Tested by turbulence: how nonprofits must adapt to succeed

Intro: Welcome to How to Market Your Nonprofit, the Counterintuity podcast featuring interviews with experts in marketing, fundraising, strategy, and leadership who offer how-tos and inspiration about how you can help your nonprofit succeed and grow during a time of chaos and change. Bringing his 25-plus-years of experience in marketing, strategy, and nonprofit management, here’s our host, Lee Wochner. 

Thank you for joining me for the first episode of our new Counterintuity podcast, How to Market Your Nonprofit.

Guess what it’s about. That’s right—it’s about how to market your nonprofit.

Now, marketing is a big word because it applies to a lot of things—more than merely spreading the word, or designing good-looking things, or developing a message. It’s all of that and more. Fundamentally, marketing means everything about how you and your nonprofit connect with everyone else.

And so today, in our inaugural episode, we’re going to talk about three things:

1. Why we’ve got this new podcast—and I promise this will be brief and relevant to the discussion.
2. The dramatic systemic change we’re living through—and please bear with me for that.
3. And then finally, how to plan for success—literally, what to do. So, you might want to have a pad and pen ready.

But—we’ll also put the list, along with other resources related to this episode, on our website. So take a look there.

But wait a minute… why we changed the podcast, systemic change in the world, how to plan for success… I know you think none of that sounds like marketing. It’s like, “What the hell is this?”

Except it is. It is about marketing.

Marketing takes place in the environment in which it exists. So it’s important to talk about change—and why we’ve made some changes to this podcast as an example.

Marketing requires resources—your time and attention. And you can’t manage that—or your nonprofit—well without strategy and planning, which we’ll talk about today… and funding and fundraising, which we’ll talk about next time.

Covering this is going to take a little while today. I promise I’ll do my best to make it worth your time.

Your time is valuable, and you’re doing something important—running a nonprofit that works to help people, animals, the planet, the future.

And so, always, I want to do my best to honor that and be helpful. And so does everybody else at Counterintuity.

So please bear with me on this introductory episode. I promise—it’s important.

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Topic Number One: Why This Podcast?

We did 36 episodes of the previous Counterintuity podcast, That’s What C Said, and we’re proud of those. We had some terrific guests on there—really smart, committed thinkers and doers and leaders doing incredible things all over the United States and the world.

There are a lot of great stories there and fascinating people to meet, so you might want to check them out.

We started to realize that by making changes to the podcast, we could better meet the needs of this time we’re going through right now. And once we started making those alterations, it started to seem like a wholly new podcast.

Given the tsunami of changes washing over all of us, we need inspiration—yes, which we think we’ve been doing well—but also more people directly involved in marketing, more people with a grasp on what’s going on and what’s about to come… and more how-to’s.

What we can do about these things.

Real how-to’s that will help us understand the changing dynamic—and how we can adapt to it and do better in it.

This June, Counterintuity is entering its 19th year of business as a marketing firm serving nonprofits.

From day one, people have come to us for marketing strategy and business strategy because they figure we know something about what’s going on—that we keep our finger on the pulse. And we strive to do that, the best we can.

We now see that nonprofits and the people who lead them need strategic thinking now more than ever—because the ground has shifted out from under them, and quickly, like an earthquake.

Grants they’ve been promised are being rescinded. Hello, National Endowment for the Arts.

Consumer confidence today is not what it was last year. I think we all know that.

Nobody has any idea, minute to minute, what’s going on with tariffs or what they’ll do to the economy—or how we work, where we work… hello, work-from-home or hybrid… and what we work with.

Artificial intelligence—I’m looking at you.

It’s utterly removed from even four years ago.

Our goal with this new podcast is to help you make sense of all that—to help you make decisions and take action, and to provide comfort and determination and a go-get-’em spirit while we’re doing it.

Because we’re with you in this. We’re nonprofit people too. And we share your passion for helping people—and the world.

We’ll be here every other week with this podcast, bringing on people who know how to surf these waves and make the most of the ride.

Already, some of the guests we have lined up are going to thrill and excite you—I sure hope so—and share ideas and information that you can put into place.

Guests who really know how to wrangle artificial intelligence into being an incredible servant.

