The disruption that reshaped nonprofits 18 months ago is now reaching private and corporate philanthropy. Here’s what the data shows, and what one major funder is doing about it.
If you’re a funder right now, you may feel like you’re making decisions in the dark. The data that should be informing your strategy is incomplete, the ground is still shifting, and the organizations you’ve funded for years are absorbing shocks you may not fully see yet.
In July 2026, CSR Communications hosted Safeguarding Impact — a three-part webinar series for foundations and corporate philanthropy teams navigating the current uncertainty and unpredictability. In Session 1, Nancy Murphy, CEO of CSR Communications, opened with a candid look at what’s actually happening across the nonprofit landscape. Lee Fabiaschi, VP and Director of Learning Communities at Ares Charitable Foundation, joined for a conversation about what one funder has done in response.
Here’s what the session covered and what every funder should be thinking about before year-end.
The Numbers Are Worse Than Most Funders Realize
- 25% drop in open grant funds available to nonprofits since 2024 (GrantExec; Lyons, 2026)
- $425B in federal funds canceled or frozen (United Way Worldwide; Lyons, 2026)
- 2 in 3 nonprofits anticipate increased demand for services in the next 12 months (Tomasko et al., Nonprofit Finance Fund, 2025)
- 2× more nonprofits now planning layoffs — from 3% to 7% in early 2025 (Building Movement Project, 2025)
These figures describe nonprofit service providers, the organizations doing direct community work. But as Nancy Murphy noted in Session 1, the disruption doesn’t stop there.
Private philanthropy is already feeling it: grantees under pressure, portfolios at risk, and internal buy-in for strategy changes harder to secure than it was 18 months ago. Corporate philanthropy hasn’t absorbed the full force yet, but the grantee partners, volunteer opportunities, and community programs companies depend on are already strained.
The window for acting strategically is closing. The organizations choosing to adapt now will have more options than the ones waiting for clarity that isn’t coming.
Why Philanthropy Stays the Same Even When Change Is Necessary
One of the most valuable frameworks from Session 1 was Nancy’s diagnosis of why strategy shifts stall in philanthropy, even when leaders know they need to move. She named three specific barriers:
1. Waiting for clarity that isn’t coming
Funders delay decisions, hoping the environment will stabilize. It hasn’t, and it won’t. Not in a timeframe that leaves room for strategic action. Every week of delay narrows options. The organizations adapting now are building new approaches while others are still waiting to see what happens.
2. Giving in to the gravitational pull of the status quo
Most foundations are, by nature, small-”c” conservative. Limited external accountability means limited pressure to change. Leaders may genuinely want to do things differently, but overcoming institutional inertia requires significant energy, influence, and commitment. A crisis can be the catalyst, but as Nancy pointed out, the changes that emerged from the pandemic largely disappeared once the immediate pressure lifted. Sustained change requires more than urgency.
3. Applying wrong-horizon thinking
Funders tend to operate in two timeframes: the immediate (what gap needs filling right now) and the long-term (the decade-long strategy). The messy middle, the 18-to-36-month horizon where the real impact of last year’s funding cuts and policy changes resides, gets less attention than it deserves. The impact of the current disruption will reshape the social sector for years. Organizations that plan only for the old normal, or only for the immediate crisis, will be caught off guard by what’s still coming.
What One Major Funder Did: Ares Charitable Foundation
In Session 1, Lee Fabiaschi shared honest, specific, practitioner-level detail about the Ares Foundation approach.
Ares Charitable Foundation launched its first formal grant cycle in 2021 and celebrated its fifth anniversary in 2026. The foundation operates globally, supports between six and twelve active partnerships per year, and offers multi-year, project-based funding focused on removing barriers to economic mobility.
In 2025, Ares launched a grantee learning community. A structured, ongoing support cohort for grantees that goes beyond financial resources. The decision came from a simple question: we offer multi-year funding, and we have these partnerships working across the globe. Could we do more?
What the learning community looks like
Year one (2025) was structured around a content arc covering measurement, learning, evaluation, and storytelling. These were topics that emerged from direct surveys and focus groups with current and former grantees. Ares partnered with CSR Communications to facilitate workshops, including one focused on partnership evaluation to help grantees think through where their efforts would have the greatest impact.
Lee’s honest reflection was that they built a buffet. Everyone got something, but few got exactly what they needed.
Year two (2026) looks different. The foundation repositioned itself as a container rather than the classroom. An in-person multi-day convening at the start of the year set a completely different tone. Grantees had more influence over the program’s direction. Ares added a $500 professional development credit for individual leaders and a $5,000 per-organization capacity-building credit. Of the nonprofits in the 2026 cohort, 50% chose to use that credit for enterprise-wide AI adoption.
What This Means for Funders Right Now
Three questions to take back to your team:
Which of your grantees are most exposed?
Map your portfolio against the sectors and geographies most affected by the current disruption. DEI organizations, government-adjacent nonprofits, and organizations serving communities facing compounding economic stress are at highest risk. You need to know which of your partners are in which category.
What does ‘protecting impact’ mean when you can’t protect everything?
Loyalty to a grantee and loyalty to the mission those grants are meant to advance are not always the same thing. Getting explicit about which one guides your decisions before the next grant cycle is one of the most important leadership conversations you can have right now.
Are you planning for a recovery that takes longer than you think?
Even if federal funding is restored, the disruption is not over. Organizations have already cut staff, reduced services, and lost community trust. The grantees you care about may need different support than they did before, and they may need it for longer than your current planning horizon accounts for.
Watch the Full Session 1 Replay
This article covers the core frameworks and key findings from Session 1 of Safeguarding Impact. The full conversation with Lee Fabiaschi goes deeper on several topics not fully covered here:
- The specific workshop and consulting model Ares built with CSR Communication, and key lessons from implementation to date
- How Ares navigated board alignment and internal buy-in when strategy needed to shift
- The resource development lab Ares is running with grantees to build a co-created toolkit on sustainable fundraising
- Lee’s full answer on what she’d tell other funders facing the same decisions she faced
About the Safeguarding Impact Series
This article recaps Session 1 of Safeguarding Impact, a free three-part webinar series from CSR for foundations and corporate philanthropy teams navigating the current uncertainty and unpredictability.
- Session 1 — What’s Actually Happening: The data behind the disruption, why philanthropy stays the same even when change is necessary, and a practitioner conversation with Lee Fabiaschi of Ares Charitable Foundation.
- Session 2 — Making Change by Choice: How to move internal stakeholders, grantees, and community partners through a strategy shift — with Nancy Murphy and Moyra Knight, former president of Astellas Global Health Foundation.
- Session 3 — From Insight to Action: What the data isn’t showing yet, a framework for assessing grantee portfolio health, and three decisions to make before year-end.
