by Dr. Kevin Dean, President & CEO, Tennessee Nonprofit Network
The Strategy of Solitude: How Philanthropy’s Lone Rangers are Stalling the Sector
We are spending an exhausting amount of time cataloging the horsemen of the nonprofit apocalypse. If you’ve been to a conference or opened a newsletter in the last year, you know the list by heart: the looming crater of federal funding, the sharp sting of political polarization, the mysterious disappearance of the American volunteer, and the quiet retreat of corporate sponsors who have suddenly decided that brand alignment is a risky sport.
These are real, existential threats. They are the things that keep executive directors up at 3:00 AM staring at the ceiling. However, we’ve also seen something remarkable: when the pressure gets high enough, we actually know how to fight back. We have successfully countered some of our most daunting challenges by dropping the pretenses, abandoning territorial disputes, and coming together around shared solutions.
The problem is that we treat this coordination like an emergency brake—something to be pulled only when the train is already veering off the tracks. We shouldn’t only be functional when there is a crisis. Waiting for a catastrophe to trigger collaboration is a bit like waiting for a house fire to decide where the fire hydrant should go. If the greatest threat to our sector is a lack of coordination, then our greatest defense is building a permanent, shared infrastructure where philanthropy and nonprofits don’t just coexist, but actually operate in sync.
The Strategy that Time Forgot
Philanthropy and nonprofits have a long-standing obsession with the word collaboration. It is the kale of the sector: everyone agrees it is objectively good for you, yet very few people actually want it at their dinner table (except for Kate in our office, who loves kale so much we got her a kale-themed t-shirt for her birthday). We talk about it theoretically, and philanthropy demands it, yet are we actually coming together to solve challenges? I’ll say something controversial here: half of the “collaboration” I see between nonprofits is performative, and philanthropy (from a statewide perspective) is often still stuck in regional siloes that may be unintentionally exacerbating the larger statewide problems that filter down to regional challenges.
The problem in 2026 is that the world is now moving at the speed of a viral TikTok trend, while many foundations and nonprofits are still operating with the structural agility of a Victorian steam engine. Most philanthropic institutions are currently white-knuckling a five-year strategic plan drafted in 2024, which was based on data from 2022, to solve problems that were rendered obsolete by a technological leap that happened last Tuesday. By the time their trustees find out the world has changed, it’s too late.
In 2026, major global shifts do not wait for a quarterly board meeting. Geopolitical fractures and climate shocks arrive with the frequency of a subscription box you forgot to cancel. Yet, we persist in the belief that a static document bound in a leather folder can predict the needs of a nonprofit three years from now. The old operating system is no longer fit for purpose.
The Lone Ranger Syndrome
The greatest risk to the sector right now is a failure of coordination—not just between funders, but between funders and the very organizations they support. This isn’t for a lack of individual brilliance. It is because individual institutions are still trying to be the protagonist of their own isolated movie.
Consider the “Hyper-Specific Foundation.” They decide, in a vacuum, that the silver bullet for urban poverty is rooftop community gardens. Meanwhile, three blocks away, another funder decides the answer is digital literacy for seniors. Neither realizes that the local power grid is failing or that the neighborhood is being rezoned for a stadium. And the nonprofit grantees working on the ground apply for grants for rooftop community gardens despite knowing the power grid problem, but they can’t do anything about it without the buy-in and financial support of philanthropy. They chase the dollars and drift away from their mission, and then we get all mad at them for their mission drift. “But it’s the system!” they say, and we scoff at how tone deaf they sound.
They aren’t tone deaf. They are right. The system is broken, but it can be fixed by philanthropy and nonprofits coming together in the same rooms as equals to figure out solutions together.
They are both placing strategic bets in total isolation, like players at a roulette table who refuse to look at what the person next to them is doing. When nonprofits think they can solve deep systemic challenges alone, they nearly always fail. And when every funder scans the horizon alone, they only see their own slice of the sky. One sees a cloud, another sees a bird, and nobody notices the incoming meteor until it’s making a crater in the parking lot.
The Year of Living Collaboratively
Over the last year, Tennessee Nonprofit Network has been attempting to do something radical: get people into the same room who usually only interact via grant portals and rejection letters. We have spent the last twelve months traveling across the state, bringing philanthropy and nonprofits together to see if we could find a common language.
What stood out in these meetings was a startling alignment. Whether we were in a fancy room at the Community Foundation in Nashville or a community center basement in Chattanooga, the themes were remarkably consistent. Despite regional differences, the challenges were universal. Every conversation about a systemic hurdle was accompanied by a weary acknowledgment of gaps in funding, gaps in knowledge, or—most frequently—a total breakdown in collective action.
It turns out that everyone is struggling with the same ghost in the machine. The nonprofit executive in Memphis is worried about the same lack of infrastructure as the foundation officer in Knoxville. They just haven’t been allowed to talk about it without the artificial barrier of the funder-grantee power dynamic getting in the way….or they haven’t reached out to their counterpart on the other side of the state…or they haven’t bothered to contact the organization down the street doing similar work. Oy ve, y’all. This isn’t working.
The Hypocrisy of Mandatory Collaboration
One of the most profound ironies of the philanthropic sector is the demand for collaboration. Funders often include a section in their grant applications requiring nonprofits to prove they are collaborating with others. It is a mandate: “Show us your partners, or you don’t get the money.”
Yet, these same funders often fail to model that behavior themselves. Philanthropy demands that nonprofits break down silos while maintaining their own silos with the structural integrity of a nuclear bunker. Our approach at Tennessee Nonprofit Network is built on a few key assumptions:
- Funders set the tone: Funders often demand collaboration from nonprofits yet don’t model the way themselves. If we can better align funders across the state, they can model the way for both philanthropy and the nonprofit sector.
- The “Same Room” Theory of Change: True change requires funders and nonprofits to be in the same room. Not just a room where a funder sits on a stage, but a room where they are peers in problem-solving.
- Bidirectional Communication: We need open lines of communication. Problem-solving cannot happen effectively within vacuums. If a funder doesn’t understand the day-to-day operational friction of a nonprofit, their strategic bet is just a shot in the dark.
The Real Risk of Doing Nothing
If we don’t figure out how to think and act as a coordinated network—philanthropy with philanthropy, nonprofits with nonprofits, and both with each other—we aren’t just risking inefficiency. We are risking irrelevance.
We have spent the year proving that the appetite for this coordination exists. The alignment across the state is there. The challenges are clear. The only thing missing is the willingness to let go of the 2019 playbook and embrace a future where the most important strategic bet we can make is on each other.
It is time to stop planning for a world that no longer exists and start living in the one that does—even if it is moving a little faster than our bylaws would prefer.