Note: This post was originally published in October 2017. We have updated and republished it in response to recent enthusiasm around the network principles.
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“Relationship is the fundamental truth of this world of appearance.”
– Tagore
Over the past several years of supporting networks for social change, we at IISC have been constantly evolving our understanding of what is new and different when we call something a network, as opposed to a coalition, collaborative or alliance. On the surface, much can look the same, and one might also say that coalitions, collaboratives and alliances are simply different forms of networks. While this is true, it is also the case that not every collaborative form maximizes network effects, including small world reach, rapid dissemination, adaptability, resilience, and system change. In this regard, experience shows that a big difference maker is when participants in a network (or an organization, for that matter) embrace new ways of seeing, thinking, and doing.
The following revised list continues to evolve as our own practice and understanding does, and it speaks to a number of network principles to guide thinking and action:
1. Adaptability instead of control
Thinking in terms of networks means leading with an interest in adaptation over time. Given the complexity of the situations we are often called to help address, it is difficult for any actor or “leader” to know exactly what must be done, much less keep a diverse and decentralized social structure moving in lockstep. Iterative design and adaptive strategy serve us better.
2. Contribution before credentials
You may have heard the story about the custodial staff person in a shoe company who anonymously submitted his idea for a new shoe design during a company-wide contest, and won. Or the homeschooled teenager who contributed tremendously helpful information on nitrogen pollution to an open and crowdsourced call for research. “Expertise” and seniority can serve as a bottleneck and buzzkill in many organizations, where ego gets in the way of excellence and vital experience. If we are looking for new and better thinking, it should not matter from whence it comes.
“Your generosity is more important than your perfection.”
-Seth Godin
3. Giving first, not taking
You’ll see it when you create it. Often, people are drawn to networks by the promise of abundance, but stand back and wait for something to happen. The key to generativity is generosity, to being first to make a humble offering – of ideas, truth, courage, attention, and other resources. We often fear that there isn’t enough to go around. Yet that scarcity becomes self-fulfilling when we hold back our experiences, gifts, and capacity instead of sharing them generously. For more on the importance of giving, see Adam Grant’s work.
4. Resilience and redundancy instead of rock stardom
You see it on sports teams all the time. When the star player goes down, if the team is built around said star, so goes the team. Resilient networks are built upon redundancy of function and a richness of interconnections, so that if one node goes away, the network can adjust and continue its work.
5. Diversity and divergence rather than the usual suspects and forced agreement
New thinking comes from the meeting of different fields, experience, and perspectives. Preaching to the choir gets us the same old (and tired) hymn. Innovation is not the result of dictating solutions or choosing from existing options. It comes from expanding possibilities and moving beyond convergent thinking toward a more creative, design-oriented approach. And network action is not about everyone engaging in one large collective effort. It is about cooperation, connection, and many people contributing in parallel ways.
6. Intricacy and flow, not bottlenecks and hoarding
Networks are key to supporting life and liveliness – life is after all, a network. A constant threat to aliveness is rigidity, hoarding, and exclusion. Economically, we are seeing plenty of evidence of this, pushing us towards what Jane Jacobs once called socio-economic “necrosis.” With hyper-concentration of resources, patterns of exclusion, and growing inequality, we see the entire system put at risk. The antidote is robust, diversified local networks that are connected to other such networks, which are collectively able to move resources of many kinds fluidly from and to all parts of the social body. Keep reaching out, keep interconnecting, keep things flowing.
As with any complex living system, when a group of people comes together, we cannot always know what it is that they will create. The whole is greater than the sum of the parts. Vying for the predictable means short-changing ourselves of new possibilities, which is one of the great promises of networks. Furthermore, network effects and change stem from many different experiments rather than looking for the single best answer.
8. Shift focus from core to the periphery
As living entities, networks are defined by the nature and quality of their edges. The core of the network tends to be made up of those who are most connected to others in the network, as well as interested in and engaged in the work (albeit in some cases through exclusionary dynamics of power and privilege). Those on the edge, or periphery, may be less connected and engaged, and also bring considerable strength, to the extent that they provide lessons about adaptation, a willingness and ability to play in different spaces, and have connections to other important domains. In many cases, there is strength in following the lead of the margins. As Ceasar McDowell says:
“If you take a tent and you stake it far out at the margins … the middle is always covered. And the further out you stake it the stronger the structure you get. And why is that? Because in our systems and our social systems the people at the margins are actually living with the failures of the systems. And they are creating adaptive solutions to them. So when we design to take care of them we build stronger systems for everyone.”
“Network theory suggests that what a system becomes emerges from the complex, responsive relationships of its members, continuously developing in communication.”
– Esko Kilpi
9. From working in isolation to working with others and/or out loud
I spoke to a leader of an amazing organization in Pennsylvania who was bemoaning the situation where a number of his newer staff thought that “getting the job done” meant paying attention to the tasks on their list and working on them in an independent and efficient way. What they were not doing was involving others, communicating about what they were working on, where they were in their process and what they were learning as a result. One network mantra I have heard is “Never work alone.” Or to put a more positive spin on it, “Work in good company.” Why? Because our thinking and ideas are made better by others. Furthermore, sharing our work is crucial since communication is the lifeblood of networks (and networked organizations) if they are to be intelligently adaptive and resilient to changing and challenging times. Even if we are physically alone in our workspaces, we can show and share our work in helpful ways, to ourselves and others, using virtual tools.
