(Illustration by iStock/Yutthana Gaetgeaw)
When organizations consider merging, the first question is always about purpose: do we share the same mission? But the more urgent question, the one that determines whether a merger actually happens, is why now?
In the cases of our organizations and the mergers we were recently involved in, we had two very different answers. For Resolution Project and Enactus, global nonprofits that merged in January 2025, the urgency was organizational: Enactus faced an existential financial threat that could have ended the organization entirely. For Girl Rising and She’s the First, which also merged in 2025, other challenges were on the horizon: preparing one organization for transition out of founder leadership and, for both, navigating an increasingly unstable sector. The long-term collateral damage from the defunding of USAID and other major international development agencies, as well as the growing headwinds for work focused on women and girls globally, demanded new strategies.
These look like different stories—financial collapse versus a leadership transition and geopolitics—but they share a structure. In neither case did mission alignment alone cause the merger; a visible existential question did. It didn’t have to be immediate, and it didn’t have to be financial. It just had to be enough that leadership could no longer treat the future as something that would sort itself out.
This distinction matters because the nonprofit sector tends to recognize only one type of merger: the last-minute rescue, the handshake deal when the lights are about to go out. But some of the most strategic mergers happen when organizations are still healthy—when founders can see around the corner and choose to act before crisis hits.
Between 2023 and 2025, we led two very different nonprofit mergers. The contexts were different. The execution challenges were different. But the core principles that made both mergers work? Those were universal. And the mistakes we made? Those cut across both experiences too.
Here’s what we learned about what comes after “yes.”
What Aligned: The Non-Negotiables
Mission came first, but complementary assets made it viable.
In both cases, we started with deep alignment on purpose. Resolution Project and Enactus shared a commitment to youth social entrepreneurship. Girl Rising and She’s the First both existed to advance girls’ education and empowerment globally. But mission alignment alone doesn't create a compelling merger—plenty of organizations share a North Star without needing to join forces.
What made these mergers attractive was complementarity, not redundancy. Resolution Project and Enactus met young people at different points on the same journey. Enactus introduces students to social entrepreneurship through university teams that build projects and compete on national and world stages. Resolution Project picks up from there: Our fellowships give emerging leaders seed funding and sustained mentorship to launch a venture, and the Accelerating Impact Challenge helps those ventures become revenue-ready. Girl Rising and She’s the First overlapped in geographic focus but worked in different parts of a girl’s ecosystem to transform communities—one focused within the school system, the other on mentorship settings outside it. The result: We did not have to make painful decisions about which programs to keep or discontinue. Instead, we could offer participants an expanded continuum of support.
We also filled each other’s operational gaps. Girl Rising brought sophisticated monitoring and evaluation infrastructure that She’s the First—operating on a $1.5 million budget—had never been able to afford. She’s the First brought best-in-class practices for involving girls directly in governance, including two board seats for program participants. Resolution Project and Enactus each brought funding relationships the other lacked, creating better diversification on the other side of the deal; both worked with university students but Enactus was embedded on campuses while Resolution Project orbited through partnerships with scholarship programs and leadership summits.
Leadership humility unlocked the deal.
In both mergers, ego could have killed the conversation before it started. Instead, leaders put mission above organizational identity. For Resolution Project and Enactus, that meant George and the Enactus leadership acknowledging that survival required letting go of independence. For Girl Rising and She’s the First, it meant Tammy stepping aside as CEO while her co-CEO transitioned into a VP role within the larger organization—a significant shift, but one that created a sustainable path forward.
It also meant being honest about power dynamics. In Enactus’ case, Resolution Project was clearly the acquirer, but what we were acquiring was not a single organization so much as a federation. Enactus Global supported 30+ country offices, all of them independently governed and funded, along with the faculty advisors, corporate partners, and alumni who had sustained the network for decades. Each of those constituencies had to decide for themselves whether to trust a smaller, younger organization from New York. And the risk on our side was real but hard to size: We were inheriting a global brand with a mixed financial history, a long-standing World Cup event with significant fixed costs, and obligations to country affiliates whose own health varied widely. In Girl Rising and She’s the First’s case, the power dynamic was intentionally balanced—50/50 board representation, co-branding that blended each organization’s primary brand colors, a revised mission statement that integrated She’s the First’s cherished words “educated, respected, and heard.” Neither organization went "under" the other; rather, they built something new together.
Boards championed the vision.
