How to lead a nonprofit out of crisis

And get back on the resilience train

Photo by Willian Justen de Vasconcellos on Unsplash

Introduction

It has been a rough four+ years for nonprofit leaders. COVID was a once-in-a-lifetime event (at least I pray so), followed by a dramatic shrinking in funding - all the while the community needs have not slowed down. Such a perfect storm has forced many organizations into a state of sustained crisis. While crisis mode is essential for immediate survival, its long-term maintenance is exhausting and deeply problematic.

In crisis mode, nonprofits often adopt reactive, centralized leadership styles characterized by urgent, short-term decisions focused primarily on immediate survival. Communication typically becomes limited, top-down, and opaque, leaving employees uncertain and disengaged. Organizational culture can grow fear-driven and risk-averse, stifling innovation and cautious resource management. Financial strategies tend to focus narrowly on short-term stabilization through emergency cost-cutting, while stakeholder relationships become transactional. Opportunities for learning and reflection are limited, ultimately harming staff morale as survival concerns overshadow the organization’s core mission.

Conversely, nonprofits operating in resilience mode embrace proactive, distributed leadership, empowering teams across all levels. Decision-making becomes strategic, flexible, and future-focused, enabling swift adaptations to changing conditions. Communication is open, transparent, and multidirectional, fostering trust and collaboration. Organizations in resilience mode actively diversify financial resources, manage them strategically, and cultivate cultures supportive of innovation and calculated risk-taking. Strong, reciprocal relationships with stakeholders, continuous learning, and reflective practices characterize resilient nonprofits. Staff morale remains high due to clear, mission-driven leadership, allowing organizations not merely to endure crises but also to thrive beyond them.

This paper examines how effective leadership combined with supportive organizational culture significantly enhances resilience in nonprofits. It identifies adaptive, transformational, and servant leadership as critical approaches for navigating crises, alongside cultural elements such as open communication, continuous learning, innovation, and community engagement. Practical strategies include embedding resilience into organizational missions, promoting transparent communication, empowering staff, and enhancing financial transparency. Overall, fostering resilience through aligned leadership and cultural practices equips nonprofits to survive disruptions and emerge stronger and more adaptive.

Nonprofits operate in constantly shifting environments, facing challenges such as fluctuating funding, political uncertainty, and crises like pandemics. Organizational resilience—the capacity to withstand and adapt to disruptive events—is crucial for nonprofit survival and continued impact. Defined as “the ability to respond productively to significant disruptive change and transform challenges into opportunities” (Witmer & Mellinger, 2016), organizational resilience remains underexplored within nonprofit management literature despite its importance (Searing et al., 2022). Nonprofits often struggle with recovery due to limited resources and mission-driven priorities, making proactive resilience-building strategies especially critical. Leadership and organizational culture emerge as two key, controllable factors in resilience-building. The literature highlights specific leadership styles and cultural strategies essential for cultivating resilience, explored in detail in the following sections.

To transition from crisis mode effectively, nonprofit leaders must intentionally integrate resilience into organizational missions and visions, foster adaptive leadership throughout the organization, encourage open communication, support innovation, strengthen community collaboration, and ensure financial transparency and preparedness. These proactive strategies enable nonprofits to build internal structures that can absorb shocks and leverage disruptions as growth opportunities.

For nonprofits to transition effectively from crisis mode to resilience mode, leaders must intentionally embed resilience into the organization's mission and vision, develop adaptive leadership at all levels, foster a culture of open communication, support innovation and improvisation, strengthen community collaboration, and ensure financial preparedness and transparency. These proactive strategies enable nonprofits to build an internal structure that can absorbrage shocks and leve disruptions as opportunities for growth and innovation.

Literature Review

Leadership’s Role in Fostering Resilience

Leadership is central to organizational resilience, significantly influencing how nonprofits anticipate, respond to, and recover from crises. Effective nonprofit resilience is fundamentally shaped by distinct yet complementary leadership approaches: transformational, servant, adaptive, and shared leadership.

