State of the Network: What We Heard in 2025 & How It’s Guiding Our Work
This year, we invited our current and prospective members to share their insights, experiences, and needs through our State of the Network survey. Our Network’s responses shape what we build, how we support them, and where we focus our collective energy. This year, we’re excited to share what we heard and outline how those insights have been shaping SSN’s priorities.
Thank you to everyone who took the time to complete the survey. Your insights are invaluable!
A Snapshot of the Network
The diversity in size, reach, and mission across the Network is one of SSN’s greatest strengths. Together, our Network demonstrates a powerful representation of youth-serving organizations across New York City.
Among respondents, we see:
Budget sizes varied significantly across the Network, ranging from under $1M to over $10M. Most organizations fell between $1M and $5M (40%), while over a third had budgets above $5M, and a smaller group (13.3%) reported budgets under $1M.
Staff sizes also ranged widely: some organizations operate with just a handful of full-time staff, while others have teams that exceed hundreds of people across multiple sites
The most frequently mentioned student populations served included BIPOC (Black, Indigenous, and/or People of Color) students and students experiencing poverty or housing insecurity
The most common age group served among respondents: High School students
94% of Network members partner with schools in some capacity
This cross-section reflects SSN’s commitment to create a rich ecosystem of knowledge, experience, and practice.
Strengths That Ground Our Work
Across current and prospective members, a consistent picture emerged: Our Network’s strengths reflect deep commitment to and care for young people.
The Power of Youth-Adult Relationships
The clearest strength across both current and prospective members was the quality of youth-adult relationships. Nearly 83% of organizations rated themselves strong in this area, with an average score of 4.3/5. Organizations excel at creating supportive, meaningful, and trusting relationships with young people. This reinforces what we know from practice and research: meaningful, trusting relationships are foundational for engagement and learning and nonprofit youth serving organizations play a critical role in fostering those relationships.
Other common strengths included:
Creating Affirming and Equity-Centered Environments
Members consistently create spaces where young people feel safe, valued, and empowered. The average rating for this corresponding question was 4.13. This commitment to belonging and inclusion is a unifying thread across the Network.
Preparing Students for Postsecondary Success
Whether that means work-based learning, future planning, or navigating the transition into adulthood, organizations described a range of approaches to support students in exploring their interests. With an average rating of 4/5 and nearly 73% of organizations identifying this as a strength, it’s clear that members are deeply invested in helping youth build the skills, networks, and confidence needed to pursue meaningful pathways beyond high school.
Challenges Shaping Our Next Steps
The challenges that surfaced were also telling. Regardless of organizational size, program model, or student population served, these themes reflect both internal organizational pressures and larger systemic conditions shaping the youth-serving ecosystem in NYC.
Across the Network, members described several common needs:
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Most organizations referenced challenges related to staffing (either in the form of bandwidth, turnover, shortages, or limited training).
Common threads included:
High turnover among frontline staff and school partners
Difficulty retaining multilingual, trauma-informed, and specialized staff
Staff burnout due to increasing student needs
Limited time for training, reflection, or improvement work
Tension between programmatic growth and operational capacity
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Members noted difficulty in building systems for data collection, documentation, and evaluation, especially without dedicated staff capacity or tools.
Organizations described:
Fragmented or incompatible data systems
Lack of capacity to analyze or use data in decision-making
Challenges administering student surveys or securing buy-in
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Many responses point to a dramatic rise in the complexity of student needs, especially related to immigration, mental health, economic instability, and systemic inequity.
Themes included:
Youth facing deportation risks
Housing and financial precarity
Unmet mental health needs
Students lacking basic resources
Political uncertainty affecting undocumented youth
These challenges are real. They reflect the pressures of a youth-serving ecosystem navigating limited resources and intensifying needs and are echoed in what we hear across the field.
What This Means for SSN’s Role in Strengthening the Ecosystem
One clear theme that emerged from the survey was this: organizations share a commitment to collaborating to build capacity and improve their practice. We know that deep collaboration is possible, but not inevitable - it takes dedicated infrastructure, time, and facilitation.
Here’s some of the ways SSN translated these themes into action:
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Based on identified needs, we’ve launched our Data Pack for the “data people” who often are teams of one in their organizations. This community of practice will connect, share insights, and explore solutions to common challenges.
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We bring Network members together to test, measure, document, and share practices in areas that are essential yet not always explicit:
Improving students’ career navigation experiences, outlined in NYCPS’ Career Navigation Roadmap
Strengthening youth-adult relationships in transfer high schools that partner with nonprofits
Helping students build and activate their networks, including mentors, peers, and adult allies who can help them reach their goals
Building student competencies - defining competencies, aligning them with existing programming, and assessing and measuring growth
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In response to the desire for more collaboration, we’ve launched a Member Directory to easily identify and connect with other members. We aim to find more ways to encourage member:member connection in 2026.
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SSN continues to grow and activate spaces for shared learning across the Network.
Improvement Skill Workshops break down continuous improvement into hands-on tools and practices. These sessions are designed to build the skills and mindsets that strengthen both individual practitioners and organizational capacity.
Network Exchanges are monthly, virtual spaces where Network Members come together to surface challenges, share insights, and explore solutions. Co-facilitated by members themselves, these conversations reflect the collective wisdom and energy of the Network. Catch up on past learnings on the Network Hub!
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We’re deepening our commitment to sharing real-time lessons from the field. October’s Expo marked a powerful starting point where we were able to create a space for stories, strategies, and challenges to come to life. Our latest resource, the Empathy Toolkit, builds on that momentum by offering practical tools to help organizations listen more deeply and act with purpose.
Get Involved: Your Voice Shapes What Comes Next
Whether you’re a long-time member, a new partner, or an organization exploring joining the Network, there are many ways to deepen your engagement this year:
Share a challenge you’re having or idea for our monthly Network Exchange or Improvement Skill Workshops
Keep your organization’s profile up to date by ensuring your SSN Point Person is listed in our annual State of the Network (SOTN) survey, and that they plan to attend our Annual Network Meeting.
Let’s chat! Reach out to our Learning and Improvement Team (learning@ssn-nyc.org) if you have ideas we haven’t mentioned.
Your insights don’t just inform SSN’s work, they shape it.
Looking Ahead
We are grateful for your ongoing partnership and commitment to young people. The Network is strongest when we learn together. Thank you for helping us build a more connected, collaborative, and resilient youth-serving ecosystem across New York City.
This blog was written by Analytics & Operations Manager, Robert Zarate-Morales, with input from CEO, Lucy Herz, and Director of Collaborative Improvement, Ali Holstein.
