Civic Safeguard Strategies
Offering Holistic Risk Mitigation Support for Nonprofits
Who we are
Civic Safeguard Strategies (CSS) works with nonprofits, foundations, and universities facing funding and operational pressures. CSS is a women-led consultancy built on decades of direct, hands-on experience supporting nonprofits and civic actors in some of the world's most challenging operating environments. Our founding team brings careers spanning USAID, the United Nations, international NGOs, and the private sector, with deep experience across the Middle East, the Balkans, Southern Africa, the Former Soviet Union, and beyond. We have done this work in the hardest places, working as peer partners, not outside experts.
The Challenge
U.S. nonprofit leaders and civic actors are facing something systematically different than even two years ago: coordinated efforts to delegitimize, defund, and destabilize the organizations doing the hardest work. This is not new. Legal pressure, regulatory threats, narrative attacks, and funding disruption have played out in Russia, Tunisia, Venezuela, Zimbabwe, and beyond. Traditional tools – strategic planning, capacity building, leadership development – have not kept up with these trends. CSS has. We bring globally tried, tested, and refined knowledge directly to organizations in the U.S..
