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The challenges of recruiting, retaining — and affording — a quality staff have only deepened since the pandemic. And today’s solutions can become tomorrow’s problems. Yes, the nonprofit world has hiring challenges, but a charity that bends too far to meet demands for more pay or better benefits may end up with a salary structure it can’t afford — or a staff that balks at being asked to do more.
Here’s some advice from nonprofit leaders about how to attract new employees and keep them engaged, plus some reasons to strike a middle ground between running a super-lean operation and one that lets employees call the shots.
Sell the Work Better
In the post-Covid world, workers are seeking more meaning and purpose in their lives — including from work — and charities are uniquely positioned to offer jobs that meet that need, says Jordan Shenker, CEO of the Peninsula Jewish Community Center in the San Francisco Bay Area. Many nonprofit jobs allow workers to have a direct impact on other people, innovate, retain autonomy, and have flexible schedules that enable more time with family.
“There’s some tremendously wonderful things about working for a not-for-profit organization,” Shenker says. “Let’s do a better job of selling the benefits and explaining why people ought to want to do this work.”
Emphasize Pluses Other Than Pay
At Big Brothers Big Sisters of Utah, about 40 percent of the 55 staff members work remotely full time, up from about 15 percent before the pandemic. Many of the staff members who support the charity’s volunteers work from home exclusively, while administrative workers and fundraisers tend to choose a hybrid approach.
“Honestly, we try to make that a big benefit — whatever flexibility we can offer with a position, we try to offer,” says Nancy Winemiller-Basinger, the charity’s CEO. “We don’t pay the most — and while we try to have benefits, we don’t have the best benefits. So that’s one of the things that we think we can offer — workplace flexibility.”
Make Existing Employees Feel Valued
Staff members at the Duluth Area Family YMCA, in Minnesota, were invited last year to submit ideas for improving the charity’s work through a staff-only innovation challenge. The charity put up to $100 into each winning idea. One of the charity’s swim coaches suggested an underwater camera so that instructors could record underwater strokes. Another employee sought funds to build shelves to hold books about inclusion and diversity.
“The innovation challenge was good for our culture, and it was good for our business,” says Sara Cole, the charity’s CEO.
Build Back From the Lean Post-Covid Staffing Base
Abby Tran stepped into a gutted organization in November 2021 when she became the executive director of the Florida Symphony Youth Orchestras. The previous executive director quit because of burnout, and she had lacked the bandwidth to rehire as other employees peeled away — either to spend more time with family or for better-paying jobs. The charity, which operated with six employees before Covid, was down to just two when Tran came on.
That meant Tran spent most of her first year taking on tasks that previously would been done by someone else — or training new hires to do those jobs going forward.
“I’ve been very grateful that the staff I was able to bring on in 2022 have for the most part stayed with us,” Tran says. “It’s now easier for me to turn to higher-
level strategic planning — looking ahead and focusing on where we want to go in the next five years.”
Be Wary of Going Too Far With New Benefits
Like a lot of charities during the pandemic, ProInspire adopted changes to make work more manageable at a time when employees were already under a lot of stress. ProInspire, a nonprofit consulting firm that works primarily with BIPOC charity leaders, moved to a policy that allowed employees to set their own schedule, including flexible hours and unlimited vacation time.
Now Bianca Casanova Anderson, a co-CEO at the charity, says that her organization — and plenty of others that ProInspire works with — is facing some financial strains that she says are at odds with the employee-focused policies it adopted only a few years ago. Now the charity may need to ask employees to work more billable hours or spend more time focusing on business development — needs that conflict with the earlier goals of providing more employee flexibility and autonomy.
“Once you give a benefit, it’s really hard to take it away,” Anderson says.
