Continuing my mini-series of raw journal entries today, and nice spring day it is. Honestly, sharing these “dry spell confessionals” as Substack Notes is a weird experiment for me. But I suspect that’s what Substack is for? (＠´ー`)ﾉﾞ

Digging the DMs + responses, thank you. (╯˘ -˘ )╯ Part 4/5 below

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Something that’s been nagging at me on LinkedIn more and more this year: how American nonprofit professionals and European NGO professionals express the same underlying needs — and how the platform handles both of them. Purely my observation, not a real analysis.

• American nonprofit professionals are vocal about “wanting out”. The framing is survival — escaping an under-resourced sector, translating nonprofit experience into corporate-friendly language, signaling adaptability through AI certifications and data skills. The posts are direct about burnout, about toxic work cultures, about a job market full of ghost listings. It's loud, urgent, and very specifically aimed at crossing a sector boundary. Panic, fear, and dread infuse the thinkpieces that drown out my feed.

• European NGO professionals are doing something different. The language is about intentionality — values-aligned work, ethical AI integration, work-life boundaries, the right to disconnect. There's less urgency to flee the sector and more emphasis on finding the right conditions within it or adjacent to it. Balance, alignment, recentering. Skills-based networking rather than credential-signaling. The EU's labor protections are part of the pitch, not an afterthought. The urgency gives way to insistence?

What's interesting is that neither approach is working particularly well on LinkedIn right now. The platform doesn't handle either kind of appeal with much grace. But the ways in which they don't work are different, and the frustration that produces is different too.

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LinkedIn’s algorithm is misinterpreting my activity or my profile as speaking a different language than my potential and prospective clients' immediate pain points.

So I learned the hard way that the best place to go is not the feed, but the archives,  And its not simply about engagement but the manner and quality that matters.

On any given day, I will see leaders, founders, board members, and even funders who post interesting, meaningful, and even heartfelt items.

They’re literally talking into the void, often just to express themselves or to release steam. But you can see that’s an attempt to connect beyond performative gestures. 

And so often no one is reading or listening. And so much great communication goes unreciprocated.

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I’m a pragmatist, not an opportunist or parasite. I genuinely like these hidden nuggets of genuine, authentic, honesty that go unnoticed on LinkedIn and elsewhere. These small sharings of thoughts, hopes, ideas, and worries are good. They are worth foraging for. They beckon to anyone who’s tuned in beyond the feeds. And I think they are doing a lot for the posters no one is acknowledging.

We’re told don’t worry about lack of clicks and low engagement. We’re told to constantly post more and engage differently. No one actually encourages us to read, absorb, and appreciate what’s there.I’m certainly less inclined to add much more than I currently do.

And so far, I dig slowing down and soaking up what others are writing. I could be promoting myself more intensely and more often. But connection around what others say is helping me build connection. Maybe it won’t be a client or longstanding thing. But for even a moment, that connection does something for their day and for mine.

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There's a version of professional networking that used to feel different from what it feels like now. Less optimized. Less performance-driven. More like a commons where passing something useful to someone who needed it didn't require a frame or a reason or a positioning strategy. You just did it because you saw the need and had the thing. That was sufficient justification.

I don't think that's pure nostalgia. I think it was a functional mode of operating that the current architecture of these platforms has made harder to sustain. Not impossible. But harder. Because the systems now reward visibility, performance, and broadcast over quiet direct action. The incentives point somewhere else entirely.

What I'm trying to hold onto isn't some earlier version of connection. It's just that particular quality of interaction that made me like LI, FB, etc way back when. The one where the help doesn't need to be legible to an algorithm to be worth doing. Where passing something useful along doesn't require justification or framing or a personal brand angle. Just recognition that someone might need it. It still exists. It just doesn't get amplified.

#SpringDrySpell 4/5