Build, Don’t Fight: Advice for Graduates Pursuing Nonprofit Careers
Amid uncertainty and division, here are five lessons for those entering the sector — and for those already in it.
By Eboo Patel
Contributor
May 27, 2026 | Read Time: 5 minutes
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It’s college graduation season, a time of celebration and transition. This year’s graduates are surely wondering how they will make their way, leave their mark, and find their fortune amid global conflicts, political upheaval, and technological transformation.
Despite these challenges, I’m moved by how many students on campuses I visit tell me they want to dedicate their lives to social change and improving their communities. After more than a quarter century in the sector, I’ve learned some lessons, many of them the hard way.
A Five-Step Plan
Here’s my advice to the next generation of social change agents — and to all of us navigating deep uncertainty in the sector today.
Focus your energies on building the things you love rather than resisting the things you hate. Orienting your life around a positive vision is more sustainable, and you’ll be happier for it. Alice Waters, the chef and founder of the pioneering California cuisine restaurant Chez Panisse, is an excellent model in this regard. She grew up in the era of processed food — TV dinners, frozen fish sticks, instant mashed potatoes — knowing in her heart there was a better way to share meals with friends.
Her response, however, wasn’t to channel her frustrations into lobbying fast-food chains to use fresher tomatoes or onions on their burgers. Instead, she studied in Paris and discovered a culture with a very different relationship to cooking and ingredients than America’s. She built Chez Panisse to embody that better way.
Intertwine your social change vision with the kind of person you want to be. I started Interfaith America because I think religion is principally about becoming a better person. I need to be a better person, so it’s good for me to spend time around religion.
The waters you swim in will shape the story you tell yourself about who you are and determine the examples you follow. The greatest opportunities to learn often come from those who have a different orientation than you. I’m Muslim, but I first learned about the power of faith in social change from staying at Catholic Worker houses during college. I saw in their example people who were more committed to serving human beings than defining themselves against an enemy. They built institutions around that godly ideal.
Always remember that the environments you work and live in matter. Choose wisely.
Focus on excellence, not scale. The world doesn’t need a million things done in a mediocre way. Plenty of companies are already training AI tools to churn out mediocre insights at scale. We need worthy things done in more human ways.
Chez Panisse showed American food culture a better way to eat and live, and people were moved by the example. Much of the farm-to-table food culture we now take for granted — not to mention stores like Whole Foods — grew out of the world Alice Waters helped create.
Young people interested in social change should keep in mind that many of the most influential movements begin not with mass campaigns, slogans, and celebrities but with a small community of people quietly pursuing excellence around something they feel so passionately about that others are drawn to their cause. As David Brooks puts it, “Culture change happens when a small group of people find a better way to live and the rest of us copy them.”
Put technology in its rightful place. Alice Waters did not ride the processed food wave, even though it presented itself to the world as inevitable. Similarly, you can decide to step off the AI wave and say “no thanks, I don’t want to live that way.” Regardless of the mission or cause you dedicate yourself to, use your judgment to discern which trends deepen human flourishing and which diminish it. The pressure to stay competitive or relevant in your given field by chasing every new development may cost more than you realize.
You do not want to become the character in the story often told by Buddhist monk and peace activist Thich Nhat Hanh: A rider on a horse is galloping madly into the distance when someone asks, “Where are you going so fast?” The rider responds, “I don’t know — ask the horse.”
Remember that social change is about enriching and elevating human beings. The way we treat one another — from the people we work with to the people we serve — matters. Kindness matters. Decency matters. Grace matters. Nonprofit organizations should be communities of excellence and integrity. Be a contributor to that culture, not a detractor from it.
I recently gave a talk about interfaith cooperation at Randolph-Macon College in Ashland, Va. At the reception afterward, I met a couple named Susan and Tom Hubbard, who casually mentioned that they, too, were committed to interfaith work. I asked if they were part of an interfaith book club or discussion group. Actually, they humbly told me, they helped operate a free interfaith medical and dental clinic that treats refugees, poor people, and anyone else who needs their services. They talked about the religiously diverse medical personnel who volunteered there, and the humans they felt honored to serve and heal.
Graduates, there are many things that will frustrate you in the world of social change: the adversaries working against your mission, the necessity of fundraising to keep staff on payroll, the inevitable setbacks that slow the speed of progress. Hard days will inevitably find you and try their best to darken your path. When they do, remember that there are people like Tom and Susan Hubbard: genuine servants who believe in helping others for all the right reasons. Find those people. Work with them. Emulate them.
Social change, after all, is a deeply human affair. Despite all the fear and speculation in the world emerging before us, there will never be a replacement for people devoted to building something better out of what they love — people who surround themselves with others committed to using their talents to serve other human beings.
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