When you're under stress, stress gets all the attention. What's most important is how you react to that stress. That idea is behind the recent observation by White House Chief of Staff, Rohm Emanuel, and oft paraphrased that a good crisis should never go to waste.

That thinking is behind the recent work of the National Alliance to End Homelessness on the $797 billion stimulus bill signed into law a few weeks ago. That bill contained significant investments for housing and short-term assistance. The Alliance's goal is that this influx of resources be mindfully invested to reinforce the long-term goals of ending homelessness. Many communities have signed on to the plan to end homelessness in ten years. The Alliance contends that recent events should not derail those efforts; rather this influx of resources can be invested to create the framework needed to reach that ten year goal.

On another tack, the President's new budget bill raises concerns that changes in tax rates and limitations on deductions for charitable giving may cause donors to decrease giving. While the impact on giving is open for debate, there are some ideas that organizations can put into action now that make sense.

First, these changes impact only a small fraction of donors, and in many cases it will only affect a fraction of that small fraction.

Second, most of the changes don't take effect until 2011. So work with donors over the next two years to make sure they take full advantage of the current law.

Third, initiate or revitalize planned giving. Over the past several years changes in the estate tax have encouraged high net worth donors to give out of current income rather than from estates. In 2010 this trend reaches the high water mark with the estate tax going to zero. But in 2011 the tax resets back to pre-reform levels.

As a result, just as tax law limits incentives to give out of current income it increases incentive to make bequests in estates.

Looking ahead, organizations need to focus on mission and the core activities essential to achieving that mission. The housing bubble at the center of the current economic crisis was twenty years in the making. George Soros predicts in his book The New Paradigm for Financial Markets that housing prices nationally will have to decrease 20% to be in line with earning power.

Since there is a multiplier effect when loans are sold to investors in secondary markets, a drop of 20% in the value of housing can cause the whole economy can drop 50% or more.

Think about how your organization has grown in the past ten to fifteen years. How did it benefit from the growing economy? And what does that mean for the next several years in a smaller, tighter economy?

People will still give. Foundations will continue to make grants. And organizations that can separate services that are important and vital from those that are nice to have will be the ones that will thrive even in tough times.