Cecilia Muñoz

These Are the Times—and This Is Our Work

Exactly 250 years ago, American Founding Father Thomas Paine wrote a revolutionary call to courage that began with what are now frequently quoted words: “These are the times that try men’s souls.”  

As divided as our country feels, perhaps that’s one thing Americans of all persuasions can agree on: we are once again living in such times. The year 2025 was tumultuous for our country, our grantees, and the nonprofit sector as a whole. Together, we have faced rapid and cataclysmic changes in our federal government and the role it plays as a partner to states, cities and nonprofits.

Our grantee partners and the people they serve have responded to the deployment of federal troops and immigration officials on their streets and sharp reductions to access to services. Our staff and trustees have wrestled with big questions about philanthropy’s role in an era of great upheaval and heightened scrutiny. 

The pressure on our grantees and partners has increased, sometimes dramatically. The funding landscape shifted as federal support rapidly shrank, reducing or even eliminating longstanding funding streams, often without notice. And the need in communities has grown as health care, environmental, community development and other vital programs contracted or disappeared. Philanthropy, for all of its resources, cannot begin to compensate for the scale of federal dollars, services and expertise that vanished during 2025.  

This calls for both reflection and action. Through reflection, we recognize that the challenges we face require us to keep steady — investing in approaches that we know work. But the landscape has shifted so mightily that we must also act in new ways, because standing still is not an option. That’s what it means to hold and build, the theme of this report. 

We hold on to the values which are the foundations of our work: our deep commitment to equity, to centering our efforts on communities where families work to build economic stability, to upholding our democratic institutions and ideals, and to supporting our trusted partners. We hold tight to justice, to place, and to the power of communities to chart a hopeful future for themselves and their children. We hold with an eye toward what we hope to build: a country of strong, healthy communities where opportunity is abundant.

We also have thought a great deal about our role in building what will be after this moment of turmoil passes. Indeed, our role as builders may be our greatest strength.

We have learned so much about what it takes to build opportunity in places like Detroit, Memphis, New Orleans, Fresno and beyond. We have infused our appreciation of and partnership with place with skill in leveraging resources beyond our own, and paired that with expertise in climate justice, health equity, culture and creativity, human services, and higher educational opportunity.

Each city offers extraordinary examples of the ways in which making resources, know-how, and partnership available to community leaders and institutions fuels the work of transformation. I marvel at the reinvigorated riverfronts in Detroit and Memphis, the bustling educational and cultural campus at Marygrove in Northwest Detroit, the community-powered climate change and health equity work in New Orleans, and the inspiring resident-led development plan bearing fruit in Fresno.

These are demonstrations that, even in days of turbulence, good people working locally can accomplish great things. Even in an atmosphere of bitter division, Americans can come together to solve problems and create opportunities that make our cities more just and equitable places.

In these times, what we build has an even deeper meaning than the particular milestones we reach. Our souls may be tried, but through our partners, we can see a brighter future, and we know how to wield the tools to get there.