10. From “Who’s the Leader?” to “We’re the Leaders!”
Leadership can be a confusing and fraught concept. In certain quarters there is still glorification of and deference given to heroic individuals, with little recognition of the interdependent nature of, well, everything! The late Mila N. Baker made the case that the individualized and command-and-control leadership lexicon is grossly insufficient for our changing, complex, and interconnected world. She promoted the use of peer-to-peer (P2P) IT architectures as models for thinking about leadership and how people organize themselves. In P2P arrangements, everyone becomes a generative and recipient node in a network, and has easy access to other nodes. This embodiment of leadership is stymied by rigid hierarchies, fixed positional authority, and purely transactional mindsets (without regard to underlying and authentic relationships). Flipping this script means seeking arrangements where everyone leads and follows, trust and reciprocity are fundamental values, and thriving is linked to connection.
What might the integration of these principles do to the way you lead and do your work? What opportunities and outcomes might be created?
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The Interaction Institute for Social Change is seeking an Interim President to support our organization through a pivotal transitional period which we estimate to be 12 to 18 months, subject to agreement between the Interim President and the Board of Directors.
As the Interim President, you will be responsible for tending to four major priorities: Transition Support and Guidance, Organizational Culture and Wellbeing, Revenue and Strategy Development and External Relationships, and Governance and Board Collaboration.
While participating in the day-to-day activities, this role will support the organization’s overall sense of stability and vision by guiding us through this transitional period and collaboratively developing the recommendations and changes needed to move the organization into its next chapter. This role will speak to a person who is energized by supporting the staff of a mission-driven organization in the advancement of racial equity and social justice, specifically with an eye toward organizational change, network building, and strategy development.
This position is offered as a full-time role, including the competitive compensation and benefits package offered to all staff: a 4-day workweek, virtual office equipment and utility reimbursement, a generous PTO package, 100% medical, dental, vision coverage for individual employees, spouses, domestic partners and dependents, and more.
The Transition
Our current President has served us unwaveringly for 10 years, deepening our commitment to shared leadership and social change, both internally and with our clients and partners. As we continue much of the transformative work that we’ve done as an organization for the last 30 years, we also see this moment as a time to expand our impact, growth, and financial strategies. The Interim President will be a critical stabilizing and supportive force, working with our staff and Board of Directors to help IISC shape our strategic initiatives, deepen our shared leadership, and lead us through this next chapter until we bring in a new President in 2027.
The Details
Location: 100% Remote
Start Date: Mid-July to Early-August
Salary Range: $131,700 – $151,600
Travel: Variable, up to two days a month on average
Reports To: Chair of the Board of Directors, serves as voting member of the Board of Directors
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In our last blog, we explored the importance of clarifying your North Star: the purpose, values, and vision that anchor your organization in times of uncertainty. That clarity is essential. But clarity alone is not enough.
When predictions are shaky and change is constant, nonprofit leaders are navigating conditions that feel more complex than ever:
Shifting funding and political landscapes
Increasing demand for services
Workforce burnout and capacity constraints
Rapid political, social, and technological change
Traditional strategic planning, built on stability and predictability, no longer meets this moment. This is why we are seeing organizations shift toward strategic direction-setting: an approach where the direction is clear, but the path remains flexible
Within strategic direction setting:
North Star = Direction (what stays constant)
Scenario Planning = Conditions (what may change)
Strategies = How we move (what adapts)
And within this approach, scenario planning is a critical practice. But the question remains: How do we stay purposeful when the conditions around us are constantly shifting?
Why Scenario Planning Matters
In times of uncertainty, our ability to radically imagine multiple futures becomes essential. Not only to stay grounded and hopeful, but also to prepare for changing conditions while holding onto our North Star.
Scenario planning is one of the most useful tools for doing exactly that.
Our colleagues at Building Movement Project, in their 2026 Brief on Solidarity: Lessons from a Year of Crisis and Change, noted that organizations can no longer afford to treat scenario planning as an occasional exercise. Increasingly, it is becoming a necessary practice for preparing, protecting, and adapting in these times.
At its core, scenario planning is the process of imagining and exploring multiple potential futures based on a range of uncertainties. Organizations often try to plan for one expected future, but in times of uncertainty, it is more useful to prepare for multiple possible futures while staying grounded in your core purpose, values, and North Star.
Scenario planning helps us imagine and shape the future we want, rather than only reacting to the future we get.
Ask: What do we know, what can we imagine, and what remains uncertain? How can we hold the future lightly as we plan and move with purpose?
This is what makes scenario planning for multiple futures such a powerful component of strategic direction setting. It helps organizations maintain both clarity and flexibility.
Making Scenario Planning Real
Scenario planning does not require predicting the future perfectly. Instead, it invites organizations to reflect on a range of possible conditions and consider how they might respond while staying grounded in their values, purpose, and North Star.
This can look like:
Identifying the external forces most likely to shape your work
Exploring a few plausible future scenarios
Reflecting on what opportunities, risks, and decisions each scenario raises
Identifying strategies and priorities that would remain important across multiple futures
Organizations might ask:
What happens if funding decreases significantly?
What if community needs increase faster than capacity?
What political, technological, or social shifts could affect our strategy?
What remains essential no matter the conditions?
The goal is not to predict exactly what will happen. The goal is to build readiness, adaptability, and shared understanding so organizations can move with greater clarity.
What Scenario Planning Makes Possible
The scenario planning process provides organizations with an opportunity to:
Stay Grounded in your North Star across different possible futures. This process clarifies what is core to your organization’s purpose and what cannot be compromised, even when strategies need to shift.
