Someone Has to Give a Damn

By Kristy Klein Davis

We’ve all heard it: in a perfect world, most nonprofits wouldn’t need to exist. Hunger gone, disease cured, injustice addressed. We say it with a kind of pride, and I think that’s because there’s something quietly beautiful about it. An organization built around the hope that one day it can become unnecessary. The goal is not survival for survival’s sake. The goal is that the need itself disappears.

The more I think about it, the more I believe that nonprofits are not just organizations. They are evidence that people care enough to act on behalf of something larger than themselves. Every day I have the privilege of working alongside nonprofit leaders who are tackling problems many others have decided are too hard or are someone else’s responsibility. Nonprofit leaders are among the most creative, persistent, and hopeful people I know.

To be fair, the social care sector has not always been what I’m describing. It has often carried paternalism alongside generosity and solidarity. The history is complicated and sometimes ugly, with institutions built to help sometimes causing harm. And yet I find myself wanting to believe in the better of it, in the version where someone shows up not because it serves them, but because they decided that another person’s wellbeing was their concern.

The thing I admire about nonprofits isn’t their organizational form, it’s what their existence reveals about our society. Nonprofits feel less like the thing itself and more like evidence that at least some people still believe that our lives are connected and that they are responsible for something beyond themselves.

This is why I find myself with a question I can’t quite shake. When we say the nonprofit sector is in crisis (and many people are saying exactly that) what exactly is in crisis? Nonprofit leaders are navigating real financial pressures, demand is rising, funding is uncertain, and expectations continue to grow. But I can’t help wondering whether calling this a nonprofit crisis unintentionally locates both the problem and the solution within the nonprofit sector itself.

After all, nonprofits don’t create the need they respond to nor do they create the belief that someone should respond to it. The food pantry did not create food insecurity. The housing nonprofit did not create the housing crisis. The domestic violence shelter did not create domestic violence. They emerge when people decide that the wellbeing of others is a responsibility we all share. No single nonprofit can carry that responsibility alone. They were never meant to.

The responses proposed when nonprofits come under strain have been fairly consistent: fund more, protect capacity, increase payout rates, help organizations weather the storm. I don’t disagree with any of that, but I keep wondering whether we’re leaping to the most immediate answer rather than asking the deeper question. We debate payout rates, donor behavior, and organizational sustainability, but those conversations keep us focused on the institutions already carrying the responsibility. We continue asking more and more of nonprofits and those who already support them without asking how we invite more people, institutions, and sectors into the shared work of caring for one another. What if the strain is trying to tell us something about what’s happening outside the nonprofit sector? That’s a different and less comfortable question.

If nonprofits are increasingly strained, what does that tell us about the society around them? For much of history, responsibility for one another has moved between institutions (churches, governments, neighbors, families), finding new forms as old ones weakened. The institutions change but the question underneath never does. What do we owe one another?

There is an uncomfortable tension in the current moment. Nonprofits are increasingly asked to address some of society’s most persistent challenges while the institutions and collective commitments that make their work possible face growing skepticism. Whatever the source of that skepticism, it raises a question worth considering: what happens when fewer people view responsibility for one another as a shared endeavor?

Maybe that is what makes the current conversation feel incomplete. If the nonprofit sector is under strain, it may be worth asking whether the strain extends beyond nonprofit organizations themselves.

When we say “the nonprofit sector is in crisis,” are we talking about nonprofit organizations or are we talking about something larger? A weakening sense that the wellbeing of others is a shared concern? A shrinking number of places where responsibility for one another resides?

At their core, nonprofits cannot exist unless someone gives a damn.

Given that, the question of how many nonprofits survive the current moment is undoubtedly important. But I wonder if there is a deeper question underneath it. Is responsibility for one another still something we expect to be broadly shared and, if not, where do we imagine that responsibility now resides?

Partnership is not just a value we name. It is a practice that requires believing that the thoughts and ideas of the person across the table have worth. That is harder than it sounds. It might also be the whole thing.