Nonprofit Notebook

Summer Solstice 2026

“Summertime, and the livin’…” well, it’s not so easy. But I guess that was the whole point, then as now: the bluesy lullaby is meant to reassure against a world that’s far from sure.

♫ Summertime (Ella Fitzgerald)

This summer notebook didn’t come easy. As I’ve sought to weave together observations and ideas that might have some value to nonprofits and those of us stewarding them, I’ve been hard pressed to focus my attention, more impatient, and less interested in the seemingly endless dialog and analysis—very much including my own.

The world is burning. And some of us are stuck in merely naming the discomfort, unsure how to quench the fire. Others fall back on old, comfortably mundane conversations, as though business as usual isn’t what got us here in the first place. Meanwhile, the cognitive dissonance deepens, as we plan summer barbecues while watching our voting rights get stripped away and authoritarianism tighten its grip.

But one theme that has broken through as something real and true, is about our humanity. My past notebooks have given a lot of word count to the topic of AI, and I think the artificial intelligence crisis (and I do view it as a crisis because it accelerates the consolidation of power of a few over the many) calls us to dive deeply into what it means to be imperfectly, messily, authentically flesh-and-bone human. Not just “human,” but the soft animals we really are.

♫ Like Animals (BTS)

The following pages lift up various ways I see colleagues reminding us that we are human animals doing this work, for each other and for our planet, together.

Feature Topics:

• Season Salty

  There’s something about the intensity of a summer solstice that, rather than offering us the cover of winter’s hibernation, challenges us to expose ourselves and show up in full bloom. Summer is an extreme. It is expectant. But it also invites us, too, to be expectant.

• Out of Season / In Season / Unseasonal

  Ruminating on “out of season” as it feels like so many of us are trying to flourish, or even survive, in conditions that we’re not suited to or adapted for. And finding resolve to flip the script, reframe, and take part in imagining systems that are suited to or adapted to what WE need. 

• We Dream in the Dark

  It’s dark. But rather than stay trapped in fear or despair, what if we adjusted our senses, learned to see—to vision—differently? We vision in the dark all the time. We call it dreaming. And we have waking dreams, visions for alternative futures. 

  We have beautiful dreams.

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