About this episode

The episode discusses the gap between nonprofit experiences and foundation perceptions, featuring insights from Elisha Smith Arrillaga on urgent action versus strategic planning.

Nonprofit leaders are ringing alarm bells, but foundations are still deciding whether this moment is different enough to act. In this episode, Stupski Foundation CEO, Glen Galaich, and co-host Eric Brown sit down with Elisha Smith Arrillaga, Ph.D., vice president of research at the Center for Effective Philanthropy, to discuss what CEP’s recent research reveals about the widening gap between how foundations think they are showing up and how nonprofits are experiencing this moment. Together, they dig into the findings in CEP’s latest report, State of Nonprofits 2026 , including rising deficits, CEO burnout, possible mergers, foundation caution, and the risks facing the people who rely on nonprofit services. Elisha challenges one of philanthropy’s most familiar fake rules: that every urgent problem needs a long strategy process before funders can take action. Sometimes the data is already clear. Sometimes the need is immediate. And sometimes the bridge from foundation thinking to nonprofit reality is not another plan, but the courage to move resources now. 💡Elisha Smith Arrillaga: I believe the most important fake rule to break is that we need a strategy to solve every…

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