The Steady Saguaro: Seeds of Renewal

Seeds of Renewal:

What We Can Do Now to Make the Future We Want Possible

A prickly pear down the street from me is blooming in magenta pink, its base carpeted with fallen palo verde blossoms the color of piña colada eegee’s. Spring in the desert is like that, quiet drama, resilience made visible. It reliably stirs thoughts of renewal.

Earlier in my career, I volunteered as a peer counselor for families experiencing trauma. One lesson from that work has stayed with me: the importance of lifting your head to peer over the horizon. Living with pervasive trauma narrows what you can imagine. It erodes your belief that things can change.

Healing begins, in part, when someone helps you see beyond the immediacy of pain, when you can say, “What’s happening is real, but it isn’t the whole story of who I am.”

What is true for families is also true for nonprofits.

At first glance, this may seem like a strange moment to talk about renewal. Nonprofit organizations are navigating contracting markets, scarce resources, policy headwinds, financial strain, and rising community need, all at once. But renewal isn’t naïve optimism. It’s a disciplined practice, preserving mission and vitality during hard times so organizations are strong enough to meet the moment when conditions improve.

Here is the future I’m holding in mind. Ten years from now, I want to see Southern Arizona’s nonprofit sector confidently claiming its role as an economic engine; a true partner to business, donors, and government; a desirable employer; and a driver of systems-level change.

With that vision comes a responsibility to ask: “What can I be doing now to help make that future possible?”

One clear answer is to lead CFSA as a future-oriented organization that tells the truth about how hard things are, makes deliberate and values-aligned choices about what we build next, and invites others to help shape that future alongside us.

Right now, I invite you to plant seeds of renewal with us by learning and telling the truth together: about what’s breaking, what still matters, and what future we’re willing to rebuild. Renewal accelerates when nonprofit professionals, donors, and partners respond not as observers, but as co-builders.

For donors, this moment calls for more than generosity—it calls for leadership.

Renewal in the nonprofit sector depends on flexible, trust-based capital that gives organizations room to adapt, stabilize, and imagine what comes next.