2026: Vision Matters
2025 wore me down — like I know it did for many of you.
To get through it, I found myself leaning into history — as a way to reorient and remind myself that we’re not the first generation to wrestle with upheaval.
Our country has lived through enormous challenges before: World War II. The Civil Rights Movement. The assassinations of leaders like Medgar Evers, John F. Kennedy, Malcolm X and Martin Luther King Jr.
We endured the tumult of Vietnam and the unraveling of public trust during Watergate.
None of this diminishes the urgency of the moment we’re in. But it does remind me that in moments of fracture, what carried us forward was vision. So here’s the question I keep coming back to: What are we asking people to believe in?
That question feels especially urgent right now for the organizations where we lead and work. It’s tempting, in moments like this, to retreat into defensiveness. We explain constraints. We manage risk. We describe what we’re up against.
But people don’t rally around caution. They rally around vision. JFK said we’d go to the moon. MLK shared his dream of equality. LBJ declared a a War on Poverty.
Vision gives people something to move toward. It answers the question supporters are asking: What future are you inviting me to help build?
Frank’s argument underscores the importance of getting clarity about what your organization believes is possible and naming it in a clear and compelling way — because it matters.