Transformational leadership, marked by vision, inspiration, and agility, motivates teams through compelling missions, encourages innovative problem-solving, and demonstrates adaptability under challenging circumstances (Valero et al., 2015). By articulating clear visions and maintaining confidence amid uncertainty, transformational leaders inspire hope and facilitate proactive responses rather than fear-driven reactions.

Photo by Milad Fakurian on Unsplash

Servant leadership significantly enhances resilience by focusing on serving others, empowering teams, and fostering community. This approach creates trust and a supportive organizational environment capable of mitigating crises' impacts (Faus, 2023; Eliot, 2020). Practices such as active listening, empathy, and stewardship strengthen social capital and flexibility, enabling teams to better endure and adapt during hardship. Organizations led by servant leaders typically experience higher employee engagement and commitment, positioning them effectively to navigate turbulent periods.

Adaptive leadership further solidifies resilience by promoting flexibility in complex and uncertain conditions (Fisher, 2024). Adaptive leaders skillfully pivot strategies, creatively resolve conflicts, and nurture organizational learning and innovation. By embracing vulnerability and openly confronting uncertainties, they foster collective resilience, transforming challenges into growth opportunities rather than viewing them as threats.

Additionally, shared leadership and employee empowerment are crucial for organizational resilience. Distributed leadership models empower multiple organizational members, reducing dependence on single leaders and enhancing responsiveness and resourcefulness across the organization. This approach minimizes single points of failure and encourages accountability at all levels. Investing in employee development through training, mentoring, and career growth builds a resilient workforce adept in crisis response and effective problem-solving.

Ultimately, nonprofit resilience is best cultivated through leadership styles that are adaptive, empowering, service-oriented, and committed to continuous learning. Leaders who embody transparency, trust, and clarity of mission enable their organizations to manage disruptions effectively. This underscores that resilience emerges not from isolated crisis responses but through ongoing, proactive leadership practices (Duchek, 2020; Williams et al., 2017).

Cultural Strategies for Resilience

Organizational culture has a significant influence on nonprofit resilience, shaping how teams respond to and recover from crises. A resilient culture embraces change, prioritizes continuous learning, and maintains a robust commitment to organizational mission. Nonprofits deeply anchored in their mission are better able to rally and creatively respond during financial or operational crises, seeing resilience efforts as fundamental rather than merely survival-based (Witmer & Mellinger, 2016).

Open communication, trust, and psychological safety are foundational cultural attributes supporting resilience. Encouraging open dialogue allows early identification of potential problems, fosters innovation, and facilitates coordinated responses during crises. Transparent communication enhances employee engagement and proactive problem-solving, critical elements in navigating uncertainty effectively (Cause Leadership, 2025).

Promoting a learning culture further strengthens resilience. Organizations that regularly evaluate outcomes, reflect on experiences, and adapt practices are more agile and responsive to new challenges (Fisher, 2024). By prioritizing continuous learning and skill development, nonprofits can quickly adapt strategies and processes during disruptions, turning crises into opportunities for improvement and growth.

Inclusivity and employee empowerment enhance cultural resilience by leveraging diverse perspectives and resources. Inclusive cultures foster a sense of ownership and community among employees, encouraging proactive engagement during crises. Organizations empowering employees at all levels to lead and innovate benefit from heightened responsiveness and creativity, making them better equipped to manage disruptions effectively (International Consortium for Organizational Resilience, 2023).

Research consistently identifies specific cultural qualities correlated with heightened resilience: strong mission commitment, improvisational capability, community reciprocity, servant and transformational leadership norms, optimism, and fiscal transparency (Witmer & Mellinger, 2016). Nonprofits that proactively cultivate these attributes create environments capable of absorbing shocks and leveraging crises as opportunities for strengthening organizational practices and community impact.

Findings: Strategies to Build Nonprofit Resilience

Several practical strategies emerge for nonprofit leaders aiming to build organizational resilience through leadership and culture:

1. Embed resilience into organizational missions and visions, emphasizing the strategic importance of adaptability and proactive planning.

