What 2026 Demands From Social Services Leaders (And Why Founder-Led Organizations Are Built for It)
Updated: 7 hours ago
Last week a press release went out about the organizations I lead across California and Washington. It read like a lot of press releases do: programs listed, funding mentioned, leadership named. But writing the quote for it made me sit with something I don't usually slow down enough to say out loud. Being founder-led is not a marketing line. It is a daily obligation, and 2026 is going to test it harder than any year before.
What we actually do, in plain language
Our organizations run Medicaid-aligned programs: Enhanced Care Management, housing stabilization, reentry support, family case assistance, and recuperative care. Translated out of program-speak, that means we work with people experiencing homelessness or coming out of the justice system and help them get into stable, long-term housing. Not a shelter bed for a night. Housing that holds.
Doing that in two states means navigating two different Medicaid frameworks, different county systems, and different compliance protocols. None of that is glamorous. It is the unglamorous work that determines whether a program actually helps someone or just processes them.
Public funding is not free money, it's a contract with outcomes
A $1.7 million grant in California is now supporting expanded housing stabilization, case management, and workforce-aligned services for people who face the highest barriers to stability. I want to be direct about what a grant like that actually means. It is not a reward. It is a bet that public dollars, spent through an organization with real infrastructure, produce more durable outcomes than the alternative.
That only works if the organization treats public funding as a strategic tool tied to measurable results, not a lifeline to be stretched as far as possible. I said in the release that when systems are built correctly, public funding creates lasting stability, not just temporary relief. I meant that literally. If a program only exists to spend down a grant, it was never built to serve people. It was built to survive an audit.
Public funding was never meant to be temporary relief dressed up as a program. It's supposed to buy stability, and that only happens if the structure underneath it can hold the weight.
Leadership has to be close to the ground and structured enough to scale
One thing I'm proud of in how we've grown is that leadership isn't just centralized in me. In California, Anayanacy Rosillo runs program operations and staff coordination inside a genuinely complicated CalAIM system. In Washington, Paul Hall, Meaghan Highwood, and Nafai Ferouzi manage partnerships and service delivery across housing and justice-focused work. That distributed model is not an org chart decision. It is what makes it possible to run programs that are values-driven in the community and operationally sound enough to survive contact with two different state bureaucracies at once.
I started Mysti's Adult and Family Services in memory of my mother, Mysti, whose life as an artist and advocate is the reason I believe systems should promote dignity, not just compliance. That belief is personal. But belief alone doesn't pass an audit or keep a case manager employed. The structure has to hold the belief up.
What this actually demands going into 2026
Housing challenges are not going away this year. If anything, the demand on community-based organizations to prove they can be both mission-driven and operationally sound is going to keep rising. Founder-led does not mean one person holding everything together through force of will. It means the founder set the values, then built the systems, the regional leadership, and the accountability so the mission survives scale.
That is the model I'm trying to build and refine every year. It is not finished. It will never be finished. But hundreds of people move from street homelessness into stability through this work each year, and that is the only scoreboard that matters to me.
Keep going
Housing California Conference 2026: Leading a Featured Workshop in Sacramento
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