In an Era of Constant Change, Nonprofits Must Foster Learning Cultures

The nonprofit sector hasn’t had a “normal” year in a long time. The systemic challenges of the recent past have been constant and existential: political upheaval, attacks on organizations and communities, a global pandemic, financial uncertainty, fractured trust in institutions, and more.

Too often, leaders default to survival mode, as if each challenge is a temporary storm we just need to wait out. But as we’ve seen, storms will keep coming. And if we treat every crisis as an outlier, we miss the bigger lesson: We need to stop planning for calm seas and start building ships that can steer through the waves.

Recently I worked with a large nonprofit that built its strategic plan around an expectation of public funding and saw firsthand what happens when leaders assume disruptions will pass rather than factoring them into their long-term approach.

The funding seemed certain, until it wasn’t, for a variety of complex reasons. Leaders had trouble pivoting to multiple fundraising sources and instead focused their energy on “getting back to normal,” awaiting public funding to flow as they hoped.

Unfortunately, because their strategic plan was built around the expected funding and never accounted for uncertainty, their programming declined and they experienced a great deal of staff turnover. However, there is still time to turn this crisis into an opportunity if the organization can evolve and adapt to the reality of change.

Culture isn’t just about “staff appreciation” or keeping morale high. Culture is about making an organization adaptable, resilient, and engaged so it can thrive.

So, what does it mean to lead when volatility is the baseline?

After decades of working with nonprofits, foundations, and social entrepreneurs, I’ve found that culture—not operations, partnerships, or resources—is the biggest differentiator between teams that sink and those that swim when the water gets rough. Organizations need agile strategies and operations, but culture is the critical infrastructure that determines whether your organization can develop and execute that agility.

Culture isn’t just about “staff appreciation” or keeping morale high. Culture is about making an organization adaptable, resilient, and engaged so it can thrive. That’s only possible when culture is a core strategic priority, not an afterthought when resources or time allow.

The Shift from an Outcomes Culture to a Learning Culture

One of the most powerful leadership tools is intentionally building a culture that actively fosters learning, values experimentation, and celebrates insights gained along the way—even when they don’t yield immediate results.

An outcomes-focused culture tracks performance based primarily on results: hitting targets, meeting deadlines, and achieving predetermined metrics. Recognition flows to those who deliver measurable success, often without regard for the processes and learning that occurred along the way.

While outcomes are obviously important, fixating on outcomes almost guarantees you won’t achieve them. It leads to small, safe bets and discourages the bold moves and meaningful risks that fuel innovation, leaving organizations ill-equipped to adapt when the next storm hits and they need more than small, safe bets.

In contrast, learning-focused cultures become assets during uncertain times by encouraging thoughtful, bold experimentation, whether or not it produces the intended result.

Four Steps to Build a Learning Culture

When learning from both successes and setbacks is part of your organization’s DNA, teams are motivated to preserve what’s working while exploring novel approaches and opportunities, thus building their capacity for an endless string of good outcomes. Below are four steps to consider in moving your organization closer to a learning culture.

1. Be Purposeful in Your Learning
   Learning should not be for its own sake but rather must advance mission-aligned goals that increase effectiveness and impact. Leaders who foster purposeful, mission-aligned experimentation that grants permission to fail create organizations that don’t just survive uncertainty but emerge stronger by discovering new viable approaches.

Here’s an example of what not to do: When the pandemic disrupted a food pantry’s in-person soup kitchen model, the team developed multiple ideas for how to pivot to help the community. They lost their core focus and launched numerous experiments at once that had nothing to do with their core model of delivering food effectively to the community (such as supplemental income and job training). It was hard to recover from such dramatic pivots all at once and they lost their identity, effectiveness, and critical role in the community.

Instead, focused experimentation should have tested different methods to deliver food to convenient locations at optimal times, helped community members understand how to access these new resources, and maintained connection with those being served. The path to food security during the pandemic required purposeful adaptation, not an unfocused, scattershot approach.

2. Foster Learning at All Levels
   If experimentation is solely top-down, we miss invaluable insights from frontline staff and teams who are closest to the challenges and often spot opportunities first. For organizations to be fueled by learning, leaders must provide training, resources, and real autonomy for teams to test new approaches; they must foster trust, critical thinking, and a safe environment where staff are invited to bring their boldest ideas to the table, to name both successes and failures, and then to act on new ideas.

Some of our collaborative work with school districts illustrates this approach: The superintendent of one small public school district was not open to new ideas from the team unless they had a senior role, a certain pay grade, and an idea with a minimal risk of failure. This school district is struggling to adapt its systems to meet current needs.

Transparency and vulnerability cost a grand total of zero dollars.

In contrast, the superintendent of a much larger and more complex school district developed numerous methods to invite everyone, at all levels, to bring their wildest, half-baked ideas to the table in a safe and encouraging all-team meeting. They decide together which idea is worth trying first and workshop that idea so they can run with it. The teachers, principals, and support staff who work with families every day see problems and solutions the superintendent won’t see, including how to handle current challenges for immigrant families. The superintendent understands this and has fostered an approach where everyone sees it as their role to share innovative ideas to make their schools better.

3. Lead with Transparency and Trust
   Radical transparency is nonnegotiable for learning and creativity. Leaders must be clear about priorities so that everyone understands what remains true, what’s no longer relevant, and what questions still need answers. Team members need to be direct about what they tried and offer their honest take about why it did or didn’t work.

When leaders model transparency and vulnerability, including owning challenges or missteps, they foster credibility, honest communication, and collective problem-solving.

Transparency and vulnerability cost a grand total of zero dollars, can be implemented immediately, and are key to fostering learning-focused, vibrant teams. The question isn’t why do it—it’s why haven’t we already started.

Currently, many foundation CEOs are trying to help their grantees navigate rumors around pending federal executive orders, while also considering their own reputational risk. Those who are navigating this successfully are not getting mired in fear and uncertainty—which they may feel—but are communicating with their board and staff what they know and don’t know.

For example, that grantees are stressed  and potentially about to face unprecedented funding and operational roadblocks, even asthe need for support and funding in communities is increasing dramatically; ; foundation staff are demoralized by the news cycle and want to do more for nonprofits; and the resources of the foundation might not be as flexible as initially thought, but that doesn’t change the commitment to direct more money into the community.

Teams that experience this transparency better understand the problems they are facing and the options available to them and are therefore able to move much more quickly to problem-solving.

4. Inspire with Possibility
   We didn’t step into this sector just to undo damage. We chose it because we believe in what’s possible. How do we reconnect with that sense of possibility? How do we maintain a vision for something greater than simply avoiding loss?

I believe it starts with creating spaces where expansive thinking can thrive, where we can step beyond damage control and find exciting paths forward.

This came up in a recent retreat I facilitated with a group of incredible nonprofit leaders who were striving for resilience in these tough times but had become burned out and overwhelmed. To them, resilience was synonymous with perseverance, as though all they had to do was keep pushing forward, hoping better times were just around the next bend. These are all brilliant humans, but they couldn’t have been more wrong.

Resilience isn’t about slogging through; it is about having the courage, creativity and optimism —especially in hard times—to look up from the day-to-day and think expansively about what truly matters. I watched leaders have that “aha” moment during the retreat and we explored how they can use that thinking to inspire their teams. To truly be leaders in times of uncertainty, they must find and share this path forward.

Culture Isn’t a Luxury

Some leaders may still hesitate: “This kind of culture building and experimentation sounds good in theory, but we’re navigating urgent challenges and we just don’t have time or money for it.”

To those leaders: If this is your perspective, buckle up for an endless cycle of crisis response.

Successful organizations initially formed because a social entrepreneur once challenged the status quo for the sake of social good, and they still exist today because they have been able to pivot and adapt when the world demanded it. But those leaders who abandon the bold thinking that created their organization risk falling behind.

Amid instability, a strong culture helps teams stay grounded, anticipate challenges, pivot quickly, and feel valued and engaged even under pressure.

Viewing this type of culture building as merely a tool for the current challenge misses its deeper purpose. A learning-focused culture isn’t about finding short-term stability or short-term innovation. It’s about building the muscles to navigate not just one crisis, but all the crises and uncertainty that will follow. That uncertainty is perhaps the only thing that is certain, so let’s be ready for it.