Every week I talk to social impact leaders who are navigating change. Some come to us when they’re ready to rebuild — testing new models, questioning old assumptions, reimagining what’s possible.
Others come when they’re poised to scale. They’ve built something that works and now they need to amplify it. And some come when they’re simply stuck. Working harder than ever but spinning in place.
But here’s what I’m starting to see: The leaders and orgs who are thriving right now — whether they’re building, consolidating, or resting — have learned to read their seasons. And the ones who are struggling are fighting against theirs.
Once you see this pattern, you can’t unsee it.
The Pattern Nobody Teaches You
Here’s what nobody tells you about organizational growth: it’s not about doing more, moving faster, or doing better. It’s about knowing what season you’re in and acting accordingly.
Some seasons call for bold vision. Plant the seeds. Launch the initiative. Take the risk.
Other seasons call for discipline. Tend what you’ve planted. Show up every day. Do the hard work that makes things grow.
Still other seasons call for harvesting. Consolidating gains, reflecting on what worked, capturing value before the next cycle begins.
And some seasons call for rest. For letting go of what’s not working. For rebuilding capacity before moving on to the next big thing.
When You’re Out of Sync
I spent most of this year calling it a sh*tshow. I recently had to intentionally reframe this belief just to get out of my own way.
It felt like the harder I worked, the more energy I put into things, the harder things got. I kept asking myself: what am I doing wrong?
But I wasn’t doing anything wrong. I was just out of sync with my season.
I thought we were in spring. Time to plant new things. I imagined and launched new offerings and frameworks. I rethought our path. I defaulted to my comfort zone. The “What if” frame of mind. The problem solving instinct that’s helped me get through tough times in the past.
But I think I was planting when I should have been tending.
Turns out it’s harder to read the label from inside the bottle.
I see it everyday: Leaders launching initiatives when they should be consolidating. Organizations trying to scale when they should be stabilizing. Teams pushing for growth when they need rest.
All that effort. All that exhaustion. Not because they’re doing the wrong things, but because they’re doing them in the wrong season.
What 15 Years Have Taught Me
Looking back, I can see Cosmic’s cycles clearly now. Years 1-3 were raw energy and experimentation. Years 4-6 got serious. Building systems, making it real. Years 7-12 were about focus, differentiation, and deepening our expertise.
And now years 13-15 feel like…starting over. Reimagining our model. Testing assumptions. Adapting to massive change. But without that fresh excitement that year 1 had.
How do you get excited about rebuilding something you’ve already put 15 years into building?
I don’t have a perfect answer. But I’m learning that maturity isn’t about having solved all the problems. It’s about recognizing the patterns — the cycles you’re living through even when you can’t always see them in the moment.
The Work Nobody Wants to Do
As a creative thinker who feels most comfortable in that “what if” space, I’m always tempted to plant more seeds. New ideas. New experiments.
But new ideas are easy. The question is: who’s going to tend to them? Who’s going to do the simple but hard work of showing up every single day and realizing those ideas?
I guess that’s what I’m doing with this newsletter. With our Spotlight Series. With our podcast. Work I genuinely enjoy, but that requires consistency, not fits and starts.
Fits and starts is one of the biggest mistakes in branding and communications work. Organizations do the big rebrand, the big campaign, then nothing. No consistency. No nurturing. No showing up week after week.
They plant without tending. And nothing grows that way.
Reading Your Season
So how do you know what season you’re in?
You have to learn to read the signals.
Are strategies that used to work suddenly not working?
Is everything feeling harder than it should?
Are you planning new things when you have unfinished work that needs tending? You might be in fall wishing it were spring.
The social impact sector as a whole feels like it’s in transition right now. Rebuilding models. Facing unexpected threats. Exhausted from the fallout of the pandemic years, political turmoil, funding uncertainty. Some organizations are in winter, consolidating. Others are in fall, finally seeing planted seeds bloom. A few are in spring, making bold moves.
And many, unfortunately, are out of sync. Fighting their season, wondering why everything feels so hard.
After 15 years, I’m finally starting to see the pattern. Growth isn’t linear. It’s cyclical. And the wisdom is recognizing where you actually are, not where you wish you were.
What season is your organization in right now? And what would it look like to stop fighting it and start working with it? Drop your thoughts in the comments below.
What Political Campaigns Know That Nonprofits Don't
Every month, political campaigns raise hundreds of millions of dollars online. They move fast. They test everything. They know what works. And most nonprofits are still trying to figure out if they should send an email this week.
What if it’s not all falling apart?
Last week, I found myself standing in the Monterey Bay Aquarium, surrounded by sea life, champagne, and a room full of people celebrating something that feels increasingly rare this year: a massive fundraising success.
