The Awkward Teenage Years of Nonprofit Growth

The Awkward Teenage Years of Nonprofit Growth

Every nonprofit wants to grow. At least, most say they do.

They want to serve more people, reach more communities, build stronger systems, hire the right staff, and stop living from one small grant cycle to the next. Growth is usually treated as an unquestioned good, and in many ways, it is. Growth means the work is needed. It means the model is resonating. It means the organization has moved beyond an idea and become something real.

But there is a stage of nonprofit growth that we do not talk about nearly enough.

I think of it as the teenage years.

These are the organizations that are no longer little kids. They have outgrown the earliest stage of development. They are not brand-new. They are not purely local anymore. They may be operating across multiple counties, regions, or even states. They have real staff, real outcomes, real systems, and a real track record.

But they are not fully grown yet either.

They are not quite national organizations. They do not have a large development department. They may not have a deep bench of senior leadership. Their data systems may be improving, but not yet polished. Their budgets may be substantial compared to where they started, but still modest compared to the national players they are increasingly compared against.

And that is where funding gets complicated.

Local and regional funders often love organizations when they are small, scrappy, and deeply rooted in the community. They can see the need. They know the leadership. They understand the local context. A $25,000 or $50,000 grant can make a visible difference.

But as an organization grows, those same funders may begin to see it differently. Suddenly, the organization feels too large, too complex, or too far beyond the original service area. A funder that was once excited to help launch the work may start wondering whether its limited local dollars should go to smaller grassroots organizations instead.

At the same time, larger national funders may not yet see the organization as ready.

They may like the mission. They may appreciate the growth. They may even admire the ambition. But they also want evidence of scalability, financial sustainability, sophisticated evaluation, diversified revenue, and a level of organizational infrastructure that many growing nonprofits are still building.

So the organization finds itself in the middle.

Too big for some funders. Too small for others.

That is a deeply frustrating place to be.

It is also a normal one.

In the same way teenagers can be tall enough to look like adults but not yet ready to carry adult responsibilities, growing nonprofits can look more mature from the outside than they feel on the inside. They may have expanded faster than their internal infrastructure. They may be trying to build the plane while flying it. They may be serving more people than ever while also trying to professionalize finance, human resources, compliance, evaluation, communications, and fundraising.

The work is stronger than it has ever been, but the organization may feel more fragile than it did when it was smaller.

That fragility is not failure. It is development.

The challenge is that grant funding does not always align neatly with developmental stages. Funders often like clean categories. Early-stage innovation. Local impact. Statewide systems change. National replication. Evidence-based models. Capacity building. Direct service. Policy change.

But teenage nonprofits often sit between those categories.

They are not just testing an idea anymore, but they may still need capacity-building support. They are not only local, but they may not have national reach. They have evidence, but they may not have a formal research base. They have momentum, but they still need flexible funding to strengthen the backbone of the organization.

And flexible funding is often exactly what is hardest to find.

This matters even more in the current funding environment. Federal uncertainty, grant rescissions, delayed awards, and shifting public priorities all create additional pressure on nonprofits trying to plan responsibly. When discretionary grant funding is reduced or disrupted, communities and service providers feel the consequences in very practical ways: delayed projects, canceled commitments, and more pressure on already stretched organizations. 

That kind of instability is hard on any nonprofit. It is especially hard on organizations in the middle stage of growth.

So what should these organizations do?

First, they need to name the stage they are in. There is power in being able to say, clearly and confidently, “We are in a growth-stage capacity-building period.” That is very different from sounding disorganized or underprepared. It frames the organization’s needs as part of a thoughtful development process.

Second, they need to tell a stronger growth story. Funders need to understand not only what the organization does, but why this stage matters. What has been proven? What is changing? What infrastructure is needed now? What happens if the organization does not build that infrastructure before continuing to expand?

Third, they need to be honest about the difference between program growth and organizational capacity. Serving more people requires more than direct service funding. It requires supervision, financial controls, data systems, training, compliance, communications, and leadership development. Those are not extras. They are what keep growth from becoming chaos.

Finally, funders need to recognize this stage as worthy of investment.

The nonprofit sector cannot expect organizations to scale responsibly while only funding direct program expenses. If we want strong regional organizations to become sustainable statewide or national models, someone has to fund the awkward middle. Someone has to care about the braces, the growth spurts, the learning curve, and the behind-the-scenes development that makes maturity possible.

Teenage nonprofits can be messy. They can be ambitious, impatient, under-resourced, and stretched thin.

They can also be extraordinary.

They are often the organizations close enough to the ground to understand the problem deeply, but experienced enough to build solutions that reach beyond one neighborhood or one county. They are past the idea stage. They have survived the early years. They have proof that something is working.

What they need now is not for funders to step back because the organization has grown.

They need funders willing to help them grow up.

p.s. This analogy has been brought to you by the high school graduations we have been celebrating over the past couple of weeks. Our heartfelt congratulations to all the seniors graduating this spring, especially the ones near and dear to our hearts. We got these kids through, we can take your nonprofit to the next level too.