Guests who know how to fundraise in this climate.

Guests with the latest marketing developments and ideas and tips.

Guests who are making it work—and who can help lead us all into greener pastures.

I hope you’ll join us.

Topic Number Two: Dramatic Systemic Change

We people involved in nonprofits are going to have to change.

We’re going to have to change, and our nonprofits are going to have to change, to adapt to this—because we are living through a time of massive change. Epic change.

However you feel about it—whether you like it or not—whatever we assumed about our organization, our funding, socioeconomic, geopolitical customs and norms, and their continuance… that’s all up for grabs.

Yesterday, I had lunch with the executive director of a nonprofit who just lost 75% of his funding—and wanted to know how to go get it back.

And we talked about that. But also, I said to him, “Well, what are the other things we can do? Because… I’m not sure that’s coming back.”

Trying to be helpful and encouraging.

I don’t really need to tell you we’re in a period of massive change—I’m stating the obvious. You already know it because you can already see it.

You may not even like it. I don’t like a lot of it. But it’s here—and it’s the new environment.

So we need to figure out how to succeed in it. Because what we do is important.

That doesn’t mean you need to give up on the things that matter the most to you.

Don’t give up on what gives you meaning and joy. Quite the contrary. In fact, quite the opposite.

Lean into what gives you meaning and joy.

So we’re going to try to unveil those things—and what you can do about them—starting today.

Instead of giving things up, we’re going to talk about how you continue to do what gives you meaning and joy and fulfillment—how you adapt.

We all need to adapt to what we cannot change—and quickly—so that we can succeed, help others succeed, and support the causes we care about.

So first, some context by way of fully clarifying how our perspective needs to shift.

I share all this upsetting reality checking by way of helping you—and me, and anyone listening—really, really, really grab hold of the reality of the changed landscape.

And here’s a story.

Some years ago—probably 10 years ago—I was at a business luncheon, sitting on the dais because I was on the board of the nonprofit organization hosting this. The lunchtime speaker was someone discoursing on the irrefutability of the waves of the stock market.

He had diagrams showing the somewhat regularly recurring patterns—up and down, up and down—like waves of the sea. Sometimes higher, sometimes lower, sometimes a calm period, sometimes a storm. But generally predictable. Navigable. Something you could count on.

Laid out over decades, he presented all this as though it were a fait accompli—a thing that had already happened or been decided—leaving people with no option but to accept it.

Which was fine… except it was utterly wrong.

Wrong because all of his data, stretching back to perhaps the foundation of the U.S. stock market in 1792, was weighted in the past. And that past was radically unlike our present—because that past did not include the internet.

Did not include the simultaneity of communication all across the globe—of everyone, everywhere, having access to all this information and being able to immediately share it and comment on it. Whether you’re a designer-suited stockbroker in Manhattan or a goat herder on the steppes of Mongolia.

True—they have internet access. I double-checked yesterday.

If this presenter had been able to restrict his data sample to just the past 30 years, he’d have seen something very, very different from what he believed.

And here it goes—past 30 years:

• 1995: Dot-com boom.
• 2000: Dot-com bust.
• 2001: September 11.
• Mid-2000s: Massive growth from easy credit.
• Late 2000s: Global financial crisis from collapse due to easy credit.
• 2010s: Recovery and rise of tech giants.
• 2020: Global pandemic.
• 2022: Massive inflation.
• 2025: Economic wars and fractured alliances.

That’s a lot—a lot—of chaos over the past 30 years.

And if you’re a member of Gen Z, it’s all you’ve ever known.

Part of why you don’t trust institutions to protect you—which explains a lot.

This chaos is not going to end anytime soon. I’m sorry—believe me.

We’re just in one of those periods of time—a period of dramatic change.

My mother and her siblings came of age at a time when electricity, the telephone, manned flight, indoor plumbing—and who knows what else—came into play.

Imagine how her people felt, baffled every day by the latest developments… including the Great Depression, polio, and two world wars.

That’s where we are—but on steroids.

I share all this because we should all check our assumptions.

Let’s not assume things. Let’s not count on the return of what we had four years ago—whatever it was.

Let’s think about what we can go get now—what we can do now.