Move from Prediction to Preparation. In moments like these, with shifting conditions, scenario planning helps provide clear direction while remaining flexible to changing circumstances. Instead of trying to predict exactly what will happen, organizations can focus on building readiness and flexibility for changing conditions.
Strengthen Decision-Making by reflecting on what decision makes sense across multiple futures and conditions. This leads to resilient long-term decisions, rather than reacting only to immediate pressures.
Build Organizational Nimbleness & Emergence. By anticipating change and responding early, organizations can become more adaptive, identify risks sooner, and better recognize emerging opportunities.
Deepen Strategic Thinking & Collaboration across the organization. Scenario planning encourages organizations to move beyond timelines, tasks, and fixed long-term plans to reflect on current realities, risks, opportunities, possibilities, and strategic actions. In doing so, organizations strengthen their capacity for shared sense-making, collaborative leadership, and collective action.
No matter the scenarios you explore. We don’t need to have all aspects certain to move forward. You need clarity of purpose and readiness to adapt.
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After ten years at the Interaction Institute for Social Change, I will be transitioning to my next opportunity. Leading IISC has been one of the most powerful and evolutionary experiences of my career, and even though it’s hard to leave, I am so proud of what we have built together and what this transition makes possible.
How We Have Built Together
Decades ago, I met Renae Gray, a Black woman activist and group facilitator, who sat cross-legged in a chair, raised her hands to the group, and animatedly led us in a conversation about strategy and organizing. She wasn’t the voice in the room; she was the container through which we opened our hearts and processed the harsh realities of our failing justice campaigns. That experience shaped how I came to understand leadership and facilitation – it’s about creating the conditions for others to step fully into their own clarity and power.
That thread carried me through my early experiences with facilitation, through learning from leaders like Valerie Batts of VISIONS, Inc., and eventually to IISC: as a participant, partner, and later as a member of the team. When IISC faced financial challenges and a leadership transition, I stepped in as Interim President, and together we navigated a period that required steadiness and trust from all of us.
When I was formally hired as President, we anchored our work in racial equity as a central driver of collaboration, strengthened our financial position, navigated COVID, and responded to a growing demand for racial justice. We leaned into shared leadership and deepened our work with clients, partners, and networks. We received $2 million without asking and used it in service of our mission and community care.
Transitions as a Strength
At IISC, we have learned that transitions are a natural part of work. As Miriam Messinger, our former Director of Practice, wrote in Passing the Torch: What It Means to Transition with Care, leadership changes areoften treated as crises, when they can instead be opportunities to build trust, deepen relationships, and grow collective capacity.
Over more than 30 years, the IISC team has developed practices for leading through uncertainty and organizational transitions. Shared leadership, collaboration, and love are part of how the organization operates and continues to grow.
In July, I will step into a new role as Director of Transformation at the W.K. Kellogg Foundation, where I will work with the team to advance its networked organization grounded in racial equity, leadership, and community.
Collective Courage
I have been shaped by you and will carry you with me into this position and my future.
I have deep trust in the people carrying forward IISC’s work. New leadership is taking shape, fresh ideas are emerging, and IISC is helping communities at every level cultivate collective courage, love, and vibrant networks.
Stand tall in these times for collaboration, for racial equity, and never forget how powerful you are, and we are together.
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In a recent conversation with a group of people about my passion for and interest in “energy systems science,” I briefly mentioned Richard Barrett, who has done a lot of work on organizational values over the years. In a recent Substack post, he talked about a vital “flow” that is lacking from many organizations – love.
This is something we bring up a lot in our work with partners. Love is one facet of our collaborative change lens (see image below), and vital for collaborative efforts to ensure long-term human and socio-ecological thriving.
IISC Collaborative Change Lens
The late Chilean systems biologist Humberto Maturana has written how critical love is to human systems. In fact, he has gone so far as to say that it is the only emotion that significantly increases human intelligence. Clinical psychologist Barbara Frederickson at the University of North Carolina has also looked at how love can do everything from increase our peripheral vision to reduce our biases when it comes to people who appear different from us on the surface of things.
But back to Barrett’s post – at one point he states:
“Most systems were not designed for the level of complexity they now face. Love, as capacity, was never built explicitly into their architecture. This work begins not with slogans, but with attention. With noticing where presence withdraws under pressure. With asking what becomes unsayable — and why.”
Here he is alluding to the second of four pillars of energy systems science – “resilient structures” – which supports the first pillar – “regenerative flows.” These structures can be tangible and intangible, including structures of agreements and cultural norms, policies and procedures, physical design and layout of a space, and institutional structures for distributing resources.
Clearly, what we are seeing and feeling in this country and around the globe is evidence of structures that have not let love, in all of its forms (see image above from Roman Krznaric’s book, The Wonderbox: Curious Histories of How to Live) getting to certain people and places. And because everything is connected, this impacts other people and places (there really is no “other,” or outside).
“Injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere.”
This was recently conveyed to me in a different way by partners we support in Oklahoma around cultural renewal in the state. One person said, “People need to understand that what happens here in Oklahoma is not just about Oklahoma.” I have heard similar sentiments expressed by those with whom we work in the Mississippi Delta and in California’s San Joaquin Valley.
Looking at the state of our world, I am moved to ask this:
If love truly does make us more intelligent (and we at IISC think and feel that it does), not to mention more safe, secure and satisfied, what will it take to make the work of creating structures that support its flow that much more important?
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I recently read a LinkedIn post on the concept of “Trojan mice” that my former IISC colleague Gibran Rivera brought into our midst several years ago. The idea is that small, unassuming experiments can bypass the defenses of rigid systems and create change more effectively than a single large “Trojan Horse.”
