DEI Optics Are Dead. That’s a Good Thing.
There’s been a lot of noise lately about the future of DEI within non-profit and for-profit institutions. Depending on who you ask, the legal and political pressure means the work is over, or at least on its way out. I don’t see it that way.
Back in April, my colleague Tiffany Vega laid out the legal and policy shifts reshaping how DEI is being understood (and misunderstood) across sectors. She broke down what the Supreme Court ruling actually changed, what it didn’t, and how backlash narratives have distorted the truth. If you haven’t read it yet, start there.
I recently attended, Inclusive Practices in a Changing Legal Landscape, a webinar hosted by Ascend People and Volin Employment Law that added even more clarity. It confirmed what many of us in the nonprofit field have already clocked: a lot of DEI work hasn’t been built to hold up under pressure. It’s been reactive, loosely structured, and too often disconnected from broader organizational strategy.
Now, with executive orders rolling out and lawsuits testing the edges of the work, programs are being paused, messaging is being scrubbed, and people are asking: can we still do this?
My answer is yes, just not the way it’s been done before.
The backlash isn’t only ideological. It strategically plays on a weakness that’s already there: the lack of strategic grounding in many DEI efforts. When the work leans too heavily on symbolic language or vague commitments, it’s easy to challenge. But just because a program can be challenged doesn’t mean it’s unlawful. The challenge can be a signal that it’s time to revisit how the work is structured and why it exists in the first place.
What matters now is how institutions design for durability. A program rooted in clear purpose, aligned with operations, and built with intentional framing will stand up to scrutiny far better than one built for performance. The goal isn’t to make your values disappear. The goal is to make them undeniable in your systems.
That shows up everywhere: how you write job descriptions, how you define leadership criteria, how you document decision-making, how you talk to your board. When those choices are intentional and connected, your DEI strategy becomes more than a program: it becomes a way your organization operates.
What I worry about most right now, though, is nonprofits obeying in advance by making quiet adjustments, editing language, and pausing programs, all while saying nothing. I’m worried about organizations who think they can put their heads down and make themselves small to get through the next few years. As historian Timothy Snyder says in On Tyranny: Twenty Lessons from the Twentieth Century, “Most of the power of authoritarianism is freely given. In times like these, individuals think ahead about what a more repressive government will want, and then offer themselves without being asked.” This teaches people in power that they can get away with these actions. In times like this, we must exert the power we have, which includes the power to resist.
Secondly, and more importantly, I’m worried about the communities nonprofits seek to impact and serve. When inclusive language disappears, so does a visible signal that nonprofits remain safe havens. Symbols alone were never enough, but their absence leaves vulnerable communities without assurance while also weakening accountability. To serve with integrity, organizations need both public commitments that communicate their values, and the structural changes that make those values real.
As Brené Brown says, clarity is kindness. And what clarity requires is honesty and communication. If your values haven’t changed, leaders should say that. If your strategy is evolving to stay aligned and legally sound, they should explain how. Trust that people can hold complexity.
This isn’t the end of DEI. It’s the end of DEI that relied exclusively on statements instead of structure. The kind that lived in slide decks but never in policy. The kind that hoped the right language could substitute for the harder work of change.
The moment we’re in is hard. But it’s also clarifying. Nonprofits are being asked to shift from DEI as performance to DEI as practice. If they can, they’ll come out of this moment with something more honest, more coherent, and more sustainable than what came before.
