In times of increasing uncertainty, from shifting federal priorities to crises like the wildfires devastating Southern California, nonprofit organizations face growing challenges in sustaining their work and responding to the evolving needs of their communities. Recent federal actions, such as funding freezes and policy rollbacks on social services, have compounded these pressures. Many organizations are finding themselves navigating unprecedented instability, requiring them to rethink not just how to expand their work, but how to sustain it in ways that strengthen resilience, retain community trust, and address entrenched inequities.

This moment calls for rethinking scaling — not as a prescriptive, top-down process — but as a community-driven approach that prioritizes local voices, leadership, and priorities.

Foundations and their consulting partners have often viewed scaling through a top-down lens, focusing on replicating proven programs or achieving systemic change through carefully designed frameworks. These approaches, while well-intentioned, can fail to account for the nuanced priorities and experiences of local community leaders.

But what if we rethink scaling as a community-driven process — one that is led by those most directly affected?

This requires funders to shift from prescribing solutions to fostering environments where communities can lead, and involves investing in relationships, creating opportunities for shared learning, and supporting grantees in identifying and pursuing their own visions for impact and sustainability. This approach helps build trust with grantees and communities and enables funders to ensure they are scaling strategies that reflect the unique strengths and aspirations of each community, rather than imposing external models that may not align with local realities.

The Starting Smart and Strong Initiative

Since 2014, the David and Lucile Packard Foundation’s Starting Smart and Strong initiative has supported three California communities — East San Jose, Fresno, and Oakland — in a ten-year effort to strengthen early learning systems. Each community brought together public and private partners to address inequities in quality early childhood experiences, test new approaches to professional development and family support, and improve kindergarten readiness. Throughout Starting Smart and Strong, we partnered with the Packard Foundation on a developmental evaluation to understand how these communities developed their early learning support systems and to identify best practices for scaling effective solutions.

Read the full article about scaling initiatives for impact by Pilar Mendoza and Clare Nolan at The Center for Effective Philanthropy.