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Topic Number Three: How to Plan for Success Now

So, let’s start by getting a grip on what’s going on.

No, we’re not in an economic recession—at least, not yet.

Consumer spending has stayed about where it was last year. So has Gross Domestic Product.

The Federal Reserve continues to project growth.

The S&P 500 is 10% higher than it was at the same time last year.

The Dow Jones Industrial Average is 7% higher. The NASDAQ is 7% higher.

And we’ve got another 90-day stay on most of the tariffs that people had been unnerved by—including me.

What we’re actually in is turbulence created by massive changes coming from Washington, D.C., and elsewhere in the world.

These changes are creating massive, fast-moving highs and lows—making for a very bumpy ride.

Example:

To bring up the National Endowment for the Arts again—the agency withdrew all its grants after a presidential decree that the agency was going to be shuttered.

This affected nonprofit arts groups across the country.

In Houston alone, those grants totaled $482,500.

It tallies up to millions nationwide.

If your arts organization was counting on those grants—which were awarded in January—you need to make some changes quickly.

And I hope you’re already working on that.

Moreover, the perception of recession may lead us to the reality of having a recession.

So what we believe in here is: Don’t recede.

And we’re going to talk about that in the weeks to come.

If we all think a storm is coming, we will all hunker down.

So—what’s the best thing you can do for your nonprofit organization right now?

It’s this: Prepare a plan that will guide you through whatever weather you might encounter.

A plan that helps you do these six things.

And now we’re getting into these how-to’s, so you might want to grab a pad and a pen.

There are about 20 items here, but they fall into six big buckets.

And again, we’ll drop this onto the show notes on our website.

Bucket Number One: Stabilize Your Finances

Because when you’re under financial duress, you can’t even think straight. So do this first.

• Review and prioritize your spending, focusing on mission-critical activities. If it’s mission-critical, you keep it. If it’s not, maybe it’s contingent.
• Maintain a reserve or a cash buffer. Think in terms of months. How can we do what we need to do for X number of months if revenue drops?
• Diversify your funding. This was part of my advice to that gentleman yesterday. If you’re over-reliant on one form of income—one donor or grant—find something else that could supplement it or take its place. 25 years ago, I was counting on a pledged donation from a board member that never arrived. So I learned that lesson myself.
• Check in on any income stream above 8%. If it provides more than 8% of your revenue, check how secure it is for the next 6 to 12 months. And plan accordingly. Don’t count on it if you don’t think it’s secure.

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Bucket Number Two: Preserve What’s Essential

Now that we’ve stabilized, preserve what’s essential. Because you’ve just cut some things, right? But you’ve got to keep what you absolutely need.

• Protect the products and services that provide your core offering. It’s why people care about you—and it’s important.
• Focus your marketing. Let people know who you are, what you do, what you’re up to, and what changes you’re making. That’s how people find out about you—including the people who could bring more revenue.
• Keep your core talent and support them. Because without them, you can’t do any of this.

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Bucket Number Three: Plan for Trouble

Will there be trouble? Maybe. Best to be prepared.

• Write a contingency plan with two scenarios: What you would do if income dropped 10%, and what you’d do if it dropped 25% or even 50%.
• What are the things you’d cut? How would you shift resources—money, time, focus, personnel—around?
• Implement it if—or when—one of those situations arises.

The people who survive best—even under torture, it turns out—are the people who have a plan for how to get through it. That’s from Good to Great by Jim Collins.

So develop a plan for trouble. Don’t desire trouble. Don’t chase trouble. But if trouble arrives, you’ll be ready.

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Bucket Number Four: Plan for Success

These changes you’re making—you’re going to want to track and evaluate the impact of the changes you make so that you can know what worked and keep doing it. Here at Counterintuity, we made a bunch of changes in the last year and we’ve tracked and evaluated the impact of the changes we’ve made. And we’re pretty happy with a bunch of progress and we’re certainly happy with how we’re providing even better results for a bunch of clients given new learnings that we put into place. So you got to plan for success and you’ve got to implement your plan for success.

