Soapbox Engage Blog

Think of your nonprofit as a runner in a track meet. Some aspects of your work feel like an all-out sprint, such as planning for GivingTuesday, while others are a paced marathon, like capital campaign fundraising.

No matter where your nonprofit is in its journey, you’ll likely hit hurdles that can disrupt your progress toward your goals. Perhaps a recession negatively impacts your fundraising efforts, or your technology doesn’t support your organization’s growing donor base.

Proactive preparation is the best way to prevent and overcome setbacks. In this guide, we’ll discuss common challenges that harm nonprofits and how to persevere through them to the finish line.

4 Nonprofit Growth Hurdles and How to Surmount Them

1. Lulls in Staff Recruitment
2. Volunteer Burnout
3. Difficulties Managing Periods of Growth
4. Lack of Engagement with Corporate Partners

1. Lulls in Staff Recruitment

A loyal, effective team is essential for providing services and garnering support. However, between competition for candidates, budget constraints, and above-average burnout rates, talent acquisition is a persistent pain point throughout the nonprofit world. In fact, recent studies show that nearly 75% of surveyed nonprofits experience job vacancies, and over half of nonprofits have more vacancies now than they did a few years ago.

Get your recruitment (and, by extension, your programs and operations) back on track with these tips:

• Adopt talent acquisition strategies. Many nonprofits take a “set it and forget it” approach to recruitment. However, dedicating resources to recruitment strategies helps you reach the best candidates faster while also minimizing turnover. Lever suggests starting by establishing outreach channels and engaging with prospects personally.


• Use recruitment technology. Managing recruitment on top of your other operations can be a significant undertaking. However, with hiring tools, you can easily handle any aspect of recruitment. For instance, hiring software allows you to collect important talent acquisition metrics, automate outreach, schedule interviews, and report progress.


• Enhance employer branding. Even once you’ve launched your recruitment strategy, your work isn’t over. Maintaining your employer brand consistently (your reputation as an employer) is essential for sustaining hiring momentum over time. Improve your brand by taking suggestions from employees, highlighting your unique value propositions on recruitment marketing materials, and providing a great hiring experience for candidates.

2. Volunteer Burnout

If your organization is like the average nonprofit, about one-third of your workforce are volunteers, making burnout a pressing concern. Retain the hard work of these passionate community members by:

• Showing appreciation. Volunteers exert put in work that your nonprofit can’t function without. Expressing gratitude for volunteers’ hard work frequently and genuinely engages them and increases loyalty. eCardWidget recommends showing thanks by sending memorable eCards, complete with the volunteer’s name and information about their impact.


• Demonstrating tangible impact. A leading reason for volunteers to support a nonprofit is the desire to impact the community positively. Create impact reports tailored to volunteers so they can understand exactly what they’ve worked for. Contextualize impacts by explaining volunteer projects’ actual effects on constituents (i.e. specifying that 100 hours of work went into constructing a new kennel at an animal shelter, which can now house 20 more dogs).


• Providing resources for fighting burnout. Offer resources outside of the normal scope of your operations to help volunteers handle any stress related to their duties. For instance, you might plan a weekly volunteer social hour so they can blow off steam and connect with each other. Or, you could welcome volunteers to reach out to their supervisors to resolve program-related issues.

3. Difficulties Managing Periods of Growth

Effectively juggling your activities during periods of growth is a great problem to have. However, you don’t want management issues to snowball out of control and affect your nonprofit long-term. Follow these easy tips to scale up smoothly:

• Invest in configurable technology. In the beginning stages of your nonprofit, you might rely on low-cost, low-effort systems, such as spreadsheets, to stay organized. However, as your organization grows, you’ll have an influx of data to manage and report on, not to mention donations to process. Choose software that aligns with your nonprofit’s programs and can scale with you.


• Maintain an inactive talent pool. During your recruitment process, you might encounter candidates who aren’t a great fit for your needs at the moment but could be helpful in the future. Maintain a talent pool of potential candidates in your hiring platform so you can grow your team when the time is right.


• Frequently meet with staff. Getting everyone on the same page during major organizational upheavals is crucial for keeping pace with growth. Stay on track by setting regular All Hands meetings (usually once or twice a month). In these meetings, establish roles and responsibilities, delegate tasks, and strategize about the immediate future by taking your team's diverse perspectives into account.

4. Lack of Engagement with Corporate Partners

Corporations donate millions to nonprofits each year. If you’re an organization that relies on this revenue stream, you might maintain several engagements. However, many businesses view corporate philanthropy as a one-off arrangement. To secure truly valuable, meaningful partnerships, nonprofits should develop deeper relationships with corporate donors.

For instance, if you notice partners aren’t responding well to financial asks, you might pivot to pitching non-monetary support opportunities. After all, increasing financial buy-in can be challenging or complicated for businesses. To secure support from various businesses, suggest alternative engagement opportunities, such as corporate volunteering outings or donating in-kind resources.

Also, get to know your partners on a personal level. Meet up with points of contact as often as possible to learn about their interests and personal pursuits. Then, use this information to tailor outreach that shows you’re paying attention, such as wishing them a happy birthday on the right date.

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No matter what hurdles you face, remain focused on your mission above all else. It should be your guiding force through uncertainty, keeping your team driven and your community happy. By remaining resilient and proactively preventing setbacks, you’ll turn roadblocks into stepping stones in your nonprofit’s overall journey.