December 17, 2025
For our final Resourcing the Field newsletter of 2025, we look at how both policy and philanthropy—preferably working together—can help build a sturdier civil society and, in so doing, a stronger nonprofit sector.
We begin with a story on advocacy, which tends to be viewed as a combination of grassroots mobilization and lobbying. But more creative options are possible. Tom Tresser writes a bit of a primer on how nonprofits can organize candidate forums to increase nonprofit visibility and help nonprofit priorities get incorporated into the agendas of local elected officials. Next, we have two stories about resourcing strategies from outside the United States. The first, from Brazil, looks at how community control over philanthropy allows for better coordination between funders and organizations, helping nonprofits make significant public policy gains. The second examines how social enterprise in Australia has organized itself as a movement, which has helped fuel federal support for social enterprise in a country where the concept was largely unknown 15 years ago.
Last but not least, we close with an article on how fiscal sponsors can help movement organizations not only with grant administration and resourcing but can sometimes provide a measure of political shielding for movement work.
I hope you find these articles useful in thinking about your own work. Best wishes for your own resourcing as you close out 2025.
Steve Dubb
Senior Editor
Economic Justice
