Nonprofit Leaders Call for Unity to Combat Government Threats

Diane Yentel, the CEO of the National Council of Nonprofits (NCN), who emerged last year as an outspoken defender of civil society, doubled down on her criticism of the Trump administration Tuesday and teased a new effort to create a stronger nonprofit sector.

Speaking remotely at a three-hour Urban Institute event in Washington on the evolving relationship between government and nonprofits, Yentel noted that her organization filed four lawsuits in 2025 against what she described as Trump administration attempts to unlawfully undermine the sector’s work. In its previous 35 years, NCN had never been involved in a lawsuit beyond an amicus brief, Yentel said.

“We know that the nonprofit sector is fundamentally changed and we’re not going back,” Yentel said. “The sector is changed for good. It’s changed permanently, and if we work together to make it so, the sector can be changed for the better. 

“As nonprofits, we have a choice to make,” she added. “We can passively allow the sector to be changed … sort of a death by a thousand cuts. Or we can realize our collective power and come together to plan for and build for what comes next, including shoring up crucial nonprofit-government partnerships.”

The Chronicle’s profile of Yentel nearly a year ago noted that her willingness to take on the Trump administration had won millions of dollars in new financial support for NCN.

On Tuesday, she gave some hints of how the organization may begin spending that money. She announced a new national effort, starting this fall, that will feature “hundreds of events,” including town halls, to build the political power and public will to strengthen the nonprofit sector. She dubbed the effort “Transformation 2035” and said other partners would be involved.

The initiative is “currently in development,” and NCN will share more details as it develops, said Natalia Vanegas, an NCN spokesperson. Its name may still evolve, she said. 

The Urban Institute event featured a session on the history of relations between nonprofits and the government and a panel discussion about research conducted last year by the Center for Effective Philanthropy, Candid, the Nonprofit Finance Fund, and Urban on how charities were navigating the tumultuous start of Trump’s second term.

In the final segment, which focused on the future, Akilah Watkins, CEO of Independent Sector, emphasized that the sector’s economic contributions should enable it to win bipartisan support. Watkins noted that nearly 14 million Americans work in the nonprofit sector and that nonprofits contribute more than 5 percent to the country’s gross domestic product.

“Our sector cannot be reduced to political football,” she said.

Independent Sector announced the creation of a “panel on sector independence” this week.  The panel, which includes 23 experts from foundations, charities, and academic institutions, aims to strengthen the sector so that charities can pursue their missions with robust self-governance. The panel will update Independent Sector’s “Principles for Good Governance and Ethical Practice,” which were written nearly 20 years ago at the invitation of the Senate Finance Committee.

Independent Sector is also bolstering its “advocacy muscle,” Watkins said, including a push for the federal government to maintain programs that serve the poorest Americans.

“Nonprofits should never take over the work that the government should be doing,” Watkins said. “That’s one of the distinctions I want to actually draw — it is the government’s responsibility to have a strong social safety net for the millions of Americans that depend on it.”

Independent Sector will press for legislative changes in areas such as health care, child care and retirement savings for the many nonprofit workers who struggle to pay their bills, Watkins said.

The Small Nonprofit Retirement Security Act, whose co-sponsors in the Senate include the influential Sen. James Lankford, a Republican from Oklahoma, would extend to nonprofits the same tax credits that small for-profit firms receive for establishing employee retirement plans. It would allow nonprofits to apply the credits against payroll tax liabilities. The House version of the bill would provide an additional credit for the first $1,000 of contributions that employers make for each employee earning under $100,000 a year.

“Nonprofit workers don’t make enough money to afford to take care of themselves while they’re taking care of Americans,” Watkins said.