Strong organizational capacity is key to nonprofit sustainability and mission achievement. But with financial and human resources at a premium, where to start with your organization's capacity-building? Too often, nonprofits are offered one-size-fits-all solutions that don’t always work for their unique situation. Consider the needs of a small growing nonprofit versus a larger, more mature organization. They are vastly different! And in these lean times you can’t possibly focus on everything. So how do you choose where to concentrate your precious capacity-building efforts? 

 

Enter Nonprofit Lifecycles.  In 2001, author Susan Kenney Stevens identified seven lifecycle stages for nonprofits. This simple but powerful framework offers a straightforward approach for determining the current stage of growth of your organization. It provides a rapid method for diagnosing your most critical capacity-building needs in five key areas of operations given your stage of growth, and ways to help you move forward.