2025: A year of paralysis or reinvention?
For many advocacy groups, 2025 is a year of reckoning. Some are choosing to step back—but others see an opportunity to sharpen their focus, engage beyond their usual circles, and rethink their long-term strategy. We’re helping them navigate this moment with clarity and purpose.

By Paul Constance
Sociopúblico has long worked with advocacy groups focused on gender, race, climate change and related causes.
Even in the best of times, these organizations often feel like they are rowing against the tide, pulled back by public indifference, cultural resistance or lack of funding. In recent years, the emergence of an organized “backlash” against many progressive agendas has led to court battles, social media campaigns and overt political opposition in many countries. Now, following the wave of electoral victories by right-leaning parties around the world in 2024, the employees of many advocacy organizations feel besieged.
“This is a year of reckoning,” said one veteran activist during a recent meeting. The word reckoning, defined “a time when your actions are judged as good or bad and you are rewarded or punished”, might seem too harsh. But it captures the deep soul-searching that is taking place inside many of these organizations right now.
At a moment like this it can be tempting to retreat, avoid exposure, and wait for the political winds to change. We think such a defensive posture is counterproductive, and we’re thrilled that a few of our clients have asked us to help them navigate this year in a spirit of honest self-analysis and openness to dramatic change.
There are no formulas or methodologies for doing this, but here are three approaches that we are currently discussing with clients (in ascending order of ambition).
Reclaim your singularity
One of the first things we ask all our clients is “What makes you different?” We typically start by reading their mission statement and their About Us page, and then we show them a sample of the same documents from several organizations that do similar work.
This tends to be an uncomfortable exercise for two reasons. First, we often find that the language they use to describe themselves is cluttered with “movement jargon” and code words that are primarily directed at other activists (and not the general public). In some settings, this can reinforce the idea that the organization’s mission has been imported from abroad and that it does not reflect local values.
Second, these documents often fail to explain what makes the organization distinctive or necessary. Even if you are part of a broad movement, what unique contribution are you making to its long-term goals? What do you do particularly well? Among progressive activists, we often find a reluctance to appear to be “competing” with other well-intentioned organizations. But the absence of a clearly differentiating mission statement can also signal a lack of focus and an inability to show results.
Both problems can be fixed through a process where we draft and then jointly workshop new descriptive language that sends a clear signal to donors and supporters about who you are and where you are going.
Openly engage your antagonists
For a long time now, we’ve all known that we’re trapped inside digital echo chambers and that we rarely interact with people who hold opposing views. But few organizations are doing much to break out of these patterns. Sociopúblico has been encouraging some clients to systematically identify individuals, influencers or other organizations with whom they could potentially find some common ground—even if they are far removed from them ideologically.
For a group working to combat violence against women, for example, this might mean reaching out to organizations that work on men’s mental health, toxic masculinity, or fatherhood. For an NGO focused on women’s reproductive rights, it could mean approaching religious institutions or NGOs that promote family formation and childcare services.
Such “bridge-building” efforts are hardly new, but they’ve become extremely rare amid the culture wars and our hyper-polarized political culture. Advocacy organizations that are bold enough to pursue these opportunities at a time when everyone expects them to be “in retreat” could gain much more exposure and credibility than they might have in more favorable times.
We are exploring ways in which progressive organizations might insert themselves into political and media spaces (including conferences) where no one expects them to be, and where an attitude of curiosity, humility, self-deprecating humor and eagerness to listen might lead to fruitful dialogue.
Use this moment to complete a strategic reset
If your organization is more than 20 years old, you were probably already wrestling with problems such as mission drift, donor fatigue and founder’s syndrome. As organizations grow larger, they sometimes lose self-awareness about these problems or simply postpone dealing with them. In those cases, a political shock like the current backlash can provide the occasion to pause, take stock and face up to internal problems.
We think 2025 could be a good year to take a hard look at your original mission statement and ask a variety of questions. How has the social, political and economic landscape changed since you were founded? What new actors have emerged since you started who might make your original approach less effective? Which of your programs could be wound down to free up resources for more impactful work? How have evolving attention behaviors and media consumption habits affected your work? Does your communication strategy still deliver the results you intended? Is social media a productive space for you anymore?
Finally, there is mounting evidence that a strategic merger with a similar or complementary organization can make a mature advocacy group much more effective. Have you considered that option?
These are tough questions. But answering them now could turn 2025 into a year that reinvigorates your team and gives new impetus to your work.
We’d love to know how you see the future. And if you think Sociopúblico could help you to think through these kinds of dilemmas, give us a call.
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