Developing a Nonprofit Response to the Economic Crisis, Wikipedia-Style

Martin Kearns, the founder of a nonprofit environmental organization, has started a Wikipedia-style effort to help advocacy groups and other charities weather the recession.

Mr. Kearns begins the entry by telling readers that “we should all begin to operate with new assumptions.”

He says that money going into advocacy will decline by at least 20 percent, and perhaps by as much as 50 percent. “The progressive advocacy movement in 2010 will look very different from the movement at the end of 2008,” he writes.

The dissolution of the movement will not take place in predictable or sensible ways, he writes. Large, effective groups may fail, and less effective ones may survive. Connections among organizations will wither, and “a sustained effort to repair and reconnect these threads will be required,” Mr. Kearns says.

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