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I recently published the opinion piece below in Devex. It’s a topic I think about alot; exploring the "invisible infrastructure crisis" that often hits fast-growing nonprofits when they scale without the systems to match.

Growth is usually the metric we celebrate, but if an organization relies solely on a leader’s "magic" to function, it creates a fragile environment. I’ve written about how we can shift toward building systems that outlast us.

You can read the full article on the Devex site here.

For those who don't have a Devex account, I’ve also received permission to share the full text below so you don't miss out!

Opinion: Growth is the metric funders celebrate — but it may be quietly breaking your organization. Here's how charismatic leaders can build systems that outlast them.

By Noella Moshi // 17 February 2026

On social media, the youth-training nonprofit looked like a model of a modern nonprofit: triple-digit growth, a blue-chip board, and prestigious foundation partnerships. But behind the scenes, the executive director told a different story: “Everything was duct tape and band-aids. We were growing on the outside but literally ripping at the seams on the inside.”

She is far from alone. Across 23 interviews with nonprofit leaders managing annual budgets from $500,000 to $20 million, I’ve noticed that growth (the very thing funders celebrate and demand) is breaking the sector’s most promising organizations.

The problem is an existential infrastructure crisis that remains largely invisible: When a CEO becomes the bottleneck for every decision, and when their personal “magic” remains the only engine for growth, the organization creates a dangerous dependency.

In the for-profit world, a company that scales sales without scaling its supply chain or information technology is a failure in the making. In the nonprofit world, we call it “expanding impact.” We often view new partnerships and expanded reach as organizational health metrics. In reality, they are often warning signs.

One workforce development organization scaled from a $2 million to a nearly $20 million annual budget over the course of several years, but found itself unable to get basic financial data into the hands of decision-makers. Another humanitarian nonprofit recently made the radical choice to downsize from an annual budget of $11 million to $7.5 million because leadership realized their internal infrastructure could no longer ethically or effectively sustain the scale they had promised — and their outcomes are now stronger than ever.

When we talk about infrastructure, we aren’t talking about nicer office chairs. We are talking about the systems that allow an organization to function independently of any single charismatic leader. These can be clear authority boundaries that allow program directors to act without waiting for the CEO’s sign-off, budgeting systems that let managers allocate resources strategically rather than waiting for an audit six months too late, and investing in middle management and senior operations roles, moving away from the “founder-as-everything” model.

The insider brief on business, finance, and the SDGs

The charismatic-leader model is a seductive trap for both boards and donors, but for a growing organization, it is a structural liability. When an organization’s success is anchored to the personality and intuition of a single individual, it creates a fragile environment where organizational momentum halts the moment they step away or burn out.

More dangerously, these leaders can become accidental tyrants; their passion for the mission translates into a need for control, which stifles the growth of senior leadership, and ensures that the organization can never outgrow the reach of one person’s arms.

Now, large foundations often talk about capacity building, but they tend to fund the outputs of infrastructure — for example, better data for the funder’s reports or more sophisticated marketing — rather than the infrastructure itself.

Small and family foundations provide more nimble funding. But by avoiding clunky administrative costs, they inadvertently trap grantees in a permanent state of work-arounds. By focusing purely on the program, they ensure the organization can’t mature enough to survive the departure of its founder.

“Once you put yourself out there as struggling,” one executive director I interviewed noted, “donors pull back.” Consequently, leaders project stability on LinkedIn, while privately struggling with patchworked processes.

As it stands, the current funding environment, marked by shifting government priorities, leaves no margin for error. If we want enduring institutions, we must rethink what makes an organization successful.

1. Build for the successor, not the founder: Charismatic leadership is a debt that eventually comes due. Every time a founder or leader uses their personal influence to make things happen instead of using a process, that weakens the organization’s future. True infrastructure is the ability of the mission to survive the leader’s eventual departure.

2. Audit shadow decisions: Identify the unwritten rules and “shadow” approvals that force staff to guess their founder’s mind. By formalizing authority — actually writing down who can spend what and who can hire whom — charismatic leaders stop being a bottleneck and start being builders.

3. Buy back the team’s time: High-growth nonprofits often “solve” problems by asking staff to work harder, which is a hidden high-interest loan. Instead of hiring another program coordinator, invest in the tools that give the existing team 20% of their week back. Efficiency is the only way to scale without burning out an organization’s best people.

4. Value stability over size: Don’t let “more” be the only metric for organizational success. Start tracking staff burnout and how well internal tools are holding up. If an organization’s systems are ripping at the seams, leadership must have the courage to slow down or even shrink. It is better to run a healthy, smaller organization than a massive one on the verge of collapse.

The nonprofit sector faces a choice: continue celebrating growth until organizations break, or acknowledge that sustainable impact requires an unglamorous, sturdy backbone. Strategy and vision are prerequisites, but without infrastructure, they are just talk.

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