Keeping the Lights On.
There are seasons in nonprofit work where the air feels thin.
Government shutdowns and funding disruptions. Attacks on DEI. Protests in the streets. Fear and uncertainty in communities navigating enforcement and surveillance. The world gets loud, and the work gets harder. Not “harder” like a complicated spreadsheet. Harder like people are carrying stress in their bodies and still showing up anyway.
And still, the lights stayed on.
That is what I want to name, clearly, without romance and without despair: my clients kept serving. Youth kept walking through the door. Families kept asking for support. Community members kept coming to programs because those programs were not “extra.” They were essential. They were belonging, stability, food, safety, mentorship, healing, opportunity. They were the place you go when everything else feels uncertain.
I sit in a specific seat in this ecosystem. I’m a grant writer and nonprofit consultant. But in seasons like these, the job becomes something deeper than writing. It becomes translation and protection.
Translation, because funders want clarity, logic, outcomes, budgets, timelines, evidence. Communities want respect, responsiveness, and truth. Staff want something they can actually deliver without burning out. My work is the bridge: taking real-life service and shaping it into a plan that can be understood, funded, and sustained.
Protection, because in times of backlash, organizations often feel pressure to flatten their language, soften their equity commitments, or avoid naming what is actually happening. We get coached, subtly or explicitly, to make everything sound “universal,” “neutral,” “not political,” “palatable.” I understand the risk. I also understand what gets lost when we sand the truth down until it barely resembles the community we serve.
And the truth is this: funding has tightened, and competition has sharpened. Many organizations are doing more with less, while expectations and expenses keep rising. In that landscape, it becomes even more important to tell the most honest story we can, and tell it well.
Not the story that sounds fashionable. Not the story that sounds like everyone else. The story that is specific, grounded, and lived. The story that names barriers without blaming the people impacted by them. The story that centers dignity and agency. The story that is backed by a plan your team can actually carry.
This is also where I’m going to say something plainly: AI can help, but it cannot replace authenticity.
New tools can generate drafts. They can offer structure. They can speed up the blank-page moment. That’s useful. I use tools too, like any modern professional. But a tool cannot do the real work of listening to an exhausted program director who’s been holding a caseload through a staffing shortage. It cannot understand the difference between attendance and engagement in a youth program. It cannot hold the nuance of trust, cultural responsiveness, historical harm, and what it takes to rebuild safety.
AI can write a sentence. It cannot witness the lived reality that makes the sentence true.
The proposals I’m proudest of are not the prettiest paragraphs. They’re the ones that hold a community’s complexity without turning people into pity. They’re the ones that match narrative to budget, and budget to staffing, and staffing to real capacity. They’re the ones that turn “we need help” into “here is what we will do, here is who it serves, here is what success looks like, and here is what it costs.”
In turbulent times, this work becomes a kind of quiet defiance. We keep building programs that treat people like people. We keep tracking outcomes because accountability and integrity matter. We keep improving because communities deserve the best, not just the best intentions.
In 2025, I did a lot. And I will keep doing it because this work is my passion. And in the words of Ruth Bader Ginsburg, it is an honor to “fight for the things you care about.”
The lights stayed on. Let’s keep them on.
~Lara