• Be ready to demonstrate value to funders now and at any time, no matter what the economy is doing. Here’s what we’re doing and here’s what the impact is.
• Reassess your marketing, messaging, and communications. Tell the world, “Hey, we’re here. Here’s what we do, why it’s important, how you can support it—and why you really should.”

As the saying goes: You can’t cut to grow. Growth requires investment—time, money, and resources. So plan for it.

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Bucket Number Five: Stay Driven

I know we all care a lot about what we’re doing, and we are heads-down working on it. And then despair can creep in.

We all have to silence that little voice that says, “We’re not good enough. This isn’t going to work.”

I don’t know why we all have that voice—but it’s meaningless, and it’s not helpful.

Some organizations are going to succeed—and even grow—during this chaos. Be one of them.

It’s easy to sound defeatist, but hey, others have planned and adapted and made changes and succeeded, set out to be one of them. Frequently, downturns create urgency around issues, which in turn can increase nonprofit support.

And I’ll give you just three examples from the heart-stopping 2008 to 2009 economic crisis that I will never forget. So here are three success stories.

1. Feeding America
   • With food insecurity rising, their core mission became more urgent and visible to the public.
   • They leveraged corporate partnerships with Walmart, Kmart, and General Mills to secure food donations and funding.
   • The organization communicated clearly how donations would help people struggling in the recession, which drove individual and institutional giving. Feeding America not only survived, but grew stronger.
2. Habitat for Humanity—I realize that’s a famous example. We’re gonna get to a smaller one in a moment that may more closely apply to your budget.
   • Foreclosures made affordable housing more urgent and visible. And I certainly myself know people who lost their homes, friends of mine, terrible.
   • Habitat partnered with banks to offload foreclosed properties and expanded through volunteer sweat equity, and local affiliate models, keeping costs low.
     
     So the banks were foreclosing, Habitat scooped up some of those properties, turned them into housing that they could help get people into. That’s pretty responsive. That’s a great example.
     
     
3. The Fresh Air Fund
   • Many families were struggling financially, and the Fund’s focus on providing free summer vacations for children from low-income families was  well received.
   • By emphasizing the life-changing impact to these experiences on children, the organization expanded its donor base and its donations. And I gotta tell you, just reading about this and looking at the pictures makes me well up. I grew up outside in Fresh Air and I can’t imagine what it’s like if you didn’t have that to suddenly go get access to that for the summer. That’s a great story.

So they all adapted, they made some changes, they prioritized what was important, they cut what wasn’t important, they partnered with other agencies, they put out the message of what they did, and all three of those. And I’m sure there are another million examples because there are nine million nonprofits in the US. There’s lots to learn from these, but just the example of taking action should be encouraging. I mean, it just revs me up.

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Bucket Number Six: Bet on the Future

And I gotta tell you, this one gets me really excited. Bet on the future. Explore and write down your big, hairy, audacious goal—your visionary leap, your jaw-dropping accomplishment—the game-changer you could pursue when the time is right.

Always bet on the future.

Economic trends come and go, and every economy has people and organizations who succeed despite the surrounding  atmosphere. I just shared three of them with you.

Your BHAG is the idea that would truly illuminate your mission and make a difference in the world. No matter what, you should steer toward that. Steer toward your big, hairy, audacious goal. The big thing that would make a big impact that you’re going to do when you’re able and tell people about it. After all, hope for the future starts with each of us.

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That’s it for today—this first episode of the new Counterintuity podcast.

Next time, we’re going to share fundraising specifics—real-life how-to’s you can put in place. And we’ll share some success stories.

And then in Episode Three, we’ve got an honest-to-bejebus genius as our guest—one of the smartest thinkers I’ve ever come across—to help us understand how to bend artificial intelligence to our will and come out smiling.

Please join us.

Even just in a recent phone call, I shared with him a little problem I was having. He said, “Do this, this, and this,” and named three resources… and it was slightly life-changing for me—in a really good way.

And also—I want to say—keep doing what you’re doing.

Get through all this.

Work on the issues and causes that we care about.

Make for a better world and a better future.

We need you.

Thank you for what you do.

Keep at it.

Outro: Thanks for listening! How to Market Your Nonprofit is available on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, and wherever you get your podcasts. Please like and follow the show. Visit Counterintuity.com to learn more.