A Love Letter for Tulaine (June 2025)
Hello good people!
As we move into summer—a season of warmth, growth, and movement—I’ve been reflecting on the moment we’re in. It’s a time of tension and transition, where the challenges around us are evolving faster than most of us could have imagined. Whether you describe the current environment as turbulent, uncertain, or a generational déjà vu, I hope you’ll also see it as a moment of immense potential. Choosing hope isn’t easy, but it is powerful—and necessary.
I often return to this reflection by E.B. White:
“Every morning I awake torn between a desire to save the world and an inclination to savor it. This makes it hard to plan the day. But if we forget to savor the world, what possible reason do we have for saving it? In a way, the savoring must come first.”
After a long and heavy winter and spring, summer invites us to exhale, to reconnect, and to realign. The days are longer—and so is our capacity to gather, imagine, and act. At New Profit, this season is about deepening relationships and reenergizing our shared work. In a time marked by fragmentation and fatigue, community is what sustains us.
This March, many of us gathered at SXSW EDU and SXSW in Austin. It was a moment of energy and reconnection—of being in conversation with leaders across philanthropy, social impact, and beyond. One quote that stuck with me came from Sarah Johnson of Teaching Lab, a New Profit grantee:
“Now is not a time for strategic planning; it’s a time for emergent strategy.”
Designed by adrienne maree brown, Emergent Strategy draws from nature’s wisdom. It reminds us that adaptability, collaboration, interdependence, and imagination aren’t luxuries—they’re essentials. It urges us to move forward not with rigid plans but with shared intention, trust, and responsiveness to what communities are telling us they need.
That’s what we’re doing at New Profit—listening closely, staying grounded, and staying in community. In February, we co-hosted a gathering with the Ballmer Group and Echoing Green, bringing together over 70 philanthropic leaders. A few core themes emerged:
We must invest in overlooked communities and center systemic solutions;
We must strengthen relationships across sectors to better collaborate and coordinate;
We must prioritize long-term impact and organizational durability; and
We must take care of ourselves and one another—because sustainability starts with us.
These priorities reflect the spirit of Emergent Strategy—and we see them brought to life in the work that we lead and the organizations we support. City Bureau is reimagining local journalism, civic media, and participatory democracy by equipping local residents and training emerging journalists from underrepresented communities. Inclusive Action for the City is building thriving local economies in historically disinvested communities, blending access to capital with grassroots policy advocacy. These organizations—and many others—are building alongside their communities to develop adaptive, systemic solutions.
We’re also committed to sharing our learnings across the sector to encourage collaboration and coordination. Recently, we published insights from our Widespread Impact community of practice, offering a framework for scaling impact through collaboration, not replication. And we released an in-depth analysis of funding trends and opportunities in youth mental health and well-being—an area that requires collective response.
We continue to engage with dynamic networks and leaders across social impact to enhance our long-term impact. I was honored to participate in the Centre for Exponential Change’s exChange Summit in Brazil, where we explored what it means to enable collective action in complex times. Too often, philanthropy places its bets on individual “rockstars” to solve society’s biggest problems. But this mindset undermines the necessity of collective effort. No one person—no matter how visionary—can do it alone.
To meet this moment, we must shift from seeking superheroes to supporting the networks, coalitions, and communities that are solving complex problems together. Trust won’t be built through isolated interventions—it will be earned through collaboration. The most powerful way to accelerate trust is by working across differences, across sectors, and across silos to co-create solutions rooted in shared purpose.
Timely, adaptive love looks like this: showing up for one another, honoring interdependence, and believing in the collective power of many.
And finally, as always, we recognize the importance of rest—of replenishing ourselves so we can continue doing the work. As we do each year, New Profit will take a collective pause from June 30 to July 9. I hope each of us can find time to savor, connect, and recommit to shaping a future where everyone—across race, place, age, identity and background—can thrive.
With love,
Tulaine