When do we believe climate change is real? Or what prompts us into action to address homelessness & global housing crisis? For the last five decades, data has been considered the pivot point for action and behavior change. My argument is that data-based logic & analysis shapes deep bias, blame & inaction equally.

Ultimately, we must admit that some complex problems and issues are so deeply interconnected that they just don’t have simple explanations. Perhaps the pursuit of ‘explanation’ itself is an oxymoron. And perhaps liberating oneself of trying to ‘explain in a nutshell’ and ‘brevity’ will yield a much more holistic view of our consciousness. This brings us to a philosophical conundrum- if we cannot explain and understand something through data, how do we make sense of our reality? Maybe finding new methods of understanding the lived experience for understanding the world and related problems.

Are civil society organizations having the desired impact? Is it happening fast enough and at scale? Over the last two decades, I have been often asked these questions from funders, grassroots leaders, trustees of nonprofits amongst others. For years, I have struggled to answer this question, without defending nonprofits or deeply criticism them.

Given the nature of shrinking funding, climate & humanitarian crisis, what are the current models of non profit organizations? Are they effective and what are their limitations? Is there a way of reshaping nonprofit organization to meet this challenge? Are there other compelling models that we should explore?