Giving Compass' Take:

• Vu Le explains how funders can support nonprofit leadership to reduce turnover to increase the efficacy of organizations. 

• Which of these shifts can you make quickly to improve the stability of nonprofits you support? 

• Learn more about supporting nonprofit leadership development. 

So many nonprofit professionals, across all levels, are burning out and leaving. This is a serious problem in our sector.

Yes, this is an area that all of us must work together to address. We each have a role to play. But let’s be honest, a lot of these problems are caused by foundations, and thus they can be solved by funders. The stress and burnout we feel directly result from many of the practices funders inflict on nonprofits. Here are a few things funders all need to consider and do:

  • Significantly increase your funding for nonprofit talent. Stop treating talent development like a separate strategy. It is fundamental to the success of every single mission.
  • Understand that your decisions have real consequences. We lose good people every day because of funders’ shifting whims.
  • Provide general operating funds. We need them to provide our staff decent wages, benefits, and professional development.
  • Cut the BS and let us focus on the work: My team and I just spent ten hours doing a grant finance report that asks me to translate our chart of account into a funder’s template and then figure out how much this funder’s support went into each line item.
  • Provide multi-year funds. I don’t mean three years. I mean at least five, preferably ten or more. A major reason we lose good talent is that we have no stability.
  • Fund fellowship programs and learning cohorts: We need a lot more of these programs, across all levels. Fund programs for program staff, EDs, development professionals, operations professionals, data wonks, advocacy folks.
  • Fund sabbaticals: Sabbaticals have been proven to increase people’s productivity and effectiveness, and yet there’s barely any funding for this.
  • Fund retirement programs: As I mentioned last week, this is a serious problem preventing people from staying in the field, or else blocking the talent pipelines because aging leaders have nothing to retire on.
  • Fund transitions and organizations during transitions: This is when organizations are the most vulnerable, and many funders have this “wait and see” approach to see if the organization will be OK before funding it.
  • Fund leadership–focused organizations. Organizations like Fund the People, Baltimore Corps, and the Building Movement Project do important work.
  • Increase your payout rate. 5% is not enough.

Read the full article about funders' support for nonprofit leadership by Vu Le at Nonprofit AF.