Here in Western Michigan, the snow piles high, roads empty, and temperatures hover in a punishing freeze. My house is warm, my fridge full, my children safe — but the world outside feels anything but peaceful. I’ve felt restless, not because of cabin fever alone, but because in moments like these we’re called to use what we have.
What I have is a laptop, a warm home, and words. And right now, those words must grapple with what’s happening in Minneapolis — sparking protests and a broader fight over civil liberties that stretches far beyond Minnesota.
I am surrounded by safety that so many in this moment do not enjoy. I’ve joked with friends that people confuse Michigan with Minnesota when I mention I moved to the Midwest. But this week, homebound and united in national pain, location matters less than our collective action.
🧭 Truth, Resources, Convening: Philanthropy’s Role in the Moment
As Tonya Allen, President of the McKnight Foundation, recently wrote:
“Our job in philanthropy is to tell the truth, share resources, and gather people across businesses, educational institutions, faith organizations, civil society, and other centers of people power to devise solutions and demand action.”
This isn’t theory — it’s an operational framework for crisis:
Truth – Uphold the First Amendment. Document protest. Protect journalists and storytellers. Fund evidence-gathering and community-controlled communications infrastructure.
Resources – Fund trauma response, legal defense, digital security, and tech coordination tools. Move dollars to where the risk is — not where the process is smoothest.
Convening – Host tables for strategizing. Bring together educators, artists, technologists, organizers, faith leaders, and funders with a shared goal: protect the commons, coordinate the message, move the response.
This framework resonates far beyond philanthropy. It’s a compass for how any of us can respond.
🤖 Enter: AI — A Tool, Not a Savior
AI is not going to save us (#Mockingbird walter tevis). But it can help us act faster and more clearly — if we use it with intention.
Pulitzer Prize–winning historian Heather Ann Thompson reminds us that when violence is state-sanctioned and narratives are reversed, we enter dangerous territory:
“We are watching someone tell us exactly who they are, exactly what they did, and it will not matter. Up will become down, down will become up. And that also felt very, very familiar to where we are today.”
We have seen this pattern before. And we know what happens when we freeze — or worse, look away.
AI can:
Translate breaking events into localized calls to action
Deliver the right message to the right people at the right time
Support rapid coordination and communication in crisis
Free up human staff to focus on trust, relationships, and coordination
But it must be used responsibly, with clear boundaries and values-led. As the Center for Effective Philanthropy reminds us:
“We need to ask not just what AI can do, but what it should do — and who decides. Philanthropy can and must play a critical role in ensuring AI is used to support, not supplant, human-centered values and the common good.”
Let’s wield AI as infrastructure and in service of people power.
💭 Fear Is Natural — Freeze Is Not Strategy
It’s human to feel frozen by shock, sorrow, or the overwhelming pace of politics and violence. On days like today — cold, isolated, uncertain — it’s easy to want to freeze in place. To want to wait it out, to hope someone else moves first, to question whether what you have to offer even matters.
I get it. I’m writing this from a snow-locked house in rural Michigan, wondering what my laptop and my platform actually accomplish when federal agents are shooting citizens in the street. The scale of the crisis and the smallness of my tools don’t match.
The scale of the crisis and the smallness of my tools don’t match.
But freezing isn’t strategy. It’s not even rest. It’s just a way of letting the shock make decisions for us.
This moment echoes painful and familiar dynamics in American history. As historian Heather Ann Thompson reminds us in her reflections on the 1984 Bernhard Goetz subway shooting (and the politics that followed), episodes of violence and the reactions to them can reshape public policy, national narratives, and racial politics for decades. Fear is not the answer — but understanding history, and acting with purpose, is.
Thompson’s work helps us see that how we respond now — to violence, to polarization, to erosion of rights — will shape the next chapter of our civic life.
🔥 Wield What You Have
We don’t need to be perfect. We just need to move.
If you’re a grantmaker trying to figure out how to move resources faster, build trust with communities, reduce burden while maintaining rigor, or use technology ethically in service of equity — you’re not alone.
Tomorrow, we’re hosting a conversation about exactly that.
Join us for the PEAK 2026 Webinar: Bridging the Divide — a discussion on what private philanthropy can learn from public charity grantmakers who must continuously raise funds, demonstrate accountability, and stay deeply responsive to community needs.
We’ll cover:
How fundraising pressure shapes transparency and trust with grantees
Practical strategies to streamline applications and reporting without sacrificing diligence
Using technology (including AI) to reduce burden and improve clarity
Community-centered practices like continuous feedback loops, oral reporting, and co-design that you can pilot in 30 days
These aren’t hypothetical. They’re operational blueprints — and they’re available now.
📅 January 28, 2026
🔗 Register here ← Insert link
If you’ve been frozen, you are not alone. But you do not have to stay still.
Let’s wield what we have.
Read more:
Tonya Allen, “Philanthropy Must Stand Up for Minneapolis — and Our Country,” The Chronicle of Philanthropy, January 22, 2026.
https://www.philanthropy.com/opinion/philanthropy-must-stand-up-for-minneapolis-and-our-countryHeather Ann Thompson, Fear and Fury: The Reagan Eighties, the Bernie Goetz Shootings, and the Rebirth of White Rage, 2024.
Quoted via interview on Fresh Air with Tonya Mosley. NPR.
https://www.npr.org/2024/01/26/1227666782/fear-and-fury-heather-ann-thompson-subway-shooting-white-rageCenter for Effective Philanthropy, “Responsible AI: How Philanthropy Can (and Should) Support the Movement,” CEP Blog, October 24, 2023.
https://cep.org/blog/responsible-ai-how-philanthropy-can-and-should-support-the-movement/Philanthropy New York, “Exploring Alternative Operating Models for Nonprofits,”
https://philanthropynewyork.org/news/exploring-alternative-operating-models-nonprofitsWalter Tevis, Mockingbird, Del Rey Books, 1980.
Referenced metaphorically in context: AI is not the solution, much like the cautionary technological dystopia in Mockingbird.Heather Ann Thompson. “How the Bernie Goetz Shootings Explain the Trump Era.” The Atlantic, January 26, 2026. https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/2026/01/bernie-goetz-shooting-racial-resentment/685726/