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Navigating the nonprofit workforce crisis
Properly fulfilling a nonprofit’s mission and providing quality services to the community hinges on the staff hired to perform that work. However, Nonprofits can have unique challenges leading to difficulty in recruitment and retention amongst qualified staff, leading to a workforce crisis in the nonprofit sector.
Contributing factors leading to crisis
Being able to provide a competitive compensation package is a leading challenge for nonprofit organizations. The recent phenomenon of the “Great Resignation” has led to a choosier labor pool, with for-profit companies being able to offer higher salaries and strong benefit packages to prospective employees. Nonprofits are left unable to compete with for profit counterparts due to their reliance on outside funding for their operation costs.
Nonprofit workers, specifically those in client facing roles, also have a higher risk factor for burnout and compassion fatigue. Feelings of emotional exhaustion, cynicism, and the inability to accomplish goals are characteristics of burnout caused by chronic workplace stress. Nonprofit workers are also more likely to experience compassion fatigue, which is related specifically to a reduction in empathy, due to the repeated exposure to hard client stories. When staff experience compassion fatigue or burnout, their work ability can be impacted, ultimately leading to lower level of care or resignation from their role.
Understanding the scope
Experiencing the inability to recruit or retain staff, can impact a nonprofit’s ability to provide adequate services. With roles left unfilled, workers are experiencing a higher caseload, and clients can experience a delay in connection to their needed resources. If an organization has too much of a decline in service quality, they can be at risk of closing which can cause a ripple effect by reducing that community's access to their much-needed services.
Positive changes for agencies to implement
Organizations can provide a variety of support to staff to help mitigate turnover amongst employees. Organizations can provide training on symptoms and treatment of compassion fatigue and burnout to help staff implement proper self-care and reduce the risk of experiencing symptoms. Providing employees with proper support and a positive workplace culture is also important for staff to feel valued. Promoting a positive work-life balance and giving staff the flexibility to fulfill both personal and professional responsibility can also help with employee’s stress reduction.
Organizations can also take the opportunity to increase education for their stakeholders. Having those candid conversations with funders can lead to increased understanding of the need, and potentially more financial support. Many funders focus their contributions to program implementation costs versus overhead cost but helping them understand where the most need is and how the funding aids the mission can be fruitful. Increasing prospective employees' education on already available resources and benefits offered like the Public Service Loan Forgiveness program (PSLF) can also lead to an ease of recruitment for qualified staff. Increased understanding allows people to work together more effectively towards a nonprofit’s mission.
Advocating for larger scale solutions
Nonprofits can also advocate for larger scale funding solutions for the sector. Increased governmental funding such as a social innovation fund, can aid nonprofits with having adequate funding and providing comparable compensation to employees. Other solutions like programs that promote increased volunteerism can take workload burdens off of staff and even increase the number of diverse skills working toward the nonprofit’s mission.
Rebecca Zeimet is a 2024 graduate of the Masters of Nonprofit Leadership and Management program at Arizona State University. Rebecca is also the Resident Services Program Supervisor for Catholic Charities Community Services. While the agency works to provide permanent solutions to the communities most vulnerable, the resident services program specifically works to provide social services and community development to residents at 7 different affordable housing communities across the phoenix metro area.
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