ProInspire CEO Shares Year-Opening Reflections
January 20, 2026
By Bianca Anderson | CEO ProInspire
What 2025 Revealed
Across the social sector, 2025 surfaced patterns that were difficult to ignore. Political shifts and executive actions placed many organizations on the defensive. Philanthropy grew more cautious. Investments in racial equity leadership development slowed or disappeared.
In conversation after conversation, we heard the same story. Identity-based and equity-centered organizations were downsizing, cutting budgets, and sunsetting programs that had shown real promise just a year or two earlier. What initially appeared to be isolated organizational challenges proved to be systemic.
At ProInspire, this reckoning brought us to a crossroads. We made the difficult decision to downsize our team due to financial constraints. That decision forced a deeper question. Would we also sacrifice our theory of change in order to survive?
“Our answer is no.”
For far too long, workplaces have benefited from the emotional and physical labor of Black women and other marginalized leaders without fair compensation, care, or respect. As an organization founded by a South Asian daughter of immigrants, now Black-led and staffed entirely by women, we made a clear decision to continue centering the needs of Black leaders and leaders of color.
We believe that when organizations confront racial bias and harmful power dynamics, they become more effective and better able to create lasting change. When Black workers thrive, all workers benefit.
What the Data is Telling Us
This moment is not abstract. Black women’s unemployment stands at 7.1 percent, compared to 4.6 percent overall. Black women leaders are often the ones holding equity and culture change work together inside their organizations, while also being among the first pushed out when resources shrink.
“Listening to Black women is not only a moral imperative. It is a strategic necessity.”
When workers committed to justice experience trust, well-being, and humane working conditions, they are better able to do work that reflects those values. Community-based organizations are more effective when their staff experience stability and support. Public health foundations that aim to address structural racism must also attend to the internal cultures that shape how resources are distributed.
What We Are Hearing in the Field
As 2025 came to a close, leaders consistently named exhaustion and a diminishing sense of hope. Many described “wait and see” approaches in philanthropy, heightened risk aversion, and continued divestment from racial equity leadership development.
At the same time, leaders told us they need practical, day-to-day support for navigating complexity. This includes building psychological safety, embedding feedback into organizational culture, applying racial equity analysis even as language shifts, navigating conflict, cultivating rest-informed workplaces, and practicing multi-racial solidarity through an intersectional lens.
Foundations play a critical role in this ecosystem because they control resources. How foundation staff experience their own workplaces directly shapes decision-making, risk tolerance, and the flow of funding to community-based organizations. Supporting foundations to cultivate healthier, more liberatory internal cultures is a key lever for improving conditions across the sector.
How We Are Responding
In 2026, ProInspire is focusing our work on what it means to truly thrive in the face of uncertainty. We will offer training, consulting, and practical tools to support nonprofit and philanthropic organizations in embodying liberatory leadership, disrupting burnout culture, navigating complexity, and cultivating conditions for thriving in the workplace.
Our primary focus will be supporting foundations, particularly public health foundations, as they transform how they respond to crisis and uncertainty. We see this as a critical pathway for supporting Black women leaders, leaders committed to racial equity, and community-based organizations. When foundations build healthier internal cultures and increase their courage in moments of uncertainty, they are more likely to resource communities in ways that support long-term well-being.
Throughout this work, we remain deeply committed to supporting Black women leaders, especially those working in nonprofits and foundations. When these leaders have what they need to thrive, the impact extends beyond organizations to communities, life, and health outcomes.
An Invitation to Begin the Year…
We know many leaders are carrying exhaustion, uncertainty, and moral complexity. The pace has not slowed, the pressure has not eased, and the space to pause and make meaning continues to shrink.
That is why, in the first quarter of 2026, we are inviting leaders into rest and reflection as core leadership practices. In a culture that rewards urgency and overextension, slowing down and tending to our well-being are not retreats from impact. They are prerequisites for it.
“Thriving is not something leaders must do alone. It is relational, structural, and systemic.”
ProInspire does not have all the answers, but we are committed to walking alongside leaders as we make sense of this moment together. We are grateful to be in community with you as we begin this year.
Join ProInspire’s upcoming Thriving Through Uncertainty webinar for a space to reflect on the year ahead using our latest Crises as a Catalyst 2.0 tool.