Executive summary: This reflective progress report from EA Philippines outlines the organization’s key challenges and lessons learned between December 2023 and March 2025—particularly around leadership transitions, protracted fundraising, and limited team capacity—offering thoughtful advice for other community-building groups navigating similar growing pains.
Key points:
Leadership transitions caused significant delays: The unexpected resignation of the Executive Director led to a ~3–4 month delay in operations, highlighting the importance of succession planning, clear role definitions, and structured onboarding processes.
Fundraising was lengthy and complex: A ~4–5 month process involving multiple funders created coordination issues and delays, especially due to the organization’s unregistered status; EA Philippines is now exploring alternatives like fiscal sponsorship and diversified funding.
Team capacity limited program scope: With co-directors working part-time and other commitments in play, the team had to prioritize select programs, prompting a strategic reassessment and the eventual hiring of a Community Building Associate to increase bandwidth.
Gradual scaling and strategic focus are essential: EA Philippines plans to grow its team to 2–2.5 FTE, including one full-time role, to balance ambition with sustainability and maintain high-quality community engagement.
Actionable advice for community builders: The report shares practical recommendations—like maintaining leadership continuity, aligning programs with team capacity, preparing for fundraising delays, and fostering a strong team culture—that emerged from lived experience.
Building internal systems improves resilience: Templates, knowledge-sharing systems, and cultural practices like regular feedback sessions have helped EA Philippines streamline operations and build a more adaptive, collaborative organization.
This comment was auto-generated by the EA Forum Team. Feel free to point out issues with this summary by replying to the comment, and contact us if you have feedback.
Executive summary: This reflective progress report from EA Philippines outlines the organization’s key challenges and lessons learned between December 2023 and March 2025—particularly around leadership transitions, protracted fundraising, and limited team capacity—offering thoughtful advice for other community-building groups navigating similar growing pains.
Key points:
Leadership transitions caused significant delays: The unexpected resignation of the Executive Director led to a ~3–4 month delay in operations, highlighting the importance of succession planning, clear role definitions, and structured onboarding processes.
Fundraising was lengthy and complex: A ~4–5 month process involving multiple funders created coordination issues and delays, especially due to the organization’s unregistered status; EA Philippines is now exploring alternatives like fiscal sponsorship and diversified funding.
Team capacity limited program scope: With co-directors working part-time and other commitments in play, the team had to prioritize select programs, prompting a strategic reassessment and the eventual hiring of a Community Building Associate to increase bandwidth.
Gradual scaling and strategic focus are essential: EA Philippines plans to grow its team to 2–2.5 FTE, including one full-time role, to balance ambition with sustainability and maintain high-quality community engagement.
Actionable advice for community builders: The report shares practical recommendations—like maintaining leadership continuity, aligning programs with team capacity, preparing for fundraising delays, and fostering a strong team culture—that emerged from lived experience.
Building internal systems improves resilience: Templates, knowledge-sharing systems, and cultural practices like regular feedback sessions have helped EA Philippines streamline operations and build a more adaptive, collaborative organization.
This comment was auto-generated by the EA Forum Team. Feel free to point out issues with this summary by replying to the comment, and contact us if you have feedback.