Nonprofit employees are vital in realizing an organization’s mission and goals. Even though organizations recognize the importance of nonprofit employees, the sector is the third-least engaged industry in the United States with employees that are hostile or actively disengaged. Turnover is costly; research estimates that it costs 20 percent of a midlevel employee’s annual salary to find their replacement. How can nonprofit organizations build high-performing employees?

Create a recruitment strategy

As many as 73 percent of smaller nonprofits (with an operating budget of less than $5 million) have no recruitment strategy or budget. To attract and recruit talented employees, nonprofit organizations need to implement a recruitment strategy with a recruitment brand. To create a strategy, organizations should ask themselves goal-oriented questions, including:

• Positions needed to be filled
• Desired number of applicants 
• Qualifications desired
• What type of people should be targeted?
• When should a recruitment campaign begin? 
• Can the position be filled by an internal recruit?

Within the recruitment strategy, organizations should create a recruitment brand or decide how the organization wants current and prospective employees to see the company. By defining this value, employees whose values align can be attracted and recruited. 

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You are the manager of a nonprofit and find yourself exhausted by your efforts managing difficult staff, recruiting new staff and placing remaining energy into high-performing staff. Staff retention seems not only difficult, but near impossible to understand because of the intense amount of work. It is time to take a deep breath and consider the possibility you have approached staff retention incorrectly.

The Unemployment Services Trust (UST) administered a survey in 2015 to nonprofit executives, supervisors and nonsupervisory employees to understand factors contributing to job satisfaction, less employee turnover and more employee retention in the nonprofit sector.

The following results provide a great deal of insight into the question at hand. In this survey, results show that 48 percent of employees want to enhance job satisfaction. Additionally, UST found the importance of culture or office environment of the organization, which ranked 62.2 percent. Additional results note the importance of flexibility and work-life balance at 58.4 percent. 

Furthermore, this study found the importance of hiring and retaining correct individuals while removing incorrect hires. Although there are many aspects to consider in staff retention, these findings provide a great deal of opportunity for management to approach…

When I joined Public Allies Arizona, I was placed at Arizona Foundation for the Handicap, which is a day center for adults with special needs. AFH’s mission is to provide quality individualized services to people with physical or intellectual challenges in the least restrictive environments.

AFH partners with other Valley organizations to create more opportunities for our members. 

We believe in everyone’s right to choose services that most interest them. It is estimated that over 785 million people in the world today are living with a disability, over twice the U.S population.

In Arizona, roughly 100,000 Arizonans have some form of a disability. In the past, people with disabilities were viewed as cast-aways and hidden where they would be “safe.”

Thankfully, over time, the focus of care has shifted and now we advocate for self-determination. Members at AFH are encouraged to participate in a wide range of activities like cooking, art class or going out into the community.

AFH has three locations: Maricopa, Casa Grande and Phoenix. My placement was at the Phoenix location, nicknamed “Perry.” I was hired as the creative activities coordinator, in charge of creating three programs for our members: art, music and physical fitness. Perry was intimidating, but luckily, another Ally, Ellie, had been placed there as well.

The…

My name is Niamey Thomas. My name means River; it is the capital and largest city in the West African country Niger. My name represents the essence of power, strength and peace, which I try to embody every day. I am Black and Mexican and I am a creator. I create dances, curriculums and spaces for people of color to understand their identity, passion and purpose — these are lessons others tried to teach me but failed because they were more concerned with the box I did not fit into than the freedom I can have outside the boundaries of that box.

Identity is very important to me. I believe it is essential in navigating society and before you can love or accept anyone else, you must first love and accept yourself. When looking for an organization to partner with during my term at Public Allies, I wanted to find an organization that would allow me to be myself, an organization that would allow the opportunity to create and one that would not try to place me into a box.

I found that organization. Swift Youth Foundation is an organization that focuses on supporting the social and emotional development of youth and enhances social awareness and leadership skills for teens through mentor relationships. As the Program Coordinator, I created the curriculum for four of the seven programs: Swift After School, Club Swift, Swift Saturday and Club Swift Jr.…

As nonprofits explore ways to maintain sustainable growth, diversifying revenue has been a recurring focus for many. But what does it mean to diversify a nonprofit’s revenue? Investors diversify investment portfolios in order to decrease volatility and to see more stable returns on their investments. Nonprofits seek to do the same by diversifying the sources of funding they rely on to fulfill their missions. 

Importance of Diversifying Revenue

Nonprofits are competing for finite resources in unpredictable climates. The recession exposed the vulnerabilities of many organizations who relied too heavily on funding that decreased during the hard economic times. Although charitable giving has been on the rise year after year, smart nonprofit managers are seeking to strengthen their organizations to sustain growth in the future. 

Resource dependence theory states that an organization is controlled by the sources of funding on which they rely to operate. Those who control the resources hold the power. Organizations with fewer sources of funding feel these impacts even more. A 2017 study found that over half of nonprofits surveyed reported resource constraints as being a top concern, followed by managing growth at 42 percent.

Not all funding is created equal - some brings with it stipulations that require additional resources for organizations to manage. Others are highly unpredictable and cannot be relied upon for…