As the nonprofit workforce crisis evolves into 2025, how funders respond to nonprofit burnout, compensation, recruitment, and retention challenges will be more important than ever. After a summer and fall hiatus, we’re back with a brand-new season of Fund the People’s Podcast, featuring insightful guests and valuable resources to help you invest in…

We're launching Season 7 of Fund the People: A Podcast with Rusty Stahl tomorrow, Wednesday, Nov. 13! Tune in for interviews with knowledgeable guests as we explore nonprofit workforce funding challenges and success stories.

In our Season 6 finale episode, we mark Fund the People's 10th anniversary by launching our new initiative: the Funding that Works Academy. This new professional development platform equips funders, nonprofits, and intermediaries with the ideas and tools needed to provide effective funding solutions that advance good nonprofit jobs, and the wellbei…

In this brief episode, Rusty offers our loyal listeners a special sneak-peek into a new program offering being announced shortly from Fund the People! Don’t miss the inside scoop! Rusty also wraps-up Season 6 by comparing and contrasting stories from some of our amazing guests this season, and offers two key “Aha! moments:” First: when funders inve…

This episode makes clear the need for and value of talent-investing for community foundations and other place-focused funders. Our guest, Elizabeth Kidd of the Community Foundation of the Holland/Zeeland Area, demonstrates how even the most modest dollar amounts used in strategic, responsive talent-investing at key inflection points in the lifecycl…

In this episode, you’ll gain important insights into current issues in the nonprofit workforce, and how professional development is evolving in our sector, particularly but not exclusively as it relates to leaders and workers of color. Our guest is Yolanda Coentro of the Institute for Nonprofit Practice, one of the fastest-growing and most exciting…

In today's episode, you'll learn strategies and practical tips for creating happy, healthy, nonprofit workers and workplaces. Our guest Beth Kanter is a leading expert on nonprofit technology and she is co-author of the book Happy, Healthy Nonprofit: Strategies for Impact Without Burnout. You'll learn about tangible tools for preventing burnout at …

Dr. Akilah Watkins is President and CEO of Independent Sector, one of the national organizations that pulls together our sector and represents it in Washington. Dr. Watkins has been on a national listening tour of the nonprofit sector since she took on this leadership role in January 2023. In this episode, she shares what she’s heard about the chal…

Have you ever thought that funder-sponsored organizational ‘capacity building’ may be detrimental to nonprofit workers and their communities? Today we talk about concrete ways we could improve the framing and practice of capacity building to better support the brilliance and resilience of diverse nonprofit workers and organizations. Today's guests …

This episode offers a powerful example of how funders and nonprofits can collaborate and advocate to reform government contracting, so that it works better for the nonprofit sector and the nonprofit workforce. You’ll learn how Mercedes Elizalde (Board member of the Nonprofit Association of Oregon), Felicita Monteblanco (Northwest Health Foundation)…

In this episode, you'll get concrete tips for ensuring that nonprofit workers have access to retirement savings from returning guest Chitra Aiyar of Just Futures. Chitra first joined us in Season 3 Episode 10 in December of 2022, when we discussed what's wrong with nonprofit retirement. Today we'll discuss what's right with retirement. This episode…

In this episode, you’ll hear how a new nonprofit executive can start-up innovative investments in employees from scratch, even in a 60-year-old organization with 200 staff. Shaheer Mustafa tells his story about his work at HopeWell, a major foster care nonprofit in Massachusetts. When he took management of the $25 million budget with hundreds of st…

This episode spotlights how one foundation has made an ongoing commitment to supporting “healing justice” as part of its grantmaking. We're pleased to speak with Desiree Flores, Executive Director of the General Service Foundation. As they say on the Foundation's website, "Social justice work can be affirming, invigorating, and nourishing. But for …

Today's episode offers a view into how foundation executives can integrate talent-investing deeply into their philanthropic approach and how they can work with grantees in a practical fashion to ensure that they are motivated, incentivized and have the funding they need to pay appropriate thriving wages. This is the second in our special three-part…

We’re kicking-off Season 6 with a new 3-part special series, “How Funders Can Support Nonprofit Workers in the Age of Burnout.” It features speakers and topics from a panel discussion hosted by Fund the People at the Center for Effective Philanthropy conference in fall 2023. In this first episode of the series, you'll learn from a foundation execut…

We don’t need Baby Boomers to get out of the way faster. We don’t need Millennials or Generation Z to slow down their ambition for leadership. And we certainly don't need to continually ignore Generation X. Instead, we need to intentionally create a multi-generational, multiracial nonprofit workforce. The more we push long-serving leaders to get ou…

This episode discusses key trends and emerging practices that are sweeping across the funding community. It highlights the glaring gap in these important ideas and practices, and how talent-investing could add value to these ideas. Go to the episode page on our podcast page fundthepeople.org/ftp_podcast⁠⁠ to listen and get a transcript of this epis…

In this episode, I'm offering up another one of my Rants and Reflections. Today's topic: The Nonprofit Nutrition Cycle. Let’s face it: many foundation grants are frozen solid. They are restricted by purpose, program, time, even by line items in the budget. To borrow language from George Overholser’s great article on buying, not building, frozen fun…

This episode exposes the insane double standard between how staff costs are treated in private foundation budgets, and how staff costs are treated in nonprofit budgets and the grants that support them. If you want to understand why private foundations are expected to pay great salaries and benefits, while public charities are expected to compensate…

In this episode, we offer a critique of a big idea that has led philanthropy and the nonprofit sector astray since 2006, and has negatively impacted our workforce. And I’m going to tell you how Fund the People has been challenging this idea and reframing the issue. The Bridgespan Group is a major consulting firm serving foundations and nonprofits t…

We appreciate that numerous funders have been trying to support the personal well-being of nonprofit workers during recent years. However, in this episode you’ll hear Rusty’s reflection on why “mini-grants” for wellness is in no way an adequate response to the challenges confronted by the nonprofit workforce. And you’ll learn the concept of turning…

In this episode, Rusty discusses how fear freezes talent-investing, and how fear is a factor for both leaders in both nonprofits and foundations. For example, many nonprofits fear losing funding if they expose the challenges they face in supporting their staff. And many funders fear that their grantees may become too reliant on them for staffing co…

As discussed in the previous episode, our sector has inherited myths that keep funders from investing in the nonprofit workforce. One of these, which we refer to as the Soft Stuff Myth, maintains the idea that it is impossible to prove that investing in nonprofit workers can improve programs and their impact. In this episode... You'll hear a compel…

In this episode, you’ll learn about four myths that shape attitudes and behaviors which keep funders from investing in nonprofit workers. This episode, which is based on the Soft Stuff Doesn’t Have to be Hard article, is part of our Rusty's Rants and Reflections series. The series offers Rusty's provocative reflections and ideas about investing in …

Listen up, funders: it’s time to invest in nonprofit workers. It’s not just word of mouth anymore. In this episode, you’ll learn about new research reports from the Center for Effective Philanthropy and the National Council of Nonprofits that show that investing in staff is the #1 need among nonprofits. And it’s not just this year; we discuss resea…

Season 5 of Fund the People Podcast is coming soon! We've got a great season ahead, and we'll be kicking it off with a series of 10 episodes called Rusty's Rants and Reflections - hot takes on where the nonprofit sector has been, where we are now, and what all this means for you. Then we're featuring one-on-one interviews with luminaries in the non…

Welcome to a very special final episode of Season Four! In this episode, you’ll learn how one foundation built the internal political will to make internal reforms so they can provide grants that better serve their grantees and their communities. Host Rusty Stahl sits down with Kenneth Jones, Chief Operating Officer and Chief Equity Officer of one …

In this episode, you’ll get an insider’s view of The Annie E. Casey Foundation’s journey to contribute to the full costs of grantees in an adequate and equitable fashion. Our guest is Katie Tetrault, the Foundation’s Vice President of Finance and Grants Management. Tetrault manages all of the Foundation’s budgeting, accounting, financial, and grant…

In this episode, you’ll gain an understanding of how bias commonly plays out in the hiring process, and how organizations can better recruit and retain a powerful, diverse workforce that expands opportunity across lines of race and gender. Our guests are Trina C. Olson and Alfonso T. Wenker, co-leaders of the consultancy Team Dynamics and co-author…

Over half of mid-level nonprofit staff in Western New York State don’t make enough to support themselves or their families. This number grows to 68% for those who work at nonprofits with budgets of less than a million dollars. This is one of many powerful findings in new research about the wellbeing of the nonprofit workforce. How does it relate to…

So many nonprofits right now are experiencing challenges with recruitment, burnout, retention, and internal conflict around issues of equity and compensation. Sometimes we don’t know where to start. Sometimes we don’t have a vision for where to go on these issues. So we’ve got an important, helpful, and mind-expanding conversation for you today. Th…

In this second installment of our series, Smashing the Overhead Myth Ones and For All, you’ll get an insider’s view of how things are changing inside the Ford Foundation, one of the largest private funders in the world, as their team seeks to provide more equitable and effective grants to the organizations they support in the U.S. and around the wo…

In this episode, we examine The Resilience Initiative, a model of foundation-initiated capacity-building work on behalf of grantee organizations that has sought to help progressive nonprofits tackle the mounting political, economic, and health crises that have impacted organizations in recent years. The Resilience Initiative has developed a highly-…

Welcome to the first installment of our special series, “Smashing the Overhead Myth – Once and For All.” In this episode, we hear the story of Funders for Real Costs, Real Change, a learning collaborative among a dozen funders who sought to better understand how they could do their part to end the nonprofit starvation cycle. These funders examined …

In this episode, we speak with Jan Masaoka, CEO of California Association of Nonprofits (CalNonprofits), and one of the most respected and outspoken organizers, advocates, authors, and capacity-builders in the nonprofit sector. Jan recently announced her departure from CalNonprofits, and she shares sage wisdom (and rage!) on a range of issues inclu…

Welcome to the first episode of Season 4 of Fund the People - A Podcast with Rusty Stahl! In this episode, host Rusty Stahl welcomes you back, and sets up the theme for an amazing new season! Each season of this show has a theme, and together they follow the outline of our Funding that Works Framework. Season 1 explored the problem facing the socia…

Get a sneak peek at our upcoming season 4, where Rusty and guests dive into the Eight Practices of Talent-Investing.

In celebration of Martin Luther King, Jr. Day, we’re pleased to welcome special guest Michael Smith, the eighth CEO of AmeriCorps, the federal agency for service and volunteering. This special episode explores the role of AmeriCorps as the federal government’s anchor institution, ensuring that MLK National Day of Service is a “day on,” not a “day o…

2022 has come to an end, and we’ve also reached the end of Season 3 of the Fund the People Podcast. So we’ve got a nice finale to wrap things up with a bow for you! In this solo episode, Rusty Stahl recaps the theme of Season 3 – the 8 Principles of Talent-Investing – and summarizes the key ideas covered in his conversations with amazing guests thr…

This episode is end-of-year inspiration – and it offers a bold new model for increasing investments in America’s nonprofit workforce. In this episode, you’ll learn how a group of nonprofits showed elected leaders the essential value of the nonprofit human services workforce, and broke through malaise and noise to secure historic state and local gov…

From all of us at Fund the People – Happy Hanukkah, Merry Christmas, Happy Kwanzaa, and Happy New Year! You and millions of people in America’s nonprofit workforce are resisting, keeping flames alive, sustaining traditions and values, and rebuilding communities and civic spaces that have been so challenged by the pandemic, political violence, and o…

We are in the nonprofit sector’s season of giving, but we’re going counter-culture. This episode is all about nonprofit saving. Specifically, nonprofit workers saving for retirement. In this episode, you'll learn why it's critical for funders, nonprofits, and nonprofit workers alike to invest in retirement savings. You’ll hear the surprising politi…

In this episode, you’ll learn about developing a compensation philosophy on which you can build human resources and compensation systems that are in keeping with values of equity and justice. Consultant Mala Nagarajan sits down with host Rusty Stahl to talk about the ideas that undergird equitable salaries and benefits in social justice and social …

With every election cycle and issue campaign, we are reminded of the critical role that community organizers play in supporting the civic participation of all Americans. In this episode, you'll learn from new research on the working conditions of community organizers in social justice nonprofits. You’ll hear how organizers, executive directors, and…

Burnout is a chronic condition in nonprofits. Right now, it’s at an acute level after the years of trauma we’ve been experiencing. And burnout has a compounding impact on people who are dealing with marginalization. Yet burnout is often something we suffer in isolation, in silence, and in an individual fashion – as if it's not an organizational or …

Nonprofit people create and sustain the organizational capacity of nonprofits. So there’s a natural connection between organizational “capacity-building” and what Fund the People calls “talent-investing” (intentionally deploying capital to support and develop nonprofit workers). In our continuous effort to capture the value that talent-investing of…

Is student debt haunting your nonprofit career? Is the specter of student loans looming over people in your organization, or your colleagues elsewhere? Are you an HR person helping nonprofit workers navigate the harrowing nature of debt? Luckily, you don’t need an exorcist to get rid of that debt! It can be wiped away through the federal government…

Learn why it's critical to invest in the diverse emerging workforce inside foundations, and how such investment helps organized philanthropy be responsive to nonprofits and those who are on the front lines doing the work. Rusty sits down for a chat with Storme Gray, the inspiring Executive Director of Emerging Practitioners in Philanthropy (EPIP), …

In this episode, you'll learn about some easy actions you can take to help researchers address the lack of philanthropic investment in the nonprofit workforce, and the burnout that results from that deficit of investment. Host Rusty Stahl sits down with Betsy Leondar-Wright, Project Director of Staffing the Mission. Launched in 2019, Staffing the M…

In this episode, you'll get a rare glimpse into the inside story of two people who have, together, gone through the unique crucible that is an executive transition. Jane McDonnell is the former Executive Director of the Online News Association and is now an independent consultant. Irving Washington is the current Executive Director of the Online Ne…