This immediately brought to mind the Three Horizons framework, especially what it calls “Horizon 2” (see image below). The core idea of Three Horizons is that systemic change unfolds as dominant systems (Horizon 1) decline and more regenerative alternatives (Horizon 3) take root. Between these sits Horizon 2, which I understand as innovations in the form of relatively small experiments that draw from the spirit of Horizon 3 and can help break the iron hold of Horizon 1.
What’s been helpful about the past few years of unraveling in this country is seeing this dynamic a bit more clearly in many networked collaborative change efforts that we at IISC support. If Horizon 2 is where the future first becomes visible, then our task is to notice, nurture, and connect these experiments. Here are three examples:
Bringing More Good Fire to the Land
For years now, we’ve supported both the Fire Adapted Communities Learning Network and the Indigenous Peoples Burning Network (IPBN) as they have worked to bring “good fire” back to the land. This includes proactive ‘low-intensity’ or ‘prescribed’ burns, known as ‘cultural burns’ in Indigenous contexts, that build resilience in forests and grasslands. You can find more information here about that practice. At a recent IPBN gathering we helped facilitate, great news was shared about how major state funding is now going to tribes in California to establish learning centers focused on prescribed burns as an alternative to the dominant “fire suppression” system (Horizon 1). In other words, the growth of prescribed burns (Horizon 2) is helping regenerative land stewardship (Horizon 3) move toward the mainstream.
Farming Local Solutions to Hunger
Another example comes from northern Michigan, where we support a collaborative network focused on hunger. For about 30 years, the Northwest Food Coalition has worked to ensure that food pantries in the region have enough food for those experiencing food insecurity. This reflects the dominant (Horizon 1) “emergency food” system at work. In recent years, through efforts to ensure that the food provided is not just caloric but also nutritious, a program known as Farm to Neighbor was created to source fresh produce from nearby farms to make available at food pantries. This is a clear Horizon 2 example. It advances a more resilient vision in which local farms help ensure no one goes hungry while supporting growers of non-commodity, more Earth-friendly crops (Horizon 3).
Being the Better World We Want to See
A last example comes from numerous multi-organizational change efforts that we support. In all of these efforts, we encourage the practice of the notion that “how we meet and treat each other” can be a taste of the better future we know we need and want. We are now seeing evidence of overly transactional conversations and relationships (Horizon 1) giving way to more “care and wellbeing-centered” practices (Horizon 2) that can seed new cultures and systems (Horizon 3) where people are not living in poverty, unhoused, neglected, or without the supports they need (and deserve) to contribute fully to community life.
As we continue our work in 2026, I will keep in mind and heart how we can intentionally weave connections across Horizon 2 experiments, so they reinforce one another. When small innovations remain isolated, they can be dismissed. When they are connected, they begin to form patterns, and patterns can become movements.
The invitation, then, is not to wait for Horizon 3 to arrive fully formed. It is to notice where it is already flickering into view through small, innovative experiments. It is to nurture those efforts, connect them, and protect them long enough for their logic to take root.
Systemic change rarely announces itself with a single dramatic shift. More often, it spreads gradually, through relationships, practice, and persistence. The work before us is to tend those second-horizon sparks until they become the future.
Some work is bigger than any one organization. It grows through relationships, shared leadership, and the care of a network. The Food Solutions New England (FSNE) 21-Day Racial Equity Habit Building Challenge has always been that kind of work. Each year, thousands of people step into a shared practice of learning, reflecting, and taking action together.
Beginning this year, Interaction Institute for Social Change (IISC) will serve as the new host of the Challenge, in partnership with the University of Vermont Institute for Agroecology (IFA) and KAS Consulting, led by long-time Challenge co-leader Karen Spiller.
IISC is stepping into this role as a longtime partner, not a new one. We have been connected to the Challenge since it first launched in 2015 through FSNE. That year, IISC’s Curtis Ogden, along with Karen Spiller and Johanna Rosen of Equity Trust, took work that was originally created by Dr. Eddie Moore, Jr. of The Privilege Institute, and Debbie Irving, author of Waking Up White, and developed an online food system-focused version of the 21-Day Racial Equity Habit-Building Challenge. Over the past twelve years, that version has grown into a nationally and internationally recognized learning experience, bringing together thousands of individuals and hundreds of organizations each year.
Evolving Through a Network, Grounded in Continuity
As of July 1, 2025, FSNE transitioned from its longtime institutional home at the University of New Hampshire into a new partnership with the University of Vermont Institute for Agroecology. This transition reflects something that has always been true about this work: that strength lives in the network itself, which is bigger than any single organization or institution. The relationships, commitments, and shared purpose continue even as structures evolve.
Hosting the Challenge here at IISC feels like a natural continuation of that shared stewardship. The collaboration, trust, and values that shaped the Challenge from the start remain at the center of what comes next.
For some, the current political climate has made racial equity work feel more scrutinized, exhausting, or difficult to advance publicly. Many organizations are navigating uncertainty about how to continue this work in increasingly constrained environments, and some may feel cautious about participating in spaces focused on racial equity learning.
At the same time, we are seeing many people lean in more deeply. We are hearing from leaders, organizers, practitioners, and community members who are looking for places to stay grounded, learn in community, and reconnect to why this work matters. The Challenge is designed to hold space for both of these realities. It offers an accessible, reflective, and community-rooted way to continue learning together.
