Empower resilience:
Nonprofit worker well-being is more important than ever

2 Comments

November 20, 2024

by Pui Ling Tam, Relationship Manager

Last October, the Walter & Elise Haas Fund co-published a blog with the James Irvine Foundation and ReWork the Bay that called on funders to start talking about nonprofit job quality. We wrote about how “[t]oo many nonprofit jobs lack family-sustaining wages, necessary benefits, worker protections, and advancement opportunities. Instead of enabling economic security, for many, a nonprofit job means sacrificing personal economic security and, in some cases, physical and mental well-being. This is self-defeating for philanthropy … [Because] No matter your philanthropic strategy — from economic justice to climate change to the arts — your work depends on the well-being of nonprofit workers.”

Since that blog came out in October 2023, more reports and stories about the lack of nonprofit worker well-being have been published. The Center for Effective Philanthropy published an entire series about nonprofit staff and leader burnout this spring. This series was on the heels of their State of Nonprofits: 2024 report, which found that “burnout – for both nonprofit staff and leadership – remains a top concern for most nonprofit leaders, with half of nonprofit leaders feeling more concerned about their own burnout than this time last year.

If we thought nonprofit workers’ physical and mental well-being was challenged and that nonprofit staff and leaders were burning out before, now, we are looking straight ahead at an out-of-control fire. We saw in 2016 how the now incoming-again administration eroded government support structures and actively attacked and increased systemic challenges for vulnerable communities in our country. The nonprofits philanthropy funds and supports, those who provide direct services to the working poor, BIPOC, LGBTQ+, immigrant communities, as well as organize for just change and a better world—all of the staff, from line workers, case managers, community-based educators, program managers, fundraising professionals, and executive leaders, especially BIPOC leaders —they will be on the frontlines. Again.

We can act now to support their well-being and their durability to protect our communities, fortify the case for justice, and endure and thrive as people. Nonprofit workers deserve care, and funders play a pivotal role in making that happen. Philanthropy, whatever your grantmaking strategy, whoever you fund, let’s invest in the people doing the work.

In this non-exhaustive list, we offer some options that you can act on now to empower nonprofit workers’ resilience, especially if you are on course to set up your next fiscal year’s budget.

• If you primarily provide one-year long project support grants, convert those grants to multi-year general operating support. There are many reasons for this including that it’s a core practice of trust-based philanthropy, and because grantees call for it in uncertain times. We encourage you to make your grants four to five years long, to allow your grantees to nimbly respond to whatever urgent needs come their way. That’s one weight off nonprofit leaders’ minds so they can do the work defensively if needed, and proactively as they have always wanted to be able to do.
• Increase the size of your grant. Consider doubling the grant; consider adding a zero. Consider adding enough that the organization can add annual cost-of-living increases to staff salaries. Consider that any increase you make, your grantee can then go to other funders to ask them to do the same. One of our Endeavor Fund grantees took our example of a long-term general operating grant–$3.5 million over seven years—and asked a corporate funder who kept renewing a project support grant with them to increase the grant size and term. They received a multi-year renewal. Sometimes the gesture creates a ripple effect because of the signal your proactive support sends to other funders.
• Make project support grants for staff well-being. While we enthusiastically prioritize multi-year general operating grants first, project support grants aimed at nonprofit worker well-being and sustainability matter. Share a menu of ways organizations could use such a grant and let them make plans for their staff’s needs. Some actions we’ve seen grantees take, include:
  1. Restoration weeks, in which the entire organization is closed. This is different from vacations and staff coming back to a mountain of emails. This is a practice to encourage real time off and organization-wide rest.
  2. Hire coaches for new staff, regardless of position, and for staff in the first year of a promotion
  3. Celebrate staff at the end of a tough year with bonuses
  4. Compensate staff who take on additional responsibilities because of staff absences or leadership sabbaticals

One action the Fund is hoping to take is to provide project support grants for leader wellness, for organizations to use to sustain high quality leadership, both seasoned and emerging. For the work that’s to come in the immediate next period, and the work that’s always been ahead, our communities deserve deep benches of talented and skilled leaders.

• Organize and resource rest retreats to directly provide care to nonprofit leaders and staff. We’re grateful to be partnering with the Stupski Foundation to co-host just such a retreat this month, where the deliverable expected from the grantees is: nothing. That is, they are not asked to produce anything. They have been told that their well-being is the top priority of this three-day retreat. They are invited to take care and be taken care of.
• Tell your grantee organizations that you value their staff’s well-being and sustainability. Tell them you value good jobs with family benefits, as the All Due Respect toolkit for creating sustainable organizing jobs recommends. Explicitly signaling to your nonprofit partners that you support them providing good jobs gives them permission—if they need it—to figure out or at least start having conversations with you and other funders on how to provide them. It opens the door and shines a light on what often goes unsaid, that funders expect nonprofits to provide bare-bones budgets and do more with less. If nonprofits understand that they can ask for more and that they will not be penalized for not being able to, on their own, provide sustainable jobs, they can start working towards something better. Philanthropy, our job is to actively listen to them and be in the work of figuring out a better way forward on this issue with nonprofits.

Investing in the mental and physical health of leaders and staff within our grantee organizations is essential for sustaining the capacity needed to advance social justice and belonging in our communities. Acting now, is one crucial way to express and demonstrate real solidarity with our partners in the work. Nonprofit workers are the heart and soul of our communities—they’re the ones showing up every day, tackling society’s most pressing challenges, and creating a brighter future for us all. They are always looking out for us, giving their best to ensure that we all thrive. As grantmakers, we have a responsibility to look out for them in return. By investing in nonprofit worker well-being, we’re not just supporting individuals; we’re strengthening entire communities. Let’s acknowledge their unwavering commitment by providing the resources and care they need to continue this essential work. When we prioritize their well-being, we enable them to keep giving us their best—and that’s an investment we can’t afford to overlook.

Blog, Reflection, nonprofit worker well-being