In times like these, it’s easy—fashionable, even—to believe that doom is a foregone conclusion. That democracy is circling the drain. That artificial intelligence will eat our jobs, our meaning, our minds. That cruelty is ascendant and civic life has cracked.

But despair is lazy. Worse—it’s contagious. It spreads faster than hope and sticks longer than doubt. That’s why today, I want to suggest something some will consider wildly unfashionable: optimism rooted in action.

Let’s stop wringing our hands—and start ringing the bell of possibility.

This is not denialism. The challenges ahead are real and roaring: a shifting climate, rising authoritarianism, economic inequality, and an AI revolution poised to reshape work, wealth, and identity.

But that last one—AI—is exactly where for me a door opens.  The question is not just whether the machines will take jobs, but who owns the machines. And whether AI’s wealth-generating power is concentrated in the hands of the few—or shared among the many.

If, as a society, we focus on answering that question by demanding that the wealth created by AI be shared throughout society –and voting for politicians who support that goal—we’ll get it right.   And if we get this democratization of AI right it means less work, more money in all our pockets.

This isn’t just wishful thinking—it’s where nonprofits have unique leverage. We’re the sector that builds coalitions, shapes public opinion, and holds politicians accountable. When tech companies lobby for favorable AI regulations, we can lobby for equitable AI outcomes. When universal basic income pilots launch, nonprofits can demonstrate their value. When AI displaces workers, we can be the voice demanding that productivity gains benefit communities, not just shareholders.

AND THEN….

…we work on the other big issue:  what do folks then do with their free time? Time—long the luxury of the elite—might finally be democratized and available in vast pools to help advance the missions of the nonprofit sector. If we’re ready.

Will we be?

Or will we still be stuck in what I once called “Massive Incrementalism”—the maddening, microscopic tweaking of tactics while the tectonic plates of possibility shift beneath us?

I used the term way back in a 2010 post, frustrated that with all the then-new-tools—data, modeling, digital platforms, social media connections—we still mostly tinkered. A better teaser on the envelope. A different color. A slightly stronger reply form. More testing. More use of behavioral science research. More investment in building donor relationships and retention.

Fifteen years ago, the sector hesitated to dream boldly. Risk was budgeted out. Boards feared failure more than irrelevance. And so we incremented, massively.

And still do.

But consider the times we did leap:

• During the Great Depression, the invention of the capital campaign firm galvanized struggling colleges and human services groups into unprecedented organized fundraising.
• In the ‘60s and ‘70s, mass media cracked the door for civil rights, environmental protection, and women’s liberation—powered not by tweets, but by direct mail, radio, print, and public courage.
• At the turn of this century, digital platforms created entirely new relationships between causes and constituents, between data and democracy. And in those ensuing years we’ve learned a lot –some good, some bad—about the use of new technologies.

Now, with AI, we are again at a fulcrum.

And what we do now both generally as a society and specifically as the nonprofit sector may determine whether we turn into a nation of serfs serving code and AI barons—or one where shared prosperity buys us something we’ve long been starved of: freedom of time.

The same risk-averse, siloed thinking that frustrated me in 2010 persists today. But now the stakes are higher and the opportunity unprecedented. That metaphorical lawn I wrote about—shifting from talking about our grass seed to donors’ outcomes/lawns—could become vast if we’re bold enough to irrigate it with genuine vision.

Consider the math: if AI eliminates just 20% of current work hours while maintaining incomes, that’s the equivalent of adding an extra day to every work week. For a population of 160 million workers, that’s 32 million person-days of newly available time annually. Even if just 10% of that flows toward civic engagement, we’re talking about tripling the current volunteer workforce. Think what nonprofits could do with that surge of available talent—not just weekend volunteers, but people with genuine time to learn, lead, and build

I believe all too many of our colleagues are underreacting to the profound and positive side of AI and the speed at which it’s advancing. The changes coming aren’t 2030s business. They’re arriving now, like summer thunder.

And yes, they may bring enormous threat of even more concentration of power and inequality—but they also offer the raw material for democratic and social renewal, if we’re bold enough to demand its democratization and bold enough to mold it so it works for all of us.

So what do we do as nonprofits and fundraisers?

We stop budgeting to avoid failure and start budgeting to enable experiments. What does that look like? Instead of three organizations each running separate homeless services, they co-invest in an AI-powered system that coordinates housing, mental health, and job placement across the region. Instead of environmental groups competing for the same donors, they build shared platforms where supporters can track real-time impact across climate initiatives. We break the old silos—not just between fundraising and programs, but between organizations themselves, between risk and routine, between the incremental and the transformational.

Let’s not be remembered for our safety. Let’s be remembered for our leaps.

The future is arriving, fast. Let’s meet it not with fear, but with readiness. With eyes wide open and hands not wrung, but raised.

 Let the bell ring. Not in alarm, but with the joyous sound of opportunity.

Roger