This Moment Is Not for the Faint of Heart

The Imperative for Shifting Narratives, Systems, and the Role of Philanthropy

The world today is both vast and deeply interconnected with rapidly evolving economic, environmental, and social dynamics playing off each other in ways that have the potential to move us in both positive and negative directions. Five core domains consistently emerged from my conversations – the economy, environment, government, technology, and culture. Within and between each of these, reinforcing dynamics are at play, such as growing wealth inequality, accelerating climate change, emergence of generative AI, rising political polarization, and fragmentation of community. These dynamics are creating a negative spiral that is reducing job security, increasing political tribalism, undercutting journalism as the watchdog of democracy, and inculcating a lack of trust in institutions. Core public systems such as health, education, immigration, and criminal justice are universally viewed as broken, and fundamental human rights are increasingly at risk, as evidenced by recent laws negatively affecting the autonomy of women, immigrants, and queer communities.

Yet, significant positive trends are emerging that create real reasons for optimism – the percentage of people around the globe living in extreme poverty is down by almost two-thirds in the last 20 years, the clean energy revolution is rapidly reducing our reliance on fossil fuels, advances in science and human health from generative AI are revolutionizing our understanding of science and biology, and an unprecedented generational wealth transfer underway that is, for the first time, putting trillions of dollars in the hands of women worldwide. Africa is on the rise, with a population that is increasingly well educated, entrepreneurial and capable of solving problems and creating their own markets. Philanthropy is changing as well, making bigger financial commitments and increasingly hiring from and working in partnership with the diverse communities they serve, investing collaboratively to move faster and with less overhead. And the newest generation of changemakers is no longer willing to wait for a better tomorrow. They are shifting organizational culture now, intentionally building joy and selfcare into the hard work of creating positive social change.

While many of these changes, positive and negative, have been building for decades, COVID played an undeniably adverse catalytic role, first by creating a global experience of fear and uncertainty, and then by laying bare the entrenched inequities in our society as those with the least had to bear the highest risk. For the first time, safety and security became a ubiquitous issue, laying the groundwork for leaders seeking to foment fear to advance their political agendas and creating higher expectations on employers and institutions to protect and care for their people. The resulting polarization further eroded community and divided families. Racial justice became a priority, from George Floyd’s murder to the rise in Asian hate, and then experienced a significant legal and cultural backlash. These changes increased isolation, fomented fear, broke down trust in institutions, and fundamentally disrupted the patterns that provide the basis of daily life. All of this, together with the global instability brought on by Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, the Gaza conflict, and the rise of authoritarianism around the world, makes this moment dangerously fraught.

It is now that we really need to step back and understand the interdependencies in our economic, social, and environmental systems. While capitalism creates an efficient market that drives innovation, our current approach is overly anchored on maximizing financial capital in a way that is extractive of people and the planet, both of which are now suffering as a result. Algorithms hack the human brain to keep people online longer, creating greater isolation and feeding the mental health crisis. In an effort to increase shelf life, food companies have replaced nutritious ingredients with chemicals and flavors that mimic real food but do not nourish us. At a planetary level, the extraction of natural resources from fossil fuels to precious minerals threatens the regenerative ecosystems that provide stable weather, clean air, and healthy soil. We need a new way of articulating the promise and potential of capitalism that serves people and the planet, rather than harming them. This will require guardrails and safety nets but does not mean the end of capitalism, only that it needs to be re-envisioned, much as capitalism in the Gilded Age had to have limitations in order to usher in the prosperity of the next 100+ years.

This is not an idea that is in vogue, but it will not be long before people realize current policies are not going to yield the outcomes they seek and the pendulum starts to swing back. We need to be ready. To get there, we need artists, social entrepreneurs, activists, and leaders to seed our imagination and help us see beyond the immediate challenges and limitations of our old systems to the possibilities in front of us. We need to recognize the inherent capacity and capability in our nonprofit sector and start making bets at the scale of the issues. We need to shift the narrative and expand the ideas of what is possible, investing in both a diversity of storytellers and mediums as well as the infrastructure to ensure those stories reach their audience. And we need philanthropy to step up to the moment, both individually and as a field, moving away from a scarcity mentality and wealth management orientation, embracing the concept of “enoughness,” and committing more aggressively to putting philanthropic dollars to work, rather than measuring a philanthropy’s significance by the size of its assets.

In the weeks ahead, I will lay out the interconnected challenges before us, highlight the implications for individuals and organizations, and remind us of the many reasons to be optimistic. I will then go deep on what needs to change in philanthropy to rise to this moment, and the critical role of storytelling and narrative shift to help us get there. We are in a time of profound transformation, where the shape of the future is uncertain. We have everything we need to make the transition to a system that supports the wellbeing of people and the planet but we are surrounded by all the wrong narratives, framing a very different reality. Much depends on our moral imagination, our stubborn optimism, and to paraphrase Christina Figueres, our willingness to be gritty, determined and relentless in pursuit of the better world we know is possible for all.

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