Making high-stakes decisions during organizational changes: What to continue and where to invest

Leading a nonprofit is a calling, a deep commitment—and the job is getting harder. Today’s operating environment is increasingly volatile, shaped by the concentration of funding among a small number of funders, economic pressure, and shifting philanthropic priorities. Many organizations have limited financial buffers and, as a result, more and more organizations are navigating structural transitions. Leaders must make high-stakes decisions that affect how they operate, whom they serve, and whether they continue in their current form. However, there’s still little guidance available for leading when the organization’s future is uncertain.

So, how do leaders make decisions when they lack clarity on timelines, structure, or long-term sustainability, especially in volatile, uncertain times?

National Arts Strategies (NAS) serves as a case study for decision making during organizational changes. Over more than 40 years, NAS has supported arts and culture leaders across geographies and disciplines. This will be our final year operating in this current form, due to a structural funding issue: NAS no longer meets the IRS public support test required to maintain its public charity status, so it’s been reclassified as a private foundation. This change creates constraints incompatible with our existing program model.

Here’s what we’ve learned about leading through nonprofit transitions:

The dual reality of leading through organizational changes

Organizational transitions create dual conflicting realities—maintaining current work while planning for structural change. One requires certainty, speed, and confidence of doing the known, and the other requires the ability to pause and reflect on how to address the unknown.

At NAS, this means continuing all current programming, including new cohorts and ongoing initiatives, while preparing for its transition beyond 2026. At the same time, we’re documenting and openly sharing what we’ve learned over four decades.

Organizational transitions are not a temporary disruption but an ongoing condition that requires leaders to balance present responsibilities with future uncertainty.

Current nonprofit leadership frameworks are falling short

Many nonprofit leadership frameworks assume stability: an unchanging mission, predictable funding streams, and long-term organizational continuity. In practice, funding is often unpredictable, and the high concentration of money among few sources increases vulnerability when priorities shift.

In the absence of shared frameworks to guide nonprofit leaders’ decision making, particularly when organizations are structurally constrained, leaders are often left to navigate decisions about continuity, closure, and transition without proper support.

Decision 1: Which programs should continue—and how

One of the first decisions leaders must make during organizational changes is what work should continue and in what form. This requires evaluating programs based on the level of urgent need for a particular program, whether it has secured reliable funding, and whether it has measurable outcomes.

All the while, nonprofits need to center relationships with community, program alumni, and partner organizations, who are essential to sustaining continuity. As a result, leaders may feel pressure to maintain programs out of a sense of commitment, even when those programs are no longer aligned with current conditions or capacity.

At NAS, we decided to transition its current organizational form rather than operate under misaligned conditions. In close consultation with board and staff, we declined to shift to charging self-sustaining program fees, even though doing so could have preserved existing offerings. Instead, we prioritized our core value: supporting a diverse community of arts and culture leaders without costs for participants.

This also required rethinking continuity. Instead, we’re exploring whether certain programs can continue independently or through partnerships. This approach reflects a shift from preserving structure to preserving impact.

Decision 2: Where to allocate resources when the funding outlook is unclear

Leaders must balance competing “priorities,” including supporting communities the organization currently serves, maintaining operations, and investing in long-term change and impact. Each allocation reflects a set of priorities.

At NAS, our priorities are reflected in a commitment to invest $1 million directly back into its alumni community. This includes gatherings, peer exchange groups, and cohort-based engagement. This allocation reflects a focus on supporting people and networks to sustain impact beyond the organization’s current structure.

More broadly, this aligns with a pattern: Leadership development and relationship-based work are widely recognized as essential, but are often underfunded relative to program delivery and operations.

Organizational change is a key moment in the nonprofit lifecycle as funding structures and external conditions continue to shift. More leaders are being forced to make decisions faster, with less time for reflection, and under greater stress.

As a result, there’s a growing need to expand nonprofit leadership frameworks beyond growth and sustainability to include decision making under constraints and in the face of longer-term uncertainty.

Our experience at NAS—in our own history and work with hundreds of arts and culture leaders—suggests that long-term impact may depend on how effectively relationships, networks, and knowledge are carried forward beyond organizational structures. For NAS, this ultimately meant making values-aligned decisions that held us true to the organization’s mission and to those whom we serve.

Photo credit: Eva Cruz