Editor’s note: The author is vice chairman of DHR Global, an executive search and leadership consulting firm with an active nonprofit practice.
At the beginning of each year, I produce a “forecast” for the coming year – a series of conjectures on what may become of the United States nonprofit sector. Last year, I predicted outcomes for 2025 based on who would win the 2024 presidential election, and then, after the results were known, wrote a follow-up and final set of predictions. I am sorry to say that my projections, though dire, did not come close to predicting the disastrous state that has befallen most of the sector in 2025.
There will be no presidential election in 2026, but there is ample current information to make some solid predictions and to speculate about others.
Education
Once the unparalleled world leader, U.S. higher education will continue to be buffeted in 2026. U.S. immigration law doesn’t just regulate borders—it shapes global educational flows. Right now, the system communicates uncertainty, risk, and limited reward. Until policy becomes clearer, faster, and more welcoming, American higher education will continue to lose talent to countries that understand a simple truth: students go where they’re wanted, and where they can build a future.
There are great financial implications. International students often pay full tuition. Enrollment declines hit public universities already squeezed by state funding cuts, smaller private colleges with fragile budgets, and graduate STEM programs that rely on foreign students.
F-1 and J-1 visa approvals are slower and less predictable. Heightened security reviews and administrative processing can drag on for months, making long-term planning for students risky. For an 18-year-old choosing where to study, “maybe you’ll get a visa” is not a compelling offer.
Rhetoric and enforcement practices from U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement and U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services have already shaped global perceptions. Even if policies soften, reputation lags reality. A 16-year-old who was considering studying in America now sees the U.S. as unpredictable or hostile to immigrants.
Less tangible but real, students from wealthier backgrounds can navigate legal help and delays; others can’t. Immigration complexity disproportionately excludes students from the Global South, refugees, displaced scholars, and first-generation international students. This narrows the intellectual and cultural diversity that campuses claim to value.
Loyalty tests and institutional acquiescence haven’t just chilled international enrollment; they’ve deformed the core operations and moral authority of U.S. higher education. Here’s what has specifically happened and what will likely accelerate.
There will be a further collapse of academic freedom in practice. Already, faculty are avoiding research topics, grant language, syllabi, and public scholarship that could trigger scrutiny, and graduate students are steering away from entire fields (ethnic studies, gender studies, migration, public humanities). These fields and others are likely to shrink or be eliminated. And, for many, it’s preemptive obedience. Universities didn’t need to be forced; many complied early.
The early retirement of faculty and faculty departures and the rejection of offers to new hires will accelerate. For this reason, Timothy Snyder, author of On Tyranny and other books warning of these times, his wife, and a philosophy professor all gave up tenure at Yale to teach at the University of Toronto. This is reverse brain drain, and it disproportionately affects public universities and regional institutions that can least afford it. Researchers are accepting offers at prestigious European research universities, affecting current and future scientific progress in the US.
And at the top of the institution, boards and legislatures are increasingly dictating curriculum boundaries and overriding faculty senates. What began in Florida and Texas is now, under the new administration, being implemented through withholding research funding, while large-donor board members are imposing their preferences on policy and governance.
Perhaps the most lasting damage; trust erodes, and once lost, it does not come back easily. Institutions that acquiesced quickly will struggle to claim principled leadership for a generation. Institutions now train faculty and staff not to think boldly, but to survive scrutiny.
What we’re seeing now is the early phase of a long institutional decline.
Social Service Sector
Under the Donald Trump administration, social service organizations have faced proposed and enacted cuts to housing, food assistance, refugee resettlement, and public health programs. Furthermore, short-term funding cycles are making long-term planning nearly impossible, leading to a greater reliance on private philanthropy to fill the gap left by federal withdrawals.
Nonprofits spend more time chasing money and less time delivering services. Smaller, community-based organizations are the first to collapse. Funding disruptions are widespread and severe. According to the Chronicle of Philanthropy, roughly one-third of U.S. nonprofit service providers experienced government funding disruptions in the first half of 2025. One in five organizations was serving fewer people, and 29 percent reduced staff. And the reinstatement of the 2017 laws, which reduce tax breaks for individuals, will negatively affect philanthropy by diminishing the financial incentives for individuals to contribute to nonprofit organizations.
The international social service sector, once the cornerstone of American democracy abroad, was eviscerated in one stroke early in 2025. Thousands of dedicated, talented, and caring professionals were fired. The sector has, for all purposes, disappeared. After a 2025 U.S. foreign aid freeze and restructuring, according to The Guardian, nearly all of USAID’s workforce, more than 10,000 employees globally, were placed on administrative leave or effectively fired, with only a few hundred retained. And thousands more employees of for-profit and nonprofit agencies that provided the research and implementation of international programs are now unemployed.
The immediate impact on food security, health, and economic development programs in Africa, Asia, and South America has been swift and, in some cases, life-threatening.
Arts and Culture
It is the arts and cultural sector that has most been in the news (the renaming of the Kennedy Center, the cuts to the National Endowments for the Arts and Humanities), and the damage is serious and extends beyond the headlines. State and local arts councils grow more cautious. Long-term planning collapses into short-term survival. Smaller, rural, and community-based organizations are the first to lose.
Senior officials in the Trump administration have publicly criticized Smithsonian exhibitions addressing systemic racism, accused the institution of promoting “divisive ideology,” and Trump issued the “Patriotic Education” executive order, explicitly naming museums and cultural institutions as sites of concern.
Perhaps the more visible examples are of direct government censorship. The state of Florida has sued arts institutions for “homophobic theater” works. Trump repeatedly uses campaign rallies, speeches, and social media to denounce artists, filmmakers, and cultural institutions as “radical,” “anti-American,” and “enemies.”
Even when unnamed, these attacks often followed specific exhibitions, films, or performances widely covered in the press. At times, named artists faced harassment and threats. Institutions that hosted their work faced donor funding withdrawals and board pressure. Some exhibitions and talks were canceled or postponed “for security reasons.” Anti-DEI rhetoric has also created a lack of opportunities for artists of color and for public commissions.
Predictions
What can these three sectors anticipate for the year, and perhaps beyond? Universities will remain open, but less brave, less global, and less honest about why. The long-term damage will be reputational, not just financial. The social service sector will shrink in capacity as demand spikes. The safety net will fray—not dramatically, but relentlessly. And American cultural output will become quieter, safer, and less relevant to lived reality. Innovation will move to informal, underfunded, or offshore spaces.
Across all sectors, anticipatory compliance will become the norm. Institutions won’t wait for rules—they will pre-comply while leaders prioritize stability over mission.
The most consequential decisions will happen invisibly: What isn’t taught, what isn’t funded, who isn’t invited, and what isn’t said. Those absences won’t show up in reports.
Marginalized communities, early-career professionals, international scholars and artists, and public-facing critical or experimental work will be hit the hardest.
History is unforgiving to organizations that mistake compliance for prudence. The question for the future is whether leaders will act—or merely endure.