2. Develop adaptive leadership capabilities across all organizational levels through targeted training and mentorship.

3. Foster an open, supportive culture characterized by transparent communication, psychological safety, and employee empowerment.

4. Encourage innovation and improvisation, creating environments where calculated risk-taking and experimentation are celebrated.

5. Strengthen community ties and stakeholder collaboration to leverage external support and resources effectively.

6. Ensure financial transparency and preparedness through diversified revenue streams, prudent fiscal management, and open financial communication.

These strategies highlight resilience as a multidimensional effort that integrates leadership actions and cultural norms, preparing nonprofits to proactively manage crises rather than merely respond reactively.

Conclusion

Building organizational resilience in nonprofits requires intentional cultivation of leadership and organizational culture that mutually reinforce each other. Nonprofits operating in a state of persistent crisis risk becoming reactive and short-sighted, which can undermine both their mission and staff morale. Conversely, those who proactively embed resilience into their core on themselves have no identity merely to survive disruptions, but to emerge stronger, more adaptive, and mission-focused. Through transformational, servant, and adaptive leadership, nonprofits can inspire innovation, collaboration, and agility at all organizational levels. Simultaneously, fostering a culture marked by transparency, continuous learning, inclusivity, and strategic risk-taking provides the essential foundation upon which resilience can thrive. While external factors, such as economic downturns and policy shifts, remain beyond direct control, internal resilience significantly enhances an organization's capacity to respond and adapt effectively. Nonprofits must therefore commit to resilience as an ongoing priority, regularly assessing and refining practices to ensure sustained strength and impact in an ever-changing world.

References

Cause Leadership. (2025). Nonprofit Insights: Impact of Workplace Culture. Retrieved from https://causeleadership.com/insights-the-impact-of-workplace-culture/

Duchek, S. (2020). Organizational resilience: a capability-based conceptualization. Business Research, 13(1), 215–246. https://doi.org/10.1007/s40685-019-0085-7

Eliot, J. L. (2020). Resilient leadership: The impact of a servant leader on the resilience of their followers. Advances in Developing Human Resources, 22(4), 404–418. https://doi.org/10.1177/1523422320945237

Faus, A. (2023, June 19). Putting your people first: The not-so-secret magic of servant leadership. Work Life by Atlassian. Retrieved from https://www.atlassian.com/blog/leadership/you-got-served-redefining-what-it-means-to-be-a-leader

International Consortium for Organizational Resilience. (2023). Embedding the culture and systems of resilience: Organizational Resilience Capability Assessment (Snapshot Report). ICOR/Build-Resilience.org.

Lengnick-Hall, C. A., Beck, T. E., & Lengnick-Hall, M. L. (2011). Developing a capacity for organizational resilience through strategic human resource management. Human Resource Management Review, 21(3), 243–255. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.hrmr.2010.07.001

Searing, E. A. M., Wiley, K. K., & Young, S. L. (2022). Resiliency tactics during financial crisis: The nonprofit resiliency framework. Nonprofit Management and Leadership, 32(2), 179–196. https://doi.org/10.1002/nml.21478

Spitfire Strategies. (2022). Smart Plan: Spitfire’s guide to crisis prep & management [White paper]. Spitfire Strategies. Retrieved from https://spitfirestrategies.com/app/uploads/2025/01/2022-Spitfire-SmartPlan-web.2.pdf

Valero, J. N., Jung, K., & Andrew, S. A. (2015). Does transformational leadership build resilient public and non-profit organizations? Disaster Prevention and Management, 24(1), 4–20. https://doi.org/10.1108/DPM-04-2014-0060

Williams, T. A., Gruber, D. A., Sutcliffe, K. M., Shepherd, D. A., & Zhao, E. Y. (2017). Organizational response to adversity: Fusing crisis management and resilience research streams. Academy of Management Annals, 11(2), 733–769. https://doi.org/10.5465/annals.2015.0134

Witmer, H., & Mellinger, M. S. (2016). Organizational resilience: Nonprofit organizations’ response to change. Work, 54(2), 255–265. https://doi.org/10.3233/WOR-162303