Breaking News: This Journalist Covers Funding for the Nonprofit Workforce

Fund the People: A Podcast with Rusty Stahl

In this episode, you'll get a free-wheeling, big picture view of how organized philanthropy does and does not address issues impacting the nonprofit workforce. Inside Philanthropy journalist Dawn Wolfe writes about how funding for living wages and other fundamental matters related to nonprofit staffing.

Why should we all be 'following the money'? Why should the hiring crisis not have come as a surprise to anybody? How are the sector's funding practices actually hurting the groups they are trying to help? Why do funders have incredible influence that they're not using right now? What can you do if you want to be a 'worker-friendly' funder? If a nonprofit speaks up about their challenges with grants, do they get labelled as problematic? We discuss these questions and more.

Resources:

Nonprofit Leaders Need a Break*

Nonprofit Employees are Burned Out*

Report on Trust in Civil Society Reveals Decline in Nonprofit Trust

NCN Report on Nonprofit Hiring Crisis 2023*

A Foundation Offers Some Relief to Exhausted Nonprofit Staff*

Nonprofit Homeless Response: Staff Struggle to Afford Housing*

Three Decades of Efforts to get Funders to Support the Real Costs of Nonprofits*

The Nonprofit Starvation Cycle

What Makes a Funder Worker-Friendly? Here's a Handy Report Card*

This Bay Area Grantmaker is Pushing for Good Nonprofit Jobs. Will Other Funders Take a Cue?

Crappy Funding Practices

Crappy Funding Practices Gives Nonprofit Professionals a Chance to Vent. It Might Also Make a Difference*

Guest Bio:

Dawn Wolfe returned to journalism in 2018 after a long time spent in the wilderness of nonprofit and small business communications consulting, where her experiences include ghostwriting a book on major gifts fundraising, writing speeches for a suicide-prevention conference, and coordinating events and raising sponsorship funds for a small foster children's charity. Prior to becoming a Staff Writer at Inside Philanthropy, Dawn covered LGBTQ issues for Michigan's Between The Lines, a wide range of topics as a paid freelancer at Daily Kos, and criminal justