July 8, 2028
This blog is based on the interview TAI had with Oyebisi B. Oluseyi (Nigeria Network of NGOs) and the podcast TAI and ECNL facilitated with the participation of Ana Toskic (Partners Serbia), Anna Isichko (CEDEM Ukraine), Tania Sanchez (Ford Foundation), Nina Madsen (Mapping Adaptation Project), Grace Maingi (Waiving Resilience Kenya), Gabriela Bucher (Fund for Global Human Rights) in April and May 2026.
The principal call to action from these conversations is that philanthropy needs to move from transactional funding to relational support.
More specifically, philanthropy should (see more details in the blog):
Support spaces to experiment and mechanisms to share learning collectively.
Support peer connection and exchange
Support infrastructure organizations and cross-sectoral networks
Invest in foresight, not only crisis response
Respect and support local expertise and local leadership
Think together with civil society about how to shape our new AI environment
Fund staff wellbeing, security, and fair compensation
Provide more multi-year, flexible, unrestricted funding
If Trees Could Speak is the title of an immersive exhibition in Sirmione, Italy, inviting humans to listen to trees. If we would listen carefully – the exhibition description says - “trees might tell us that resilience is not about strength alone, but about flexibility, the way branches bend under the weight of snow, how roots seek water in the most unlikely places, or how a forest regrows after fire.” “They would speak of community, how they thrive not in isolation but through connection. Underground, they share nutrients and warnings through vast mycelial networks; they protect the young and support the weak. Resilience, they would say, is collective. They might also teach us patience: that recovery takes time measured not in days or years, but in seasons, in centuries.” “And perhaps they would whisper a final truth: To be resilient is to stay rooted while still reaching for the light.”
Just like trees, civil society activists tell us similar stories in times when resilience has become one of the most overused words in philanthropy. It often sounds positive and practical, but it can hide a harder truth: many civil society organizations are being asked to do more with less, absorb more shocks, and somehow keep delivering while the ground keeps shifting beneath them.
That is why it is worth rethinking resilience not as endurance alone, but as a collective capacity to adapt, protect mission, and build the conditions for long-term independence. In our recent conversations with civil society leaders, one message came through clearly:
Resilience is not just about bouncing back. It is about building the strength, trust, connection, and flexibility to keep going — and to keep imagining something better.
Resilience as a shared practice
One powerful lesson from the discussion was that resilience is rarely individual. It is relational. It lives in networks, peer support, shared infrastructure, and the ability of organizations to learn from one another.
As Grace described it, resilience is like walking through a storm with a raincoat — and then, when the sun comes out, using that same coat for shade. The image is simple, but the idea is profound: resilient organizations are not only surviving; they are creatively repurposing what they have.
Others added that resilience is not about preserving the status quo. It is about evolution. In that sense, strong organizations are not the ones that pretend everything is fine. They are the ones that stay grounded in their purpose while adjusting to changing realities.
What resilience looks like in practice
The examples shared in the conversations were grounded, practical, and often sobering.
In Ukraine, Anna shared, resilience means making sure staff survives, and only then they can focus on the organization’s work. For instance, activists have been working in winter when temperatures were around minus 20 and no heating available, trying to keep people safe, maintain operations, and secure funding. Anna found that humor was an essential tool to keep going.
In another example, Oyebesi described how the Nigeria Network of NGOs noticed well before USAID closure, that the USAID-supported wasn’t strategically helpful for them. Rather than planning future income around a fragile source of support, they diversified early and cultivated other donors. That decision proved critical when that funding later disappeared. This was resilience in action: reading the signs, adjusting early, and avoiding dependence on one unstable stream.
Gabriella reminded us of activists in exile who continued working on the issues of their home country, showing that resilience can mean staying connected to the cause even after displacement. She also pointed to cross-movement organizing as a way groups keep going under pressure.
The Mapping Adaptation Project Nina works on, interviewed more than 70 activists and practitioners who described being exhausted, stuck in triage mode, and losing staff and institutional knowledge. Her example of resilience was not triumphal, but collective care, grieving, and refusing paralysis while still absorbing shock after shock.
In Serbia, in a context where disinformation left society distrustful and unsupportive of activists and civil society organizations, the government's fake investigations and police raids on NGOs after late-2024 student protests independent media, created a chilling effect that paused civil society work for weeks. Organizations, including where Ana works, overcame shock and paralysis by regrouping, refocusing on their mission, and rebuilding trust through support for student movements, academia, and grassroots groups. Progress has been made in public engagement and collective resilience, though challenges remain.
The hidden costs
If resilience is to be more than a feel-good word, philanthropy must acknowledge that it needs and absorbs resources - human and financial. Civil society leaders spoke about exhaustion, staff loss, underfunded operations, and the burden of constant compliance. They described organizations shrinking their missions, laying off staff, and choosing between visibility and safety. In some contexts, speaking out can invite political pressure. In others, simply existing as a rights-based organization can carry risks.
Tania observed through her grantmaking work, how compliance influences decision-making and how it can conflict with innovation. When executives spend a large portion of their time on compliance-driven survival tasks, it leaves little room for creativity.
There is also a deeper cost: when funders treat overhead as waste, they are often underfunding the very systems that keep organizations alive. Fair salaries, insurance, security, learning time, and institutional memory are not extras. They are part of the infrastructure of resilience.
Some organizations, pushed by donors to diversify their finances, went into the market, to try for-profit models. This can provide some financial freedom, but civil society organizations, as a sector, have unique experience and unique expertise – different from the for-profit business sector. For many, this model only creates extra burden or does not work at all.
How can philanthropy help
To start I would like to note that we know many of the following points are now standard asks of philanthropy as "good practice", however partners urge that they bear repeating as they are still not the norm. The clearest call to action from these conversations is that philanthropy needs to move from transactional funding to relational support.
Philanthropy should support a “transition strategy” for civil society. Many organizations are operating between a broken old model and an uncertain future and what they need is patient money, room to experiment, room to fail, and room to learn.
More specifically, philanthropy should:
Support spaces to experiment (with genuine permission to fail) and mechanisms to share learning collectively.
Support peer connection and exchange that is not structured around performance or reporting to funders, and not guided by funders' views of priorities
Support infrastructure organizations and cross-sectoral networks that hold the ecosystem together and build solidarity
Invest in foresight, not only crisis response
Respect and support local expertise and local leadership
Think together with civil society partners about how to transform and shape our new AI environment for resilience.
Fund staff wellbeing, security, and fair compensation
And of course: Provide more multi-year, flexible, unrestricted funding
This is especially important for organizations working on accountability, transparency, and civic space. These are often the groups most exposed to political pressure, but they are also the ones that help entire ecosystems survive.
A different definition of strength
If there is one thing these conversations make clear, it is that resilience should not be mistaken for quiet compliance.
True resilience is not just the ability to absorb shocks. It is the ability to keep mission alive, preserve voice, and build autonomy over time. It is collective, political, and long-term. It depends on trust. And it requires funders to stop drawing the map for civil society and instead provide the fuel that helps local actors navigate a constantly changing terrain.
For philanthropy, the challenge is not simply to fund resilience. It is to help create the conditions in which resilience can become something more: sovereignty, agency, and hope.
Because in the end, resilience is not a slogan. It is a practice. And for civil society, it is often the difference between merely surviving and being able to shape the future.