None of this would have been possible without board members who understood mergers, trusted the process, and weren’t intimidated by diligence. Girl Rising’s board had witnessed a successful merger seven years earlier and had a board chair who came from that previous organization’s board. She’s the First’s board chair had formerly worked for Girl Rising in its days as a film production company, and even inspired the initial merger conversation. All of our boards had members with for-profit and nonprofit M&A experience who could see past the risks to the long-term gains.
Our board chairs believed in collaboration over competition. They championed merger exploration from the first spark, and they stayed committed through 18 months of uncertainty (in Resolution Project’s case) and nine months of integration planning (for Girl Rising and She’s the First).
The driver isn’t always financial.
Enactus’s existential question was loud: a cash shortfall serious enough to threaten the organization’s survival. She’s the First’s was quieter, but no less consequential. Tammy had been thinking about succession since 2022. In January 2025, the organization brought on a co-CEO, intentionally building toward a future in which leadership would pass to someone else. A merger wasn’t on anyone’s radar before that point—it simply hadn’t been modeled as a path. But once it entered the conversation, it offered something a straightforward leadership transition couldn’t: a way to honor a succession plan already underway while building a stronger organization for the next leader to inherit.
This is the pattern we want the sector to see. Mission alignment is necessary, but it doesn’t explain why a merger happens when it happens. Something has to put the status quo in question. For Enactus, that something was a budget crisis. For She’s the First, it was the recognition that leadership can't stay static forever, and that good succession planning means building toward a transition deliberately, rather than waiting for circumstance to force one.
What We Underestimated: The Hard Truths
Internal communications were harder than we expected—in different ways.
For Resolution Project, the challenge was duration. Given Enactus’ financial duress, we sprinted eight weeks to a term sheet, but then came 18 months of “when is it final?” Staff turnover was significant. Donor anxiety was palpable. The “not-so-secret secret” phase helped for a while—people knew something was happening, which paradoxically made internal and external communications easier—but once the announcement was made, the long road to formal closure tested everyone’s patience.
For Girl Rising and She’s the First, the challenge was a period of high confidentiality in a culture that values transparency. As CEO, you can see the long-term vision a merger is solving for. But for staff who don’t have that vantage point, or who are simply thinking about their day-to-day lives, such a major change can create disruptive anxiety. Believing we were acting in our team’s best interest, we kept early merger exploration confidential and stayed upbeat once the merger was announced. We didn't make space for grief or nerves.
Months later, at a Girl Rising in-person retreat, facilitators led a “Stinky Fish” exercise: Staff wrote their anxieties on Post-its and placed them on a whiteboard over a cartoon fish. It was eye-opening. Concerns surfaced that hadn’t been on leadership’s radar—worries about job security, questions about organizational culture, fears about losing the intimacy of a smaller team. Had we created space for those feelings earlier, we could have addressed them proactively and avoided the time and strain of later course corrections.
The math doesn’t always add up the way you expect.
Here’s a truth the sector doesn’t talk about enough: Mergers often mean contraction, not growth, at least for a period of time.
Resolution Project had a $3 million annual budget. Enactus had an $8-10 million budget. The joint entity? $6.5-7 million. That’s a reduction of roughly 36 percent from the combined total. Some of that was intentional—eliminating redundancies and focusing resources. Some of it was inevitable—donor goodwill lost and funders who didn’t follow us through the transition.
Girl Rising and She’s the First had combined budgets of approximately $4.7 million in 2024. The merged entity is budgeted at $3.5 million this year, a reduction of 25 percent. Even in the best-case scenario, mergers don’t guarantee explosive growth. They create a stronger, more sustainable organization with better infrastructure and a more compelling funding case. But the path there often runs through contraction first.
Financing mechanisms are woefully inadequate.
Both mergers required significant investment just to make the deal viable. Resolution Project needed $2.5 million in catalytic funding—for legal costs, integration planning, staff transitions, and operational continuity during the merger period. Girl Rising and She's the First needed, at minimum, $100,000 in merger costs and were fortunate to secure pro bono legal support (valued at nearly $700,000) and additional gifts from existing donors specifically for this purpose.
Without that capital, neither merger happens.
And yet, there is almost no funding infrastructure for nonprofit mergers. Foundations love to talk about efficiency and impact at scale. But when two aligned organizations try to actually consolidate for greater effectiveness? The money isn’t there. Or it’s available in amounts too small to make complex mergers viable across the sector.
We got lucky. We had trust-based donors willing to take a bet on us and we both received investment from the SeaChange-Lodestar Fund for Nonprofit Collaboration, which solely funds formal partnerships like mergers and joint ventures.
Eliminating all uncertainty in advance is impossible.
In both mergers, we had to navigate through a common trap: trying to eliminate all uncertainty before moving forward. What will the new org chart look like? Which programs stay? Which staff roles change? What’s the three-year budget model?
These are important questions. But the desire to answer all of them perfectly before signing the agreement can kill momentum. Trying to mitigate every risk in the due diligence process—on both sides, in both mergers—was one of the biggest hurdles we had to clear, even with supportive boards. For example, with limited multi-year grant commitments, we couldn’t promise what the financial picture would look like in year two or three. At some point, you just have to move forward with incomplete information. Choose a merger partner whose values align closely enough that you trust you’ll handle unexpected issues responsibly together.
What the Field Must Change
Funders need to step up with money for merger costs.
If the sector is serious about sustainability and impact at scale, we need a financing infrastructure for nonprofit M&A. $50,000 planning grants and pro bono legal support (which only the more well-connected nonprofits can access) are useful but they don’t move the needle on their own. We need flexible grants—in the range of $1-3 million for complex mergers—to cover legal costs, integration planning, communications, staff transitions, and operational continuity.
This is investment in long-term impact. According to La Piana Consulting, 92 percent of organizations that pursue strategic partnerships with intention consider them a success. The ROI is there, but the capital isn’t. This is a huge missed opportunity.
Recent developments suggest the landscape may be shifting. In March 2026, the Sorenson Impact Institute launched a Collaboration Fund backed by the Ford Foundation and MacArthur Foundation—$1 million specifically for mergers, acquisitions, and strategic collaboration among impact investing nonprofits. The fund covers integration costs, legal fees, and staff transitions—exactly what's needed. But $1 million pooled across an ecosystem is still a fraction of what complex mergers require.
Foundations that fund capacity building should view merger financing as core to that work. Trust-based donors who believe in organizational sustainability should treat merger costs as a legitimate use of unrestricted funds. Intermediaries should create dedicated funds specifically for M&A in the social sector—and size those funds to match the actual complexity and cost of doing this work well.
We need new mental models about what consolidation means.
The sector treats mergers as signs of failure—organizations that couldn’t make it on their own, forced into shotgun marriages to avoid collapse. That narrative serves no one.
Yes, some mergers are crisis-driven. But others are strategic bets on greater impact. Some solve leadership transitions that would otherwise leave strong organizations adrift. Some create the infrastructure smaller organizations need to attract larger grants and sustain long-term programming.
It’s also very hard work to launch and build organizations. Founders don’t have infinite reserves of energy. The sector and funders lionize founders, but one of the best ways to honor their hard-earned impact is to support pathways that can give them a break and bring them back to the sector again.
We need to normalize merger exploration as a tool in the strategic toolkit—a proactive choice leaders make when the conditions are right. That means talking openly about the benefits (stronger organizations, better funding cases, expanded programmatic reach) and the costs (staff turnover, donor anxiety, the emotional toll of organizational change).
It also means being honest about what mergers require: mission alignment, complementary assets, leadership humility, board champions, adequate financing, and a tolerance for uncertainty that most nonprofits aren’t structured to handle.
Tolerance for uncertainty has to increase—on all sides.
Merger timelines are long. Resolution Project’s deal took 18 months from term sheet to closure. Girl Rising and She’s the First’s took seven months from public announcement to closure. During that time, staff are anxious. Donors are watching. Stakeholders are waiting for clarity you can't yet provide.
The sector—funders, board members, staff, beneficiaries—needs to accept that this is part of the process. You can’t answer every question up front. You can't eliminate every risk. You can build trust, communicate transparently about what you know and what you don’t, and create structures to navigate uncertainty together.
A Different Story
Twenty-one months after Resolution Project and Enactus signed their term sheet, the merged organization is operating at scale with greater programmatic reach and a more diversified funding base. Eleven months after Girl Rising and She’s the First announced their merger, the joint entity is impacting more girls’ lives across the globe and meeting needs in more innovative ways. Our integrated programming has drawn attention and support from catalytic new funders.
The nonprofit sector is facing an increasingly uncertain future—political volatility, funding constraints, rising operational costs, leadership transitions in organizations built around charismatic founders. Mergers won’t solve all of those problems. But for organizations with genuine mission alignment, complementary assets, and leaders willing to put ego aside, they offer a path forward.
Read more stories by George M. Tsiatis, Christina Lowery & Tammy Tibbetts.