Sage, the leader in accounting, financial, HR, and payroll technology for small and medium-sized businesses, announces its 2024 Sage Foundation Grow Program nonprofit participants, strategically matching nonprofit leaders with Sage executives for mentorship and guidance. Over the course of five months, The Grow Program aims to help solve specific challenges that may be hampering the nonprofits’ growth.

Together, Sage and nonprofit leaders work to name the issues blocking progress, brainstorm possible solutions, and create an action plan to ensure lasting change. Each nonprofit leader participant will walk away with new tools and skills to not only execute strategic projects that drive their organization’s social impact in their communities but to also improve the leader’s own capacity and leadership skills. The primary areas of interest from this year’s cohort are developing strategic business plans, defining vision and goals, and enhancing marketing and communications.

The 2024 cohort consists of four local nonprofits in metro Atlanta:

• 21^st Century Leaders: a youth leadership nonprofit, connecting Georgia businesses with high school youth around the state through innovative partnerships, fostering leadership development, career readiness and inclusion.
• East Atlanta Kids Club: a youth development nonprofit, offering no-cost afterschool, summer camp, counseling, family cafe, and food security programming for youth placed at-risk in southeast Atlanta.
• VOX ATL: a teen-driven independent media outlet fostering a professional space and learning environment for metro-Atlanta teens.
• YELLS: a youth empowerment nonprofit, building marketable skills through youth-led service, inspiring them to invest in themselves, in their education, and in their communities.

These organizations join the 20 nonprofits that the Grow Program has supported over the last three years across the US, Canada, and Australia.

2023 participant HYPE, an Atlanta-based nonprofit that works to equip girls of color with tech skills to help diversify the tech talent pipeline, came to the Sage Foundation Grow Program with an outdated organizational structure that no longer supported their growth goals – for their communities or their employees. HYPE’s Executive Director Kristina Newton wanted to identify ways to evolve the current structure and learn how to iterate upon it in future periods of growth.

Kristina Newton of HYPE said, “It’s an understatement to say that as a nonprofit leader, you have to wear many hats – but the new organizational structure I created with mentors from Sage equipped me in two ways. Firstly, I’m much more confident about positioning my nonprofit as a partner and employer of choice in my community because we have a clear path to support each person who works for us. And secondly, because of that confidence, I was able to take my maternity leave without worrying about my colleagues’ roles and responsibilities, or our operations – we had the infrastructure in place to manage that transition just fine.”

Renee Mathewson, VP of Corporate Affairs in North America at Sage and Grow Program’s executive sponsor, adds, “Often, we see nonprofits get the short end of the stick for budget and headcount resources. And as a global corporation, Sage has a real opportunity to uplift and help scale their work and programs. We strive to knock down those barriers and help these organizations thrive. Building on the passion of these nonprofit leaders, we can support their business aspirations to create a plan that is sustainable after the program finishes.”