What the Challenge Offers
For 21 days, participants receive daily emails with curated resources, carefully crafted reflection prompts, and invitations to deepen understanding and to engage in concrete practice. Some engage individually, while others participate as teams or organizations. Many return year after year because the Challenge becomes both a learning opportunity and a sustaining practice that deepens their sense of purpose, connection, and possibility.
Now entering its 12th year, the Challenge remains open to anyone looking to strengthen their racial equity practice and work more generally for a just world.
Registration opens March 5, 2026, and the Challenge will run from April 20 through May 10.
While the Challenge has historically been free, registration will now be $21 for 21 days. This small fee helps support the coordination, curation, and stewardship that allow this learning community to continue growing while staying accessible to participants.
The FSNE 21-Day Racial Equity Habit-Building Challenge continues to be shaped by the communities, partners, and participants who have carried it forward since 2015. We feel honored to help steward this next chapter alongside IFA, KAS Consulting, and the broader FSNE network.
The invitation is open to anyone who wants to learn, reflect, and take action in community with others working toward a more equitable and just food system and society. Save the date for March 5 when registration opens here. We hope you’ll join us!
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In 2020, the world had shut down, and George Floyd’s murder had sparked a global “racial reckoning.” Nonprofit organizations rushed to release statements about racial justice, boards scrambled to diversify their leadership, and suddenly, Black and brown women were being elevated into executive director and CEO roles at an unprecedented rate.
But behind the public commitments and DEI statements was a different story. These newly appointed leaders were calling IISC, exhausted and isolated, because they were inheriting organizations deeply embedded in racism, with fragile budgets and boards that didn’t understand or trust their leadership styles. They were expected to repair harm, transform systems, and lead boldly – all while navigating inadequate resources and limited support. Our movements cannot survive without these leaders, and yet far too many were and still are leaving.
Inside IISC, a group of Black and brown women began talking and recognized what was happening. These leaders didn’t need another technical training; rather, they needed space to exhale, to speak honestly, to be affirmed rather than questioned. They needed room to reset, reflect, and rebuild confidence in who they already were.
Out of those conversations, the first cohort was born. And today, that work continues as Gathering to Rise, now open to Black, Indigenous, Latine, Arab, Middle Eastern, North African, Asian, and Pacific Islander women and gender-expansive leaders.
Building Space During Hard Times
Beginning in 2020, IISC launched a leadership cohort specifically for women of color executive directors and CEOs, made possible through partnerships with the Boston Foundation and Boston Women’s Fund. Across three cohorts through 2023, 45 women of color leaders participated in two online cohorts during the pandemic and one in-person.
Facilitated by Kelly Frances Bates and Aba Taylor, and enriched with coaching from IISC affiliates Adeola Oredola, Eugenia Acuña, Andrea Nagel, and nisha purushotham, the program was intentionally designed to be different from traditional leadership development. Participants weren’t expected to perform professionalism or leave parts of themselves behind; instead, space was created for humanity, honesty, and rest. Leaders gathered in ways that felt embodied and relational, sharing openly about what leadership was costing them and what it was offering them.
Through a blend of coaching, online and in-person cohort sessions, and small “sister pods” for deeper connection, the program explicitly affirmed culturally grounded leadership styles rather than pressuring participants to conform to dominant norms. Leaders spoke about growing confidence and power, setting boundaries, and feeling less alone than they had in years. One participant shared that the program had saved their life during a period of intense stress.
At the time, there were very few programs designed specifically for BIPOC women leaders through a liberatory lens. Applications exceeded capacity in every cohort.
Where the early cohorts asked how leaders could sustain themselves before burnout set in, today’s context feels different. Many leaders are already carrying years of accumulated exhaustion, so the question has shifted to: how do we recover, reconnect, and continue without losing ourselves?
Carrying the Lineage Forward
Gathering to Rise is not a replica of the original cohorts; it’s shaped by this moment while maintaining clear continuity. Adeola Oredola and nisha purushotham, who served as coaches and advisors to the original pilots, are now stewarding this next chapter, bringing deep connection to the lineage of care and relational leadership that defined the early programs. C. Payal Sharma, an IISC Affiliate Consultant/Trainer, and Amy Casso, a Senior Associate at IISC, were also integral to iterating and evolving the offering, helping ensure it remains responsive, grounded, and true to its purpose.
The current cohort expands the original vision, now welcoming Black, Indigenous, Latine, Arab, Middle Eastern, North African, Asian, and Pacific Islander women and gender-expansive leaders. We’re carrying forward: a space centered on care rather than performance, the integration of personal and leadership transformation, coaching as a core element, community over competition, the affirmation of culturally grounded leadership styles, and an honest space for grief, joy, exhaustion, and imagination.
This current version also responds directly to where we are now, centering ancestral wisdom, radical imagination, liberatory practice, and collective leadership at a time when old systems are unraveling.
It’s intentionally built first for an online experience – a choice rooted in access. Online participation allows caregivers, parents, people with disabilities, leaders with limited travel budgets, and those balancing demanding workloads to engage fully.
An Ongoing Commitment
This work has always been grounded in real need. We’re continuing because when leaders are supported in culturally grounded, relational, and affirming spaces, they’re more likely to stay connected to their work, communities, and sense of purpose. Rather than trying to preserve a program, we’re trying to keep our people going.
Gathering to Rise stands on the shoulders of what came before. It carries forward a simple intention: to help leaders reconnect with their gifts, strengthen their capacity to navigate change, and ensure that those who carry so much for our movements don’t have to carry it alone.
If you’re interested in learning more or being notified about future cohorts, please sign up for updates. If you’re a funder, partner, or ally, we welcome conversations about how we might collectively sustain and expand spaces like this over the long term. Get in touch with us.
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So many groups, organizations, and networks that we at Interaction Institute for Social Change supported in 2025 struggled with capacity and focus. So much has been coming at all of us that it can feel difficult to do anything more than respond to the momentary needs.
In an effort to help people stay grounded and strategic as they responded to funding cuts, legal challenges, hunger and housing needs, and physical threats, and to rise a bit off the “dance floor” to have a “balcony” perspective, we have found a few things helpful.
This is not an exhaustive list, but it speaks to some of what we are seeing as fundamentals for navigating ahead:
• Continue to create space for grounding and embodied practices to prevent nervous systems from constantly firing.
• Create opportunities for people to share what they are feeling, for real, as a way of moving intense emotion through their bodies so that it is not stuck, looping, and draining them.
• Bring in the so-called “Eisenhower Matrix” to conversations, asking people to consider where “urgency” and “importance” meet, and when they fall into the habit of responding to every little unimportant thing as if it is a crisis. Encourage them to think about doing more in the important and non-urgent quadrant.
• Bring the “Impact Matrix” to conversations, and ask people to consider the correlation between effort and impact. Ideally, we should be conserving as much energy as possible in these times and looking for opportunities where less effort can yield more impact, while ramping down what requires a lot of energy with little to show for it.
• Invite people to find even brief moments for strategic reflection as they navigate various kinds of real crises. An example of this is work I did last year with a regional food security network as it responded to the federal SNAP cuts. As this amazing coalition organized itself in rapid response mode, I provided a shared document that people could access on their laptops and phones with columns for people to note: (1) what they were learning about both needs and opportunities “out there”, (2) what they were experiencing as strengths of their network, and (3) where they were seeing gaps in and needs for strengthening the network.
There is a lot that will continue to ripple through systems as they unravel and as we iterate our way into the better. Along with practices for “transitional hygiene,” staying focused, strategic, and collaborative will be our collective superpower.
What have you found helpful in keeping eyes and efforts on what matters most?
If your organization, network, or partnership is navigating similar terrain and could use support in creating space for reflection, strengthening collaboration, or sharpening strategy, we’re here. Reach out to explore how we might partner with you in this season.
Image Description: Illustration of a hand holding a lit match, with a small red-orange flame against a warm gradient background of orange and gold. By Ubaid E. Alyafizi via Unsplash.
This year, I’m having an especially hard time saying “Happy New Year” given all that has transpired in just the past three weeks. The list would take up an entire post of its own, but I’ll name the bombing in Nigeria, the military-interevention-called-law-enforcement-action to capture of Nicolas Maduro and Cilia Flores and threats against Columbia and Mexico in a jingoistic revival of the Monroe Doctrine, threats to take Greenland, the murder of Renee Nicole Good and subsequent lies about it, and symbolic actions like renaming the Kennedy Center and the proposal to put the president’s face on US currency. Are you exhausted yet?!
“Recognize that we are already living under an authoritarian regime.” This is not just toxic, polarized politics as usual, and the solutions will have to go well beyond winning seats in Congress in 2026 or the White House in 2028. Among other things, there are institutions and norms to build and rebuild, and hearts and minds to shift and inspire. She reminds us that authoritarianism is not coming; it’s already here. The murder of Renee Nicole Good and the brazen lies about the situation by the president and his minions give more evidence to that fact, on top of all the other mess of the past two weeks alone.
If you’re not convinced, just reflect on all the Trump regime has done to consolidate presidential power and use government institutions to enact retribution and silence dissent, dismantle institutions and norms, upend alliances, exit international institutions, vilify public and civil society efforts to advance equity, diversity, and inclusion, accelerate gerrymandering in an attempt to further consolidate power, strong-arm, threaten, and use military power against leaders around the world, and use symbolic actions to deepen a cult of personality.
“Be louder.” “Articulate the harm that is being done.” Communicate effectively so that people believe that “democracy can deliver.” Be authentic and trustworthy. She reminds us that the authoritarians are intentional about repeating lies so often that they become accepted as truth. We’ve got to keep telling the truth, in clear and compelling ways, even if we don’t see an immediate response. And, she reminds us that more voters sat out the 2024 presidential election (almost 90 million) than voted for the winner (a little over 77 million). There are so many people who need to hear a compelling message about a vision of a better world and the power they have to help create it!
Part of this is being loud about the wins. In a communications landscape that features bad news so prominently, we need to develop the discipline to tell the stories of progress. Here are just a few other reflections on recent progress.
Ordinary people are coming out in larger and larger numbers to protect democracy and to bear witness to aggressive immigration enforcement actions and support their immigrant neighbors.
Several foundation CEOs created United in Advance with the theme that what happens to one of us happens to all of us.
More Black women are being elected to office at all levels of government, reminding us “that representation isn’t symbolic. It’s structural. It’s policy-shaping. It’s democracy-strengthening. And it requires all of us, from the halls of Congress to local organizing meetings to keep building together.”
Find your lane and get busy. “Remember, we don’t have to do everything. You know Everything, Everywhere, All at once. Fantastic name for a movie. Terrible mission statement, but we can all do Something Somewhere Soon.” I love that turn of phrase as an antidote to furious, exhausting effort. Increasingly, we are coming to understand that exhausting ourselves isn’t good for us or for our movements.
