Today’s geopolitical landscape is increasingly complex, fragile, and disruptive. It is forcing every sector to continually adjust and adapt. While governments shift foreign policy strategies and businesses reorganize their operations, nonprofits are caught in the crosshairs of a constantly changing environment—with extremely limited resources.

These organizations are vastly different in the issues they address and the scale at which they operate, but I am struck more by their similarities than their differences. In each meeting, I heard the same three challenges:

  1. Cultivating donors to maintain core operations
  2. Working in a country that discouraged a thriving civil society
  3. Managing the scope of their work given the interconnectedness of social and environmental issues

While the need for unrestricted funding and scope management plague every nonprofit, not all operating environments are the same. Local politics and regulations can have a considerable impact on the progress of community organizations. Whether it is responding to bureaucratic registration processes or building funding pipelines in places where donors lack financial incentives to give, the hurdles are plentiful. And in all of these scenarios, community leaders are forced to adapt. They largely depend on unrestricted funding to pay for unexpected legal fees, replace stolen goods, or reimagine a program structure to ensure their work continues.

When the geopolitical and economic landscapes are always changing, so are the needs of nonprofits working tirelessly to support their communities amidst the instability.

Read the full article about unrestricted funding by Kristina Joss at GlobalGiving.