We asked journalists who cover the sector to share what they’ve been hearing and thinking about the challenges facing the charitable and philanthropic sector in 2026.
—with files from Sherlyn Assam, Gordon Bowness, Toula Drimonis, Tim Harper, Angela Long, Christina Palassio, and Yvonne Rodney
In 2025, journalists on assignment for The Philanthropist Journal attended sector conferences, read books about the sector, talked to organizations on the front lines in remote regions, interviewed sector leaders, and more. Everywhere, they asked questions. Journalists ask so many questions. You shared with them your hopes, anxieties, plans, strategies, and wishes.
But what do they think?
This year, for The Journal’s annual look ahead at the coming year – in which we usually reach out to sector leaders and thinkers to ask what’s on their radar at the start of a new year – we flipped the script. We asked journalists who cover the sector what they think about the sector and what they’ve been hearing in conversations and interviews over the last year. They pointed to a range of issues facing the sector and a veritable deluge of concerns.
“I have a lot of sympathy for the sector because of what’s happening south of the border,” says Tim Harper, a long-time Philanthropist Journal contributor who spent more than three decades at the Toronto Star holding roles including Ottawa bureau chief, Washington correspondent, and national editor. “In my view at least, you’ve got to be careful, and you’ve got to be ducking for cover, because you don’t know when the next initiative will land.” (Scroll to the bottom for more thoughts from Tim Harper and the other journalists interviewed, on the year that was and what’s to come.)
I have a lot of sympathy for the sector because of what’s happening south of the border.
Tim Harper
Journalists also inevitably talked about the important relationship between philanthropy and journalism: both, they said time and time again, have a shared interest and role in a healthy democracy. And both are facing headwinds in 2026.
Journalists are used to asking questions. They’re not always so used to answering them. But some of The Journal’s main contributors from the past year opened up to share their reflections on the year that was – and what’s to come.
‘People are falling apart’ and the charitable sector can’t keep up
Much ink has been spilled about the difficulties of 2025: global conflict, tariffs, and affordability chief among them. It’s also something that came up – often – in journalists’ conversations with sector leaders this year.
The sector is facing what has been dubbed a “trilemma” and a “compounding crisis.” According to an April report from Carleton University’s Charity Insights Canada Project, the trilemma consists of three forces: rising demand for services that’s outpacing charities’ capacity, workforce challenges, and financial instability because of short-term, unpredictable, and shrinking funding.
How are service providers going to cope?
Yvonne Rodney
The stats are dire: nearly three-quarters of charities report they can’t meet rising demand, according to the report. Eighty percent say they need more funding to cover rising costs. More than three-quarters say they are dealing with increased mental health challenges among staff and volunteers. Nearly half report a drop in individual donations. It’s a list of challenges journalists are used to hearing about – and they see the risks.
“How are service providers going to cope?” wonders Yvonne Rodney, a writer, career development specialist, and contributor to The Philanthropist Journal.
“A lot of these issues are complex, multifaceted issues,” says Toula Drimonis, a Montreal-based journalist and another Journal contributor. “When you’re dealing with affordability, when you’re dealing with housing, the lack of housing, the fact that a lot of people right now can’t afford the basics – there are no easy fixes for these things.” Drimonis doesn’t foresee challenges – from rising demand for services to mental health issues – going away anytime soon. “I’m definitely hearing that it’s not getting better.”
A trilemma – or a polycrisis – requires a coordinated response. And that’s something the sector has to improve on.
“The sector is really feeling the pressures of having limited services, limited capacity, but also not necessarily being mature enough as a sector, in terms of data management, to basically collaborate and also know what to do with the large amount of Canadians that they serve,” says Sherlyn Assam, a Philanthropist Journal contributor who attended the Charity Insights Canada Project Data Summit in October.
The leaders that I’ve been speaking to this past year have been really surprising me with their just basic human decency and empathy.
Angela Long
At the same time, journalists have been heartened by the deep empathy with which the sector is approaching its myriad challenges. “The leaders that I’ve been speaking to this past year have been really surprising me with their just basic human decency and empathy, infusing everything we do with empathy and kindness and love. I mean, they’re also talking about love, which I find so surprising but also so heartening,” says Angela Long, a journalist and Journal contributor. “I’m hearing more and more that that’s at the heart of everything,” she says. “Like, if you’re in the environmental sector . . . instilling a sense of love in nature, for example, this is how we can create change.”
‘The Donald Trump prism’: Threats to democracy top of mind in the sector
The polycrisis was not new in 2025. It’s a series of challenges, exacerbated by the COVID-19 pandemic and sent into something of a tailspin by policy changes coming from the United States under President Donald Trump’s bullish second term. “If you look all around, it’s coming at the sector from all sides,” says Harper, who says he hears many concerns from sector leaders about what’s happening south of the border, including “the ripping apart of [diversity, equity, and inclusion] initiatives and whether they’ll leak across the border, and the draconian cuts to foreign aid and public broadcasting.”
If you look all around, it’s coming at the sector from all sides.
Tim Harper
“Everything seems to funnel through the Donald Trump prism,” says Harper, who is not optimistic for the larger societal context in 2026. “I don’t like the geopolitical outlook, and I don’t like the financial outlook in Canada, with the [United States-Mexico-Canada Agreement], the North American free trade deal, up for renegotiation,” he says. “I think all this is going to put pressure on economics and the sector going forward. The sector is also highly leveraged in the stock market and had better be very careful about an AI bubble, too. So I just see a lot of forces bearing down on the sector.”
Gordon Bowness, another contributor, agrees. At the start of 2025, he says, many people were worried about how the outcome of the April federal election could affect the sector – and those sorts of fears aren’t going away. “The threat of a change in government put the fear of God in many people in the Canadian philanthropic sector. That risk is still there,” he says. “There’s still risks at the provincial level and elsewhere – for how that kind of mean-spirited and anti-intellectual and anti-science movement can impact the sector.”
There’s still risks at the provincial level [of government] and elsewhere – for how that kind of mean-spirited and anti-intellectual and anti-science movement can impact the sector.
Gordon Bowness
“That’s still a very big risk, both in this country and beyond, and that relates to the rise of social media and how communication strategies really do have to deal with countering miscommunication and misinformation,” he says. “The world seems to have a nastier edge to it, in a way that I don’t think it had in the past.”
Though some people in the sector may have been inwardly relieved that the federal election didn’t bring major changes, many were still disappointed by the new government’s first federal budget.
I’m interested in learning how charities are going to be pivoting and basically engaging more in advocacy work.
Sherlyn Assam
But government policy – and what’s in the budget – can be influenced by the sector. “I’m interested in learning how charities are going to be pivoting and basically engaging more in advocacy work,” Assam says. Only about half of Canadian charities engage in advocacy work, according to a March 2025 Charity Insights Canada Project report. Many charities report that they don’t see advocacy work as relevant to their mission.
But for others, it “is not for want of trying, but often for limited capacity,” Assam says. “That goes back to not having enough people who are trained to do advocacy and lobby work, and not having enough time to do it in the first place.”
Journalists reflect on sector communications
Journalists are storytellers by nature, and as such are very attuned to the stories the sector is telling about itself. And though public relations and journalism can often be at odds with one another – think of a government refusing a journalist’s requests for information, or a corporation dodging tough questions – that doesn’t mean journalists don’t respect the work of building narratives for a good cause.
“Communications doesn’t get enough visibility,” says Christina Palassio, a journalist and Philanthropist Journal contributor who also works in the arts, food security, and international development sectors. “There are amazing communications and marketing people working in the sector, working super hard, in the face of a changing and difficult global political climate and changing mindsets on issues.”
“Lots of people are doing really good work to hold the line and to put out progressive narratives that are about care and dignity and people,” Palassio adds. “That needs to continue to happen . . . to build narratives that are compelling and engaging – even when it feels like things are scary and hopeless and uncertain.”
Lots of people are doing really good work to hold the line and to put out progressive narratives that are about care and dignity and people.
Christina Palassio
But the sector’s communications have not always hit the mark.
“There’s often a disconnect between the objectives of various philanthropic organizations and their service users, and it’s a communications disconnect where people don’t know services are available,” Bowness says. “Organizations in the sector could do a better job on communications to the general public.”
And at times, Bowness says, sector communications have tended to lean towards “wonk.” “I do find the sector still a bit bewildering . . . especially when it comes to things like policy,” he says. “If your bailiwick is around policy, then the language just becomes so hard to penetrate. There’s an overreliance on terminology and inside terms that I find very baffling at times.”
Organizations in the sector could do a better job on communications to the general public.
Gordon Bowness
For Bowness, the sector is still learning to better communicate with the general public while navigating a complicated political landscape. “When you get to the upper echelons of the philanthropic sector, the ones that have to deal with government regulation and policy . . . it becomes really hard for a lay reader to understand what’s going on, because so much of it is imbued with a history of certain political outlooks that have their own terminology, and recognizing that as soon as you use one term, it’s a political hot potato,” he says. “Of course, people have to be careful about language, but it becomes a form of obscurantism . . . I think it really can undermine accessibility. It makes it very hard for people to enter that realm and contribute.”
But for Bowness, this is a clear place where journalism can step in and fulfill a need. “That’s one of the ways that the symbiosis between journalism and philanthropy can develop. Here is an industry where wordsmiths are tasked with coming up with ordinary, accessible language, and deciphering the policy speak that can stranglehold comprehension.”
‘Symbiotic relationship between independent local news and philanthropy’
And, indeed, 2025 was another year of increased partnering between philanthropic foundations and journalism outlets. “There’s a much better understanding and more of what I like to call a symbiotic relationship between independent local news and philanthropy,” Harper says. “The sector more clearly understands editorial independence, and, I mean, it works both ways. Almost all foundations that I deal with will donate and basically get out of the way.”
Last year saw a new pooled fund for small local news outlets, led by Inspirit Foundation, as well as another gathering of journalism outlets and funders in Charlottetown, among other initiatives. But Harper says that the sector’s interest in funding journalism is not about saving the journalism industry. It’s a recognition of the importance of journalism – and a shared set of facts – to democracy. “A lot of [funders] are delving into journalism, not because they’re enamoured with journalism or trying to save journalism – but because they understand democracy is under attack in this country, and local news outlets can erode some of the sharp edges of partisanship, at least at the local level,” Harper says. “[Journalism] can promote social cohesion, and I think the sector also realizes that.”
But journalism outlets have been struggling across Canada, with a tidal wave of shutdowns of local newspapers and layoffs at larger outlets. Long knows about that firsthand. She started writing about the importance of local news and how it’s connected to philanthropy in 2018. “I started an article for The Philanthropist Journal, and that’s when I did a research trip as well across Canada, visiting rural local news outlets,” she says. “That was seven years ago, and now, I think, almost half of the places that I visited have closed down,” she says, pointing to how dire the situation is for so many journalism outlets in Canada. But it’s not universally true, she says. “Others are thriving, so it’s really hard to know.”
The important challenge going forward, according to journalists, is to make sure any philanthropic funding for journalism makes it to the organizations that need it, and that are doing the crucial work of strengthening democracy and reducing polarization.
Nation-building through community
“The more spaces that we can create where that kind of non-partisan exchange – nation-building or whatever you want to call it – the better,” Palassio says. “We need to talk about things we all care about and find solutions together and show how we can work together.”
Social cohesion will be a focus of the sector in 2026, according to the journalists who cover it. “I think more than ever people are understanding that community is at the very core . . . I think it’s where it starts,” says Drimonis, who points to the isolation of the pandemic. “A lot of people were spending a lot of time alone. And I feel more and more people are understanding and realizing the importance of connection and of grassroots efforts on the ground. It starts with us; it starts individually. It starts in your community, starts in your neighbourhoods.”
Everyone is really stressing these connections, these collaborations on the ground in the communities.
Toula Drimonis
It’s something Drimonis says she’s hearing a lot about from funders and charities, too. “Everyone is really stressing these connections, these collaborations on the ground in the communities. Few things can happen unless people really come together to understand what the needs are,” she says. “Instead of just having a government agency or someone kind of high [up] deciding what the needs are, [people are] really understanding that it’s about collaboration and communication, and really kind of getting to the nitty-gritty of it.”
Drimonis sees an increasing trend in the sector of “understanding that you need to understand what the needs are before you can actually attempt to offer solutions.”
People in the sector are strained
The impact of years of global tension, pandemic-related isolation, and more is leaving its mark on workers and volunteers in the sector, including those interviewed by journalists for The Philanthropist Journal. “The more I get exposed to the sector, [the more I realize] just how much work people are doing, and all types of work – like, they’ve got their primary services that they’re offering, but they’re also dealing with communications, and they’re dealing with their own mental health issues . . . This is an anxiety-provoking time,” Bowness says.
Rodney agrees, pointing to the challenge many people face in finding stable employment. “I talk to a lot of young people, primarily from the Black community. Many of them are not in stable work. They’re living with a lot less stability,” she says. “People are falling apart.” She points the finger at least in part at a walk-back of some of the progress made in recent years. “Work–life balance, and all the DEI gains we made during the pandemic are being repealed.”
Young people are engaged, but they’re engaged different. Really, they’re online.
Yvonne Rodney
It’s not just employees within the sector who are struggling. There are also fewer and fewer volunteers, part of a generational shift in priorities. Roughly half of charities report not having enough volunteers, according to a 2025 Charity Insights Canada Project report.
Rodney says that re-engaging a disenchanted younger generation will require thinking differently. “Young people are engaged, but they’re engaged different. Really, they’re online,” she says. “I think the tendency is to make a case that young people are not interested. But I don’t know if that is it. They may not necessarily engage the same way that my generation did, but they don’t want to be excluded.”
Financial stresses continue to strain the sector
Younger Canadians may be volunteering less – but they are also donating less. CanadaHelps’s annual giving report found that Canadians over 65 accounted for more than a third of all donations in 2025, and more than half of donor dollars. And that’s part of a general trend in a declining number of donors. It’s something journalists hear a lot about. “Organizations are trying to survive and trying to diversify their funding,” Palassio says. “We don’t want to see what happens if we disinvest, especially in this political climate.”
Challenges with funding are among the top refrains journalists hear again and again. “Organizations are dealing with the fact that they’re feeling underfunded; they are trying to secure stable funding and it’s a hard thing. People are feeling the pinch,” Drimonis says. “They are surviving day by day, not getting the funding that they need.”
Sector is ‘changing for the better’: journalist
Many journalists who contribute to The Philanthropist Journal had little or no experience with the sector before they started covering it.
“I’m an outsider. I came into this completely blind to some of the attitudes and the family battles and strategies in the sector. I found it, initially, as everybody else would acknowledge, was really risk-averse. It was very conservative,” Harper says. But from his vantage point, that’s changing. “I believe the sector is becoming a little bit more proactive, a bit more aggressive, less risk-averse, and I think that’s all to the better. I think a lot of that is because there’s a new generation that is coming in . . . instead of the old family foundations that wanted their name on the hospital wing,” he says. “There’s a lot of issues out there that a newer generation of leaders in the sector realize are underfunded and underrepresented, including the underrepresentation and underfunding of Indigenous and Black organizations, mainly. It’s a very white top-heavy sector that I think is changing for the better.”
That change in sector leadership is coming at the right time, Long says. “There’s people that are thinking big and bold in the philanthropic sector, and I hope that their voices will be amplified. I think that that’s part of systemic change . . . I think this is kind of gaining momentum.”
But it won’t happen overnight. “It takes time, and it takes a lot of collaboration and a lot of people to kind of put their heads together, whether it’s [for-]profit, non-profit, government – everyone to kind of come together and find solutions,” Drimonis says. “A lot of these issues are national. These are across the board . . . It’s everywhere. So I don’t expect that things will get better right away. I think it’ll take time.”
The year that was and the year to come: Journalists in their own words
Budget 2025’s refrain to “spend less” to “invest more” is a bid to assure Canadians about job markets and the future of the economy. Unfortunately, the non-profit sector and Canadians receiving its services are not a substantial part of the offer. The federal budget’s objectives focus on harnessing energy industries, building housing, prioritizing domestic markets, and trade. But the non-profit sector needs sector-specific and ongoing funding, too.
Charitable organizations are receiving fewer annual donations and losing volunteers. Limited funding and increased need are causing precarious work conditions – and by extension, staff capacity and retention issues, which affects the quantity and quality of the services that Canadians need. Organizations should not have to rely on Canadians surviving amidst rising inflation to keep health, social, and community services running. Government investments should secure non-profit jobs, government ministries as permanent funding partners, and federal data services that help organizations serve vulnerable populations better. We’ve already seen this during the pandemic: without the non-profit sector, Canadians will be left behind.
As someone who has spent more than 25 years working in 2SLGBTQIA+ media, I’ve been struck by the parallels between community-centred journalism and the philanthropic sector. They share a set of core values like care, utility, engagement, trust, and collaboration. More broadly, I think, both journalism and philanthropy recognize that a better-informed, more engaged citizenry is critical in establishing a healthier, sustainable, and more equitable society.
As such, the two sectors are courting each other, hesitantly at first (versus a more red-blooded embrace in the United States). An increasing number of journalism outlets are moving into the philanthropic sector, embracing not-for-profit/charitable corporate structures to diversify their funding streams. Meanwhile, many in the philanthropic sector are turning to journalism to advance their missions by directly supporting individual media outlets (on a project-specific basis or through start-up and ongoing funding), providing critical financial support to a sector under siege.
I can’t emphasize the importance of media literacy enough. Social media has become a breeding ground for misinformation and disinformation deliberately designed to sow distrust.
Lack of media literacy makes people more susceptible to divisive rhetoric and fake news, leading to polarization, disillusionment, political apathy, and the erosion of public trust in democratic institutions and the media itself.
When people are unable to discern credible sources from fake content created to manipulate, they retreat into echo chambers, form a distorted view of reality, forge more extreme views, and often find themselves unable or unwilling to engage in genuine civic discourse. Without media literacy, too many people online aren’t equipped to detect fake news or bots, the use of AI, or political propaganda masquerading as facts-based political criticism.
The Canadian government has called disinformation “the single biggest risk to our democracy,” because a healthy, functioning democratic system depends on people being able to make informed decisions.
We live in a polarized world in which political opponents lob barbs and threats at each other from behind their respective social media bunkers. Many of us look south in horror, watching guardrails being bulldozed, civility and respect disappearing, the justice system used for retribution, and the very core values of democracy eroding daily.
Independent journalism can soften some of those sharp partisan edges. Local news can sustain the community square where news of your local hockey team, accomplishments of your neighbours, or the shared joy of a civic triumph can bring people together and coax them from those bunkers. Funders who once questioned the value of supporting journalism now realize they are really supporting democracy and the kinship of community when they back local media.
The philanthropic sector can struggle when our social fabric is being ripped apart, but it can help repair that fabric by supporting local journalism. Increasingly, philanthropy and local journalism are coming to understand that they need each other.
A watercolour painting of a bright-red-and-pink heart. A story of grieving the death of a sister nearly 20 years later. A book recommendation to view rivers as sentient beings.
It’s easy when you interview people in the philanthropic sector to get caught up in all the jargon, in the language of non-qualified donees and disbursement quotas. But this past year so many interviewees, with little coaxing, cut right to the chase. It’s time to get back to basics. Forget about reports and funding strategies; let’s tune in to our empathy. Let’s amp up the love. These are our superpowers.
They reminded me that, after all is said and done, that’s what lies at the heart of philanthropy: the love and care for all beings, and, as one interviewee put it, a belief that “we are in this together and that we cannot let the dark clouds and the enemies of decency win the day.”
The things I’m concerned about include the continued squeeze on our sector – higher demand, less operational funding, more uncertainty and stress, and a growing social deficit. I’m interested in areas where funders and organizations are exploring collaborative and pooled funding to make progress on issues like gender justice and housing. And I’m interested in seeing more funders step up to support women’s and gender justice organizations as essential social infrastructure.
In the development space, I’m concerned about the impact of the dismantling of USAID, which is reported to already be leading to hundreds of thousands of deaths worldwide, and of the funding cuts to aid made by governments worldwide, which will set back progress on education, health, gender equality, poverty alleviation, and other key issues. Canada can and should step up here instead of stepping back.
When people get on our nerves, it is so easy to forget that we need each other; that the interactive rub that we experience as we do life together is necessary for our mental health and well-being. Mental health challenges floated to the top during and after the COVID-19 pandemic, not only because of the fear of the unknown but also because of the imposed isolation we experienced. People need people. These days I see my medical doctor – online; my therapist – online; clients – online; classes – online; work – online; and meet – online. While these have their upsides, absolutely nothing beats a hug or warm handshake, the camaraderie of shared laughter, food, and presence.
I see more young people unable to cope, higher cases of social anxiety, younger children who missed out on learning how to interact, and more mental health incidents on public transit. We resort to spending time with our non-judgmental devices instead of looking into the eyes of the person beside us and acknowledging their presence in the room. And for that, we are paying a high price. We are forgetting how to be humane.
What are we – service providers, counsellors, charities, non-profits, corporations, journalists, artists, pundits, and politicians – going to do different in the new year to build back interactive spaces and address these hurts? Do we have the willingness to do so, the capacity and the energy? The fatigue is real. So is the task that must be done. But if each one of us does one good thing with one of us . . . we can begin to turn the tide.