I’m on many email and action alert lists and receive requests almost daily to take action on a wide range of issues. Sometimes it’s exhausting, but the good news is that there are a LOT of people doing a LOT of things to block and build. If you’re not sure where to put your precious time and energy, check out networks like MoveOn, 50501, No Kings, Healthcare Not Warfare, Democracy Docket, 18 Million Rising, Native Organizers Alliance Action Fund, Indivisible, Working Families Party, to name just a few. And, these readings could help with some specific action steps to get you started.
And, no matter what lane you’re in, check out Timothy Snyder’s On Tyranny: Twenty Lessons from the Twentieth Century for lessons that can help us move forward. You’ve probably heard some of the lessons – like “don’t obey in advance” – even if you haven’t seen this book.
I’d add a few final bits of encouragement from IISC.
Collaborate and strengthen networks. In addition to finding your lane, find ways to connect with folks in other lanes. This could be connecting across issue areas, demographic or geographic communities, or action strategies. This is a moment to deepen and strengthen the collaborative ties that bind and build both the skills and infrastructure to move forward together, even when we don’t agree on everything.
Keep love at the center of it all. Love is the strongest force we have for positive social change. This love isn’t a sentimental feeling. It’s a deep commitment to building a society and institutions that embody shared values. Check out PolicyLink’s A Revolution of the Soul: To realize the unfulfilled promise of our democracy as one where we can all thrive, we must commit to developing an individual and collective soul that can love all. And remember the words of Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., written from a Birmingham jail. “Injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere. We are caught in an inescapable network of mutuality, tied in a single garment of destiny. Whatever affects one directly affects all indirectly. ” Let’s commit and recommit to caring for our own spirits and for one another as if our lives depended on it, because they do.
In the year to come, may we each do our part to effectively guide people to clearer understanding, deeper resolve, more strategic action, compelling visions of a just, equitable, and sustainable future, and meaningful relationships that sustain our individual collective souls. And may we remain open, grounded, and welcoming to fellow travelers, new and old.
Image Description: An abstract illustration of a teal human silhouette against a dark background filled with flowing pink, orange, and white lines, along with scattered stars and circular shapes. By Gemma Evans via Unsplash.
“Network intelligence is the ability to learn from a diverse group of connections. Wherever you work, look beyond your walls: there are more smart people outside than inside your organization.”
– Reid Hoffman (digital strategist)
2025 has been one for the record books. So many shocks to so many systems, including most nonprofit organizations in this country. Sudden cuts and changes in funding flows, threatening policies, toxic and unstable political leadership, economic uncertainties, culture clashes, literal fires and floods…all resulting in physical and mental health challenges, staffing shortages, and ongoing fatigue teetering towards burnout. We have definitely seen and felt it in our own organization.
In times like these, even finding basic stability can feel unclear. We have written in other posts about the crucial nature of leadership practices that center on care and well-being (see blog here). Those are certainly foundational, and alongside them, we continue to emphasize the importance of leaning into and cultivating strong networks. Networks are a source of resilience, resource-sharing, extended capacity, creativity, and mutual support. They remind us that no one has to navigate uncertainty alone.
What Networks Make Possible When Conditions Are Hard
We know the power of nurturing connections to keep our energy going and flowing. Sometimes that looks like turning to people beyond our organizational walls to be seen and heard, share honestly how we are feeling, and perhaps commiserate. In one place-based network we helped to launch and now co-steward, a community of practice for executive directors has become a crucial space to unburden and not feel so alone.
In another network we have supported on and off for a decade, we have seen how like-minded program directors can mentor one another around practice and innovation. Bringing in perspectives from other organizations and communities can feel like a breath of fresh air – one that can help us see things differently, spark new ideas, and increase energy and enthusiasm.We just recently witnessed this at a national gathering of this network, where a series of “spark talks” about different initiatives happening around the country got people talking excitedly about possibilities, which they carried home with them.
In a multi-state watershed network, we have seen how shared capacity can stabilize the whole ecosystem. Organizations take turns leading based on bandwidth and hand off stewardship when they need a pause. Knowledge-sharing across the network, from grant opportunities to policy updates to new technologies, has become essential for groups trying to stay grounded amid constant change.
We are also seeing more organizations that have needed to shrink explore shared infrastructure with other organizations, from co-locating office space to pooling administrative support. Some ecosystems are even asking a bigger question: What work is each organization best positioned to hold right now? While the losses in these cases are real, there is an upside, as “doing what you do best and connecting to the rest” can support the creation of diverse and interconnected ecosystems, which are inherently more resilient.
Steps Leaders Can Take Now
Whether you are already part of a larger network or starting to build one, nonprofit leaders can begin cultivating the benefits of collective power by:
Keep looking beyond your organizational walls
Map the larger ecosystem of which you are a part
Identify peers and mentors with whom you might connect
Consider where you might let go in the name of doing what you do best
Gauge where you have excess capacity to share with others in your ecosystem, and let them know
Meet with others to discuss where there are collaborative efficiencies to be gained through joint staffing, shared back-office resources, use of technology, and peer-to-peer exchanges
Encourage funders to support convenings/collaborative conversations and invest in stronger ecosystems
In a time when certainty is scarce, networks offer something steadier: collective possibility.
Where might you reach outward, even in a small way, to strengthen the web that can hold you, your team, and your community through what comes next?
Notes from Race Forward’s Just Narratives for Multiracial Solidarity 2025
Image Description: An illustration of a person with brown skin and long dark hair against a yellow background. A cloud-filled sky bursts through the middle of their face as if the space is torn open, revealing blue sky and white swirling clouds bordered by black night sky with stars. By Mariana Cuesta via Unsplash.
Years ago, in my first nonprofit communications role, a colleague asked me why I was shaping my work around what the system allowed (what I thought was “realistic”), instead of imagining a system that actually served us. That question changed everything for me.
At Race Forward’s Just Narratives for Multiracial Solidarity 2025, it felt like the whole convening was grappling with that same tension: What possibilities are we leaving behind because we’ve accepted the limits we were handed? If harmful systems were imagined into existence, what could happen if imagined something better?
Throughout panels, performances, research sessions, and even late-night conversations, imagination wasn’t framed as a soft skill. It was treated as political power, and one we need to take seriously if we want to build something better.
Imagination is the Starting Point
The opening panel reminded us that pointing out what’s broken is only step one. Movements can’t grow without a shared picture of what comes next. Fear can ignite urgency, but it rarely sustains people. It shrinks our sense of who belongs and narrows what feels achievable.
Hope, on the other hand, builds the kind of community that lasts. It expands our sense of belonging, creates room for collaboration, strengthens trust, and helps people stay in the work through long periods of uncertainty. And choosing hope doesn’t mean we just ignore the compounding crises we’re in – it means recognizing that hope requires action, discipline, and a willingness to stick with the work even when progress is slow.
Monica Roa from Puentes put it plainly: “The world is indeed shit, and we can choose to compost it together.” The circumstances are tough, but we are not powerless. And if harmful systems were imagined into existence, then new systems can also be imagined.
Later, a Palestinian dabke performance from Canaan Wellspring reinforced that imagination can also be embodied. Culture, rhythm, and collective movement are forms of political storytelling.
Nikko Viquiera from Race Forward added a grounding point: imagination without action is just delusion. Naming and posting aren’t enough – dreams require steps.
Infrastructure Shapes What Imagination Can Actually Do
Rinku Sen from Narrative Initiative grounded the conversation by discussing infrastructure – not in an abstract policy sense, but in terms of what allows imagination to become reality. We at IISC wrote about the importance of infrastructure a few months ago here. Infrastructure is not only organizations or reports. It’s people’s stories, their capacity, their confidence, their relationships. It’s whether everyday people (not only professionals) have what they need to share narratives that matter.
Jennifer Ng’andu from the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation added that infrastructure also includes trust, support for leaders who are under-resourced or targeted, and the relational glue that keeps movements going.
Anna Castro from the Transgender Law Center reminded us that infrastructure isn’t just the bones, it’s the joints. It’s what makes movement possible. And she pointed out that the South has been living with disinvestment long before national headlines caught up. Southern organizers have had to imagine new solutions out of necessity, and there’s a lot to learn from that.
Together, these points made something clear: imagination is powerful, but it needs structure. Without infrastructure, imagination never makes it off the page.
The Hope Gap: When People Support Change but Don’t Believe It’s Possible
One of the clearest connections between imagination and political power came from folks I deeply admire: the BLIS Collective. Their workshop introduced the Hope Gap, the distance between what people support and what they believe is achievable.
Their research shows major gaps in belief:
76% of Black Americans support reparations, but only 21.5% believe it can realistically happen.
80% of Indigenous people support Land Back, but only 19% believe it’s possible.
This pattern extends across many bold policies. People want transformative solutions, but decades of disinvestment, backlash, and political messaging have convinced many that big changes are unrealistic. When people don’t believe change is possible, they disengage or lower their expectations. The Hope Gap isn’t just a barrier to action, but a crisis in political imagination.
The BLIS research is ongoing, so instead of presenting final answers, their workshop taught us how to identify Hope Gaps in our own issue areas. We worked collectively to explore narratives that invite participation rather than resignation.
My biggest takeaway was this: we don’t have to start from scratch. We can learn from what already exists. We can amplify the wins, from reparations efforts to LandBack victories, so they feel possible, repeatable, and real. When we lift up these examples, we normalize the idea that what we imagine together can take root.
Imagination Grows Through Community
Outside the formal sessions, the theme of imagination showed up again in the way people gathered. I spent time tending to old and new relationships, eating and dancing together, laughing through a spontaneous mini-makeover session. At one point, nearly everyone said some version of, “This is why we come.”
These moments truly were the heart of the gathering. They confirmed that narrative work, hope-building, and movement strategy grow through connection, the kind you build by showing up, sharing space, and remembering that people are the reason this work moves at all.
ALOK’s Call to Choose Humanity Over Convention
ALOK Vaid-Menon’s brilliant keynote tied the theme together. They asked why our sector continues to choose convention over humanity. They reminded the audience that our values come from the people who have held and supported us through our lives.
Their central point was that all justice work is connected. Trans justice, racial justice, climate justice, gender justice, disability justice – these are not separate fights. When we act like they are, we weaken all of them. And there are systems intentionally built to keep them separate.
ALOK also named the funder-industrial complex’s role in encouraging fragmentation, but insisted that collaboration is where our movements gain power. We shouldn’t need to justify why justice movements are linked. We should care because people matter.
What I’m Taking With Me
Imagination is political power
Action gives imagination meaning
Infrastructure makes imagination possible
Relationships make imagination sustainable
Hope must be intentionally built, protected, and nurtured
It is not enough to critique the systems we live in. Just like we need better messaging, we also need better imagination to actively build alternatives. And we need the conditions that allow people to believe in what they already want for the world. If fear built the systems we’re fighting, imagination can replace them.
Take a moment to ask yourself and your team:
What possibilities have we dismissed because we assumed they weren’t realistic?
Start naming them, imagining them, and then start building the infrastructure that makes them real.
