We’ve been talking a lot about how the election results affect strategies and messaging for political and advocacy groups. Today, let’s turn our attention to humanitarian groups and mainstream charities.

Let’s look at both a short-term and slightly longer-term issue coming to the fore:

Don’t make easy assumptions about where your audience stands.

The audiences of most charitable organizations include a mix of people from both sides of our country’s political divide. And the more mainstream the charity, the more fluid the audiences’ political mix. That said, there are some groups in the sector – especially international humanitarian ones — with audiences that lean left.

But even if a group’s audience is mostly aligned in one direction, it doesn’t mean the audience sees that organization as an appropriate vehicle for acting on their ideological or partisan interests.

All of which is to say, right now, it’s best to be cautious about venturing outside your lane.

Year-end giving to political causes and charitable ones isn’t a zero sum game.

Typically, an election turning decisively in one direction provokes elevated giving to the losing side. Sometimes that increased giving can be quite dramatic. But a surge in political giving rarely translates into a big decline on the charitable front.

People tend to see the two kinds giving as distinct buckets. Usually, they don’t let decisions to dig deeper on one front overly influence giving on the other.

The immediate struggle is more about getting peoples’ attention than gaining their support.

For charities, the biggest worry in the crucial weeks ahead is getting people to focus on their work. The lull that usually happens between the end of an election and the launching of a new administration is not as evident this year. Donald Trump and his allies are moving swiftly. They’re dominating news cycles with attention-getting Cabinet nominees and policy pronouncements. That’s leaving less space for other news and information to get through.

People need reassurance that some areas of life are positive and uplifting. 

Whatever side your audiences are on politically, they probably didn’t see the recent campaign as an edifying experience. And uncertainty abounds as to where things are headed. For charities, that creates space for what I call counter-programming.

People have a thirst for positive energy, uplift and unambiguous good news. Charities meeting that need with their year-end offerings are likely to succeed. On the other hand, as people turn their attention back to your work, if your implicit message is “things are pretty bad over here too,” that’s far less likely to connect.

Indeed, if there is a single rule that should guide year-end and early 2025 charitable group messaging, it is this:

The clearer the opportunity for immediate,
positive impact, the better the response.

Being alert to what’s happening around us and not over-thinking should get most charities through the next couple of months in fine shape. But then things will get really interesting and “business as usual” strategies and messaging will be put to the test.

Here’s why. Almost across the board, the watchword of the opening months of the Trump administration will be disruption. And neither charitable nor humanitarian organizations are likely to escape the need to react to that disruption.

Prepare for change and controversy as the most ambitious Trump policies are advanced.

Like most American institutions, charitable organizations work best when operating in an environment where challenges are confronted in the context of established norms and safe assumptions. If Donald Trump and new administration are intent on anything, it is ignoring those norms and upending those assumptions.

With few exceptions, charities or humanitarian groups that plan on their 2025 activities being a straightforward extension of their 2024 ones are in for a rude awakening.

Easy assumptions about how 2025 will unfold will undoubtedly be upended.

Predicting substantial 2025 disruption in the charitable/humanitarian landscape is easy. Forecasting exactly how that disruption will unfold and on what timetable is a much harder, perhaps impossible, task at the moment.But this much is certain. Groups that think ahead, consider scenarios and game plan strategies will fare better than those that don’t do those things. In a climate like the one we are entering, “wait and see” isn’t a strategy.

Humanitarian groups will have a hard time staying out of the fray.

International humanitarian groups have long been arrayed along a continuum. At one end, there are what you might call “good works” groups that do all they can to help people in crisis but don’t get involved in “challenging the system.”

At the other end are groups that combine “on the ground” humanitarian projects with advocacy efforts demanding changes in governmental policies and corporate actions they see as the root causes of the turmoil in peoples’ lives.All through 2024, the war and humanitarian crisis facing the Palestinian people has forced humanitarian groups to struggle with how to respond and react to the horror they are seeing on the ground. Can they stick to just helping people in crisis or do they need to engage on policy and advocacy terms including challenging the actions of our own government?

If Donald Trump upends U.S. foreign policy as much as expected, groups that have operated on a “we do good works, we don’t take sides” platform may face a fundamental choice: Do they enter the fray or try to stay above it?

Health charities may face an even starker set of choices.

If he survives a nomination fight, Robert Kennedy Jr. – a proponent of crazy, dangerous, scientifically indefensible public health ideas – will soon hold the most significant health care position in the country.

What happens if he acts on his wildest ideas from such a powerful perch? If he weakens access to vaccines at the heart of American health care, what do charities committed to developing and delivering those vaccines do? Do groups that have long maintained an apolitical stance just keep their head down and avoid “becoming too political?” Or do they choose to speak up and push back?

We can ask the same questions about groups working on childhood nutrition, food safety and a host of other issues. Will we reach a point where the traditional approach to their mission is hopelessly disrupted? 

Will there be a time when silence feels like a betrayal of the people they serve? If they decide they have to speak up, how will their donors and constituents react? None of these are easy questions to confront. But they may well be on the horizon.

Deciding to speak out doesn’t mean adopting the rhetoric of harsh, anti-Trump advocacy groups.

Charities, professional associations and others may decide extraordinary circumstances force them to adopt a new posture. But if that moment comes, they will have to find ways to speak out in a voice consistent with their identity.

That will be a major communications challenge – finding a way to have a meaningful impact on the public dialogue without forfeiting the authority, standing and respect that make their decision to step forward meaningful in the first place.

Groups can’t wait to be boxed into a corner on these vital questions.

The smartest organizations are already thinking through the challenges that almost certainly lay ahead. They’re gaming out different scenarios. When will a reckless government action force their hand? Which actions would totally disrupt the way they do business?  What are the consequences of adopting a more political stance?And the most pivotal question of all: What is the red line and, if it gets crossed, how will they respond?

We have at least a partial script for how opposition to Donald Trump’s initiatives will play out for advocacy groups. And it’s not hard to map out how humanitarian groups with a history of advocacy work will respond in the weeks ahead. 

But, the same can’t be said for charities and more mainstream humanitarian organizations. Watching them work through mission-related choices, strategic directions, and messaging approaches will be some of the most fascinating and consequential events in the year ahead.