's what you refer to it as. I love that. So if somebody says, hey, this I haven't given a donation yet, but I love what they're doing and I'd be proud to wear a t-shirt, let's say. So what happens there? You're getting a financial transaction. You're getting a CRM note that somebody is now connected to your mission, even if it wasn't by donation, it was by purchase. You've got an ambassador that's walking around in their community wearing your brand or talking point or whatever. Some of the old yellow wristbands from Livestrong conversation starter. It was a donation of a dollar, but it was merged because it was a wristband that people could wear around and talk about and show their support for cancer. To that point, it's innovation in the margins, if you will. Testing little things, you may say, how much am I really going to make on that? Okay. So if you're going to do that, you're going to have a donation of a dollar, and you're going to have a donation of a dollar, and you're going to have a donation of a dollar, and you're going to have a Or maybe you'd participate in an event and you could become a captain and you could help us actually raise thousands of dollars for your friends and families. Wow, that's really an innovative way to create next-generation ambassadors. It's not a matter of, and I like it, think small, iterate, don't try to do too much, evolve, iteratively through times of uncertainty. We can't really afford to break the bank on it. It's responsible for us to be budget conscious, what's not responsible is for us to clunk her down and not think in possibility or try to test and iterate. Absolutely. I think a lot of nonprofits right now are probably in a mindset of how can we diversify our revenue so that when future, not if, but when future uncertainty comes around, we're not left holding the bag when something unexpected happens. Absolutely correct. Diversified revenue sources are critical. And I think right now there are some nonprofits that look at us, they're, oh my goodness, we have been dependent upon one particular revenue source. Okay, can go back to what we talked about, thinking of possibility. If that's your crisis, what is your nonprofit look like in the evolving two, five and ten years? What will your organization look like from the healthy, diversified revenue sources in ten years and how do you work backwards from that? What does break through look like? And when I say diversified, it doesn't have to be equally balanced, right? It doesn't necessarily mean that you're going to say, oh my goodness, government grants. That was 85 percent of my revenue was only 15 from end of the day giving. And never being a spot again, we've got to be 85 individual giving and 15 percent government grants. That's probably not practical either. You probably aren't going to be able to be experts in all things related to all of the sources that you have. But when we think about merchandise, corporate, government grants, private foundations, individual giving, there's a balance in all of that. And a lot of organizations have people that are responsible. The events have changed significantly, right? A lot of the larger health and human services organizations that are even this order appear to pure organizations, multi-affiliate health organizations, we're raising 30, 40, 50 percent of their money through peer to peer events, just a decade ago. And now they're not as much. Why is that? There's a distribution of people's time, effort, energy, a lot more competition in the event space. They've had to reinvent some new events, if you will. I've seen some good stuff out there. So something the other day from leukemia and lymphoma that is really interesting related to the youth ambassadors, raising a lot of money and getting a lot of social, really smart because they're getting some social media exposure and they're doing some nice things out there. To your point, it's not a matter of doubling down on what you've done so well over the years. Do that well and stick to the principles we've talked about. But where can you keep your momentum and still iterate and innovate in the fringes as well? What are some closing thoughts that you have for nonprofits that are listening and maybe they're looking for a few kind of concrete things they can take away to put into practice tomorrow? We'll go back to what we said. Fear should not create cause. Momentum is everything. The mission that you are amplifying that you work for that you're supporting is still more important than ever and your work is critically vital. This time that we're in is a season. And again, I think there's far too much energy being wasted right now, either blaming or trying to solve for it at the macro. And what we really can control and influence is what we're doing and our day to day momentum. Let's worry less about throwing acts and determining whether the things that we're reading about are good, bad or who to blame or reposting are personal emotions around that and focus and say, what can I control today with my constituency and my mission to continue to navigate through this storm? Being a political landscape, global geopolitics, there are always cycles and we're in a cycle of uncertainty right now to come back and put some closure to this and in this uncertainty, which is being driven by the things we talked about, we need to lead more strongly than ever and impact depends upon what you're actually doing and not waiting for. So my advice I think to the leadership that's listening to our podcast today, galvanize your team a little bit and come to your bulwark with some vision and confidence. I think your board is looking to hear from you that you're the right captain of this ship through the turbulent times that we're in, but that you're going to adjust yourselves the right way. Coming in with this is where we're going to stick through to what we're doing that works. We're going to do more of these things. We're going to test in the other areas. We're also going to be responsible with our budgets and be vigilant so that we can pivot if it weren't necessary because I do think we also live in a time that's very reactionary. Right? Here's the end of March. The stock market's been pretty crazy this month. If I had a guess, I think probably March will end up pretty flat from February, but what a roller coaster it was. There were days, there were weeks that it was like, oh my gosh, your 401k is crashing. Why is this coming to an end? What are you going to do? You buckle down. And the next week something gets turned off on something political or some job report comes out or something else comes out. It catches back up. Just say the course. It's the time to be bold, visible, consistent, integrity, authenticity, transparency, all the things that we talked about. And just do that consistently. I think that you will succeed through this. And probably better than ever because there are organizations that will pause the year going to pass during this race. You'll be strong on the other side, but we saw it coming out of COVID. We saw it coming out of the greater recession. I couldn't agree more Trent. I think that our true character is revealed in times of crisis. And so I think that the nonprofits that stay the course and look to innovate at this time are going to emerge even stronger after some of this uncertainty has settled. And we'll see who those strong brands are on the other end. Yeah. For those of you that are listening to we partner with, we are always proud to partner with you if you're looking for a partner to help you grow through these uncertain times. We'd love to have a conversation. We love solving for problems. Just as you have leaders and your nonprofit organizations that are passionate about their causes, a leading spirit and pursue on our 200 plus professional that are passionate about solving problems for the nonprofits face. We would love to have a conversation with you. And it's an interesting time, but I think it's a great closing. Lea, like you said, I think right, we should embrace these challenges and there's going to be nonprofit organizations that end up a lot stronger on the other side for this. So thanks. It's always fun to talk to you. We appreciate the opportunity. Thanks for joining us on another episode of Go Beyond Fundraising. We hope these conversations have equipped you with the tools and inspiration to take your fundraising, marketing and advocacy efforts to the next level. If you're ready to transform your nonprofits growth and impact, visit teamolegents.com to get in touch with the experience team, et al. egent's group and pursuant. We are here to help you make a lasting difference. Until next time, keep up the phenomenal work you do every day. And there we can create a brighter future.