We live in an era of contradictions. On one hand, progressive nonprofits have never been more richly resourced. Foundations, donors, and institutions have poured billions into our ecosystem over the last decade, building out one of the most sophisticated advocacy and organizing infrastructures in history. On the other hand, authoritarian leaders, regimes, and movements have not only survived this period, they have grown stronger. Around the world and here at home, ultra-conservative networks have expanded their base, taken power, and deepened their hold on the political imagination.
This paradox cannot be brushed aside as coincidence. It forces us into a deeper reckoning with ourselves: if we are as strong, strategic, and resourced as we claim, then how is it that authoritarianism has advanced so far under our watch?
We must discern a difficult and unsettling truth: authoritarian regimes, personalities, and movements have not only arisen but gained momentum in the very era when progressive nonprofits have been more abundantly resourced than ever before. This contradiction forces us into profound self-examination. Have we truly done the work we claim? Have we built and expanded a durable base of people, or have we mistaken short-term mobilization for long-term power? Have we invested in organizing that transforms conditions, or have we built institutions more skilled at sustaining themselves than at shifting the world?
If we claim to have grown the base, then we must discern how authoritarianism has been able to flourish alongside us. Too often, we have substituted campaigns for movements, programs for power, and metrics for mass participation. Instead of practicing the discipline and rigor of organizing that demands sacrifice, develops leaders, and expands collective capacity, we have grown into professionalized, homogeneous organizations where staff are centered above the base, comfort is prioritized over conflict, and institutional stability is mistaken for victory.
This is the paradox we must confront: if our sector can grow in size, budget, and visibility while authoritarianism grows stronger, then something at our core is misaligned. Discernment requires us to admit that we may not be organized to defeat authoritarianism, but to coexist with it. And if that is true, then the field must agitate itself toward transformation, away from institutions that preserve themselves, and toward movements that are willing to risk themselves for freedom.
Learning From Reconstruction to Now
Authoritarianism has never advanced simply because its leaders were charismatic or its movements inevitable. It advances when those who oppose it fail to match its discipline, scale, and relentlessness. History makes this plain: from the collapse of Reconstruction in the United States, to the rise of fascism in Europe, to the coups and counterrevolutions that followed independence struggles around the globe, reactionaries have triumphed not only through their own strength but through the inability of democratic and progressive movements to hold their ground and grow.
Take Reconstruction. In the decade after the Civil War, formerly enslaved Black people built schools, held office, and expanded democracy in ways the U.S. had never seen. Their vision and organizing reshaped the South and offered a glimpse of true multiracial democracy. Yet within a generation, those gains were violently dismantled as white supremacists mobilized institutions of power, the police, the courts, state legislatures, and vigilante militias, while stoking racial hatred to justify terror. Northern politicians abandoned the fight, elites chose compromise, and democracy itself was sacrificed to preserve white rule. The lesson is not about any lack of capacity among Black communities, but about the ruthless discipline of their opposition and the willingness of allies to walk away when the fight became costly.
Europe offers another warning. The rise of fascism in the 1920s and 1930s was not inevitable. It grew in the cracks left by liberal governments that failed to meet the needs of their people and progressive movements that were often fragmented, reactive, or too caught up in ideological purism to build broad enough bases. Mussolini and Hitler did not win only because of their charisma; they won because they built organizations that matched scale with relentlessness, while opponents underestimated the threat until it was too late.
Latin America shows the same cycle. From Chile to Guatemala to Brazil, independence and reform movements toppled dictatorships or oligarchies, only to be met with coups and counterrevolutions. Authoritarian rollback succeeded not only because of foreign intervention and domestic elites, but also because progressive movements were too often unprepared for the discipline and institutional power required to hold the terrain once they had won it.
Our moment is no different. Authoritarian forces have been patient, strategic, and relentless in building their base, especially among white working-class, rural, and religious communities. They have steadily shaped narratives, captured institutions, and normalized their worldview. They have played the long game: decades of building evangelical churches into political machines, seeding conservative student groups on campuses, and investing in local talk radio and media ecosystems that hammer the same messages every single day.
Meanwhile, progressive nonprofits have too often been reactive, chasing each new crisis rather than cultivating the disciplined, rooted, long-term organizing that actually shifts the terrain. We mobilize in bursts, after police killings, Supreme Court rulings, or elections, but too rarely sustain that energy into permanent base-building structures. Where the right has built institutions that can weather defeat and keep growing, we have built campaigns that spike in visibility and then fade. The lesson from history is clear: without discipline, scale, and relentlessness, moments of progress collapse into retreats, and authoritarianism fills the vacuum.
Professionalization Without Power
We’re not at war with the nonprofit form, but we have to admit it has shaped us. A steady influx of foundation funding let many groups hire staff, expand programs, and professionalize. It also created perverse incentives. Too often we manage programs instead of growing movements, chase funder priorities over community priorities, and optimize for visibility rather than power.
This didn’t happen overnight. In the 1960s and 1970s, movements were rooted in grassroots, membership-driven organizations: freedom schools, tenant unions, farmworker collectives, student groups, and neighborhood associations. Their power came from people, dues-paying members, mass meetings, and leaders developed out of struggle. By the 1980s and 1990s, as government crackdowns and corporate interests sought to contain that power, philanthropy stepped in to fund “professional” nonprofits. Many were born from the ashes of radical movements, with 501(c)(3) status and foundation grants replacing dues and collective sacrifice as the lifeblood.
That shift changed our DNA. Instead of measuring success by how many new members were organized, we began reporting outputs: how many workshops held, how many leaflets distributed, how many people attended an event. Over time, metrics replaced membership. Funders rewarded efficiency, compliance, and communications polish, criteria that make sense for grant cycles but not for building long-term power. What once was a grassroots ecosystem became what is now called the “nonprofit industrial complex,” a system where philanthropy sets the incentives and organizations bend to meet them.
Over time, staff became the center of gravity instead of the people we claim to organize. We designed for efficiency, not democracy; cultivated expertise, not mass participation. In the process, we drifted away from the discipline of organizing, the conflict, leadership development, and cross-difference capacity-building that actually grows power.
Authoritarianism didn’t flourish in a vacuum. It gained ground while our sector chose comfort over conflict. Professionalization made operations smoother, but it also normalized an internal culture that prioritizes staff stability over the messy work of expanding a living base. Many organizations became homogeneous, safer for insiders than porous to new people.
This isn’t about individual failings; it’s structural drift. Our institutions have become more fluent in funder reports than in power mapping, more committed to HR manuals than to leadership pipelines, more focused on surviving the next grant cycle than on changing the conditions that reproduce authoritarianism.
The result is a sector that looks strong on paper but is brittle in practice: staffed up, well-branded, flush with reports and metrics, but too often disconnected from the deep relational networks that make movements durable. The nonprofit form allowed us to scale programs, but it has too often starved us of the very thing we claim to build: people power.
The Illusion of Progress
The danger is not simply that authoritarianism grows, but that it grows alongside us. That our institutions can expand at the very same time as repression deepens. That we can point to larger budgets, longer staff rosters, polished campaigns, and endless streams of social media impressions as proof of our success, while the ground beneath us is steadily pulled toward authoritarian rule. If this is possible, then we are not resisting authoritarianism, we are adapting to it.
That is the unsettling truth our sector must face: an ecosystem of nonprofits can thrive in parallel with authoritarianism. It can professionalize, fundraise, and build reputations while the actual conditions for people worsen. Our annual reports can look stronger every year while the democratic terrain grows weaker every year. This coexistence is not neutral, it is dangerous. It risks creating a nonprofit infrastructure that is sustainable for itself but irrelevant to the fight for freedom.
Recent history shows this clearly. In 2017, the Women’s March drew millions into the streets in one of the largest single-day protests in U.S. history. Yet because the infrastructure to absorb, train, and organize that energy was thin, much of it dissipated within months. In 2020, the murder of George Floyd sparked the largest wave of racial justice protests in generations. Tens of millions marched, corporations rushed to make statements, and nonprofits received unprecedented donations. And yet, much of that energy was never translated into durable base-building or long-term campaigns. Police budgets have grown, authoritarian sheriffs and governors remain in power, and the window of protest energy closed as quickly as it opened. Climate marches, too, have drawn hundreds of thousands worldwide, but without sustained organizing, they often remain symbolic demonstrations rather than engines of transformation.
We also see this in how many nonprofits approach elections. Some organizations pour millions into voter turnout operations every two years, achieving impressive numbers on paper but leaving no permanent infrastructure in the communities they mobilize. Staff are hired for the cycle, metrics are hit, and then the field disappears until the next election. Others have built powerful digital platforms that can generate mass petitions or viral campaigns in hours, but without a base of members or leaders who own the work, those bursts fade as quickly as they appear. In both cases, the sector mistakes activity for power, visibility for durability.
And let’s be honest: this kind of work has its place. It’s fine for political organizations to operate as turnout shops or digital platforms. But don’t call that a movement. A movement is not just activity, or even visibility, its base, discipline, and durability. And if we blur those lines, we confuse what’s tactical with what’s transformational.
These examples are not failures of passion or commitment. They are failures of infrastructure. Mobilization can ignite imagination, but without disciplined organizing to follow, the fire burns bright and then burns out. What the right has understood, and what we must relearn, is that base-building, leadership pipelines, and institutional durability are what convert moments into movements. Protest can spark change, but only organizing can sustain it.
The question for our field, then, is not whether we are “doing good work.” Good work is not enough. The question is whether we are building the kind of power that can actually defeat authoritarianism and win a multiracial democracy capable of enduring beyond one election cycle, beyond one funding cycle, beyond one generation. If the answer is no, then the survival of our organizations is irrelevant. A thriving nonprofit sector without a thriving democracy is nothing more than a managed decline.
When Optics Replace Power
Discernment cannot end with critique. It must end with transformation. The path forward demands that we discipline ourselves to build beyond staff-centered institutions. That we root our work in base-building, leadership development, and collective struggle strong enough to withstand authoritarian advance. That we stop confusing metrics with power, outputs with outcomes, narrative reach with movement strength.
This will require risk, real risk. Risking the comfort of stable institutions. Risking the security of funder-driven priorities. Risking the homogeneity of professionalized nonprofits in favor of messy, pluralistic, bottom-up movements. Because only movements willing to risk themselves for freedom will be able to defeat authoritarianism.
The consequences of drift are already visible. We have confused visibility with strength, funding with freedom, narrative with power. We hold up social media impressions, budgets, or program outputs as proof of impact, while authoritarian forces quietly consolidate control of legislatures, courts, and culture.
Part of our confusion has been the belief that turning people out to vote is the same thing as building power. Elections matter, they decide who holds office, shape the policy terrain, and can open or close space for organizing, but they are not the same as organizing. Voter mobilization without base-building is a moment. Organizing is what turns electoral cycles into durable movements. Too often, nonprofits claim victory when turnout numbers are high or when a candidate wins, but then fail to do the slow, disciplined work of transforming that energy into membership, leadership pipelines, and campaigns with staying power.
And so we must ask ourselves hard questions:
If our work isn’t leading to a bigger base and real capacity to fight an authoritarian white nationalist regime, then what exactly are we building? A larger budget or staff roster is not the same thing as a stronger movement. If the numbers don’t translate into more people organized, more leaders developed, and more communities prepared to confront repression, then our growth is organizational, not political.
If we keep chasing the easy targets, members who look and think like us, while avoiding the harder work of organizing across differences, then are we really growing power or just building comfort? It is easy to gather like-minded people into homogeneous spaces. But authoritarianism thrives precisely in the communities we write off as “too hard to reach.” If we are not crossing race, class, geography, and ideology, then we are not contesting for the country; we are retreating into enclaves.
If our organizations operate no differently than fly-by-night GOTV shops that show up for an election and disappear, then what makes us any different? A turnout spike in one cycle is not durable power. If we leave no infrastructure behind, no leadership, no ongoing campaigns, no institutions people can call their own, then we are contractors, not organizers.
If every program, campaign, and initiative cannot answer clearly how it contributes to the fight against authoritarianism, then why are we doing it at all? In this moment, when the stakes are nothing less than whether democracy survives, every piece of work must be measured against that horizon. If the answer is unclear, then the work is not strategic, it is busywork.
History offers clear lessons. The Montgomery Bus Boycott was not simply a protest against segregation, it was a 381-day campaign sustained by carpools, church networks, and disciplined community organizing. The March on Washington in 1963 drew hundreds of thousands, but its power came from the organizing of unions, civil rights groups, and churches that had been building for decades. By contrast, more recent waves of protest have often lacked this infrastructure. Without institutions to absorb people into long-term campaigns, the energy of the street dissipates.
Movements require durability, discipline, and sacrifice. Yet too often, our sector elevates efficiency and optics above conflict and risk. We celebrate the image of mass protest without investing in the architecture to sustain it. We measure staff growth instead of base growth. We reward polished campaigns that impress funders more than gritty organizing that actually grows people.
If authoritarianism can rise in the same era when our ecosystem is flush with resources, then “good work” is no longer good enough. The only question that matters is whether we are building the kind of power that can actually stop authoritarianism, and if not, whether we are willing to change enough to do so.
Discernment Demands Transformation
If authoritarianism can rise in the very era when we have been most well-funded, then we cannot escape the conclusion: something fundamental must change. We must discern whether we are building organizations designed to coexist with authoritarianism, or movements disciplined enough to defeat it.
History will not judge us by the budgets we managed or the programs we ran. It will judge us by whether we built the power necessary to keep freedom alive.
History is also unrelenting in its warnings. In Germany during the 1930s, strong unions and social democratic organizations coexisted with the rise of fascism. They had resources, members, and institutions, but too often they chose accommodation, fragmentation, or survival over confrontation. Their infrastructure endured for a time, even as democracy collapsed around them. By the time they realized coexistence was surrender, it was too late.
Contrast this with the South African anti-apartheid struggle. There, movements risked themselves, built broad coalitions across labor, students, churches, and communities, and sustained mass resistance even in the face of brutal repression. They did not build organizations to survive apartheid, they built movements to destroy it. Their discipline and sacrifice carried them through decades of struggle until apartheid itself collapsed. The lesson is clear: coexistence allows authoritarianism to grow stronger; confrontation, however costly, is what makes freedom possible.
Discernment is not despair. Discernment is clarity that demands transformation. If we are serious about defeating authoritarianism, then we must discipline ourselves away from staff-centered nonprofits and back toward base-centered movements. We must measure ourselves not by the size of our budgets but by the depth of our base, not by the survival of our institutions but by the survival of democratic space.
That requires reinvesting in the rigorous, often unglamorous work of organizing: developing leaders, cutting issues, escalating campaigns, and teaching the skills of power-building to a new generation. It requires embracing conflict and sacrifice rather than comfort and stability. And it requires a willingness to risk our institutions themselves if that is what it takes to win.
We cannot afford to confuse purity with power. Sitting out elections because our ideology tells us we are “too pure” for imperfect choices is not resistance, it is surrender. Authoritarianism thrives when we vacate the field. Elections are not salvation, but they are tools: tools to defend democratic space, block authoritarian overreach, and expand what is politically possible.
The same is true of legislative advocacy. Passing bills or blocking harmful ones is not the endgame, but it is accountability, forcing those in office to answer to the people we organize. Every vote, every hearing, every amendment is a chance to measure whether our elected officials deliver on the demands of our communities.
Purity politics can feel righteous in the moment, but without discipline and participation, it leaves authoritarianism uncontested. Power comes from engaging every tool we have, elections, legislative fights, direct action, and base-building, and wielding them with strategy and clarity. Our vision remains uncompromised, but the path requires us to act inside the world as it is, not just the world as we wish it to be.
The pathway is not abstract. We know what practices actually build durable power:
Dues-based membership models that tie organizations’ survival directly to the people they serve, not the preferences of funders.
Leadership pipelines that intentionally develop new organizers out of every campaign, protest, and election, so energy isn’t lost but multiplied.
Deep rural and cross-racial organizing that confronts authoritarianism where it is strongest, rather than retreating into enclaves that look like us.
Issue campaigns that cut winnable fights, producing tangible victories that grow confidence and capacity over time.
Because if our organizations can thrive while authoritarianism thrives, then we are not resisting it, we are adapting to it. And adaptation in the face of authoritarianism is not survival. It is surrender.
Not budgets. Not staff rosters. Not impressions. Power. That is the only measure history will remember.