When the Urgency Wears Off

by LaDawn Sullivan

There’s something familiar about this moment. The lines at food pantries are longer, eviction notices are stacking up, and community organizations are scrambling to meet rising needs with shrinking resources. The government shutdown has only magnified what’s already been unraveling, families left without the safety nets they rely on, nonprofits left trying to fill the gaps.

And just like in 2020, there’s a rush. The urgency returns. The nation rediscovers compassion… for a while. We see new campaigns for food drives, rental assistance, and emergency grants. People lean in. For a moment, we remember how deeply connected we are.

But we’ve seen this cycle before.

The last time the nation moved with this much urgency for Black communities, it was 2020 in the wake of the murder of George Floyd. The world paused, protested, and pledged to do better. Corporations made statements, foundations promised change, and philanthropy scrambled to prove its solidarity. But when the protests quieted, so did the commitment. The policies were softened, the budgets were cut, and DEI (once a moral imperative) was quietly renamed, reduced, or removed altogether.

And here we are again. A crisis brings a flurry of attention and a wave of temporary solutions. But when the novelty wears off, the same communities - Black, brown, historically marginalized, and working class are still the ones left to hold the weight. We’re still the ones asked to stretch, to make do, to survive the silence that follows everyone else’s rush to help.

As someone who works at the intersection of philanthropy and community, I’ve learned to expect the pattern: urgency sparks movement, but only consistency builds change. The food boxes, the emergency checks, the calls for “all hands on deck”, they matter, but they are not enough. What we need are systems built to last beyond the moment of panic.

Because the real question isn’t how fast we respond when things fall apart,  it’s whether we’re willing to keep building when the cameras are gone, the grants expire, and the sense of urgency fades.

At BRIC, we were born out of crisis and injustice, but we are not defined by it. We fund and fortify Black-led organizations and cultivate and support leaders of color to carry on when the rest of the world moves on. We invest in the kind of resilience that doesn’t require tragedy to be noticed.

So, as this new wave of urgency builds, I can’t help but ask: when it fades — and it will — who will still be standing in the gap? Who will still care when the news cycle shifts?

Because if history is any guide, our communities will still be here.

Doing what we’ve always done.

Holding it down.

And finding a way, yet again.

Stay connected. Stay consistent. www.bricfund.org