Some of the most important growth happens in the pause. That’s where Champions for Change is headed this year.

After intentional reflection on where we’ve been, where we are now, and our vision for what lies ahead, the Champions for Change facilitation team decided not to launch a cohort this fall. Instead, we’ll spend that time reconnecting with our alum community, learning what’s needed for racial justice and healing work right now, and rebuilding our curriculum, with a plan to relaunch in Fall 2027.

Where We’ve Been

Over 7 cohorts, we’ve built an alum community of 225 people who’ve shown up and stayed connected in the hard and hopeful work of racial justice and healing. Since that first cohort in 2019, the program has grown and changed every year alongside the needs of the community.

Champions for Change was launched as a space to center and uplift BIPOC (Black, Indigenous, and People of Color) leaders in Washtenaw County. The vision was ambitious from day one: a community of anti-racist, inclusive, and thriving people and organizations. Support for leadership by People of Color at every level. A shared commitment to dismantling the policies, practices, and habits that stand in the way of justice and liberation. To NEW, it has always been about the will to shift our hearts, minds, and actions, together.

That vision hasn’t stayed still, because the world hasn’t. In 2020, after the murders of George Floyd, Ahmaud Arbery, and Breonna Taylor, we brought White Leaders more fully into the work, grounding the program in frameworks of collective liberation. We ran two cohorts virtually as we all navigated loss, grief, and fear, rebuilding our worlds and routines around the pandemic. Our geographic scope broadened as more Champions joined us from Wayne County. We’ve moved through two presidential elections, and we’ve organized against surveillance, kidnapping, and violence against BIPOC communities at the hands of ICE and law enforcement.

Through all of these evolutions, and all of these moments we’ve had to meet, Champions for Change keeps returning to one throughline, in the words of Maya Angelou: “No one of us can be free until everybody is free. Dismantling oppressive systems and centering and uplifting Black, Indigenous, and communities of color, along with their wisdom and histories, builds wholeness and wellness for everyone.

Where We Are

Over the past months, the Champions for Change facilitation team has noticed something familiar, in ourselves and in this community. Burnout and exhaustion, the kind of tiredness that shows up when people have been giving and giving without much space to refill. Capacity stretched thin. Everyone is still showing up and fighting hard, because they care deeply about the wellbeing of their community,, while feeling overwhelmed by the sheer scale of this polycrisis and what’s at stake.

We saw it in those who joined the cohort in January 2026 and named what they needed. We heard it from those who wanted to join but couldn’t because family, work, and other organizing commitments pulled at the same limited hours. Either way, the message was clear: the world is asking a lot of us right now, and our time and attention have never been more precious.

We don’t think this is unique to Champions for Change, or even to NEW. Talk to almost anyone doing nonprofit, community organizing, or DEI (diversity, equity, and inclusion) work right now, and you’ll hear some version of the same thing. The world keeps handing us more to respond to, more urgency, more grief, more change,  all while our funding, our resources, and our very existence as organizations are under attack.

Nonprofits are often expected to be steady caretakers, the ones who show up and fill the gaps our systems leave behind, no matter what’s happening in the news, even though we’re just as susceptible to that tumult ourselves. That expectation comes from funders, from community, and just as often, from ourselves.

Being steady takes resources, and it takes an investment of time. We can’t rebuild, rethink, and reimagine this program while we’re also running it at full speed. So often, nonprofits are asked to build the plane while flying it, to lay the bridge while already crossing it. This year, we’re choosing something different. We’re landing the plane. We’re moving off the bridge to build stronger ground beneath it. We can’t keep running on empty until something breaks.

Champions for Change was built on the idea that racial justice leadership, community building, and showing up for each other has to be sustainable, even in the middle of everything. The program we offer has to be nourishing, a space people find restorative and trauma-informed. After careful consideration among the Champions for Change facilitators, the NEW team, and close partners, we agreed: It’s time to pause, reset, and refresh.

Where We’re Going

I don’t have every answer yet about exactly what Champions for Change will look like when it returns, and that openness feels like part of the point.

I know a few things for certain. This is a time to reconnect with and draw closer to our alum community. Starting this fall, we’re planning intentional ways to gather: pop-up workshops just for alum, chances to volunteer alongside and support one another’s work, and opportunities to get out in community together. Alongside that, we’ll spend the fall listening to and engaging directly with our community to assess what’s needed. Then, in early 2027, we’ll draw on everything we’ve learned to rebuild the curriculum itself.

During this upcoming year, the Champions for Change team is focused on:

• Reassessing and strengthening our content, making sure what we bring back is thoughtful, relevant, and worth the time our community gives it
• Listening to what’s worked, what hasn’t, and what this community actually needs from a program like this, going forward
• Investing in the alum community, and building connection among the 225+ people who’ve already come through this program
• Learning, resting, and gathering inspiration, so we can refill our own cups, too

This year holds a lot of openness for creativity and experimentation, and I am leaning into that. Having helped steward the vision and experience for Champions for Change over the last six cohorts, I can honestly say I don’t think there’s been a better moment for this reset and refresh. I earnestly look forward to our return with something stronger, rooted in deep healing, and built with care for what our community needs now.

Thank you for being part of this journey with us. We’ll see you soon.

Carly Friedrich & the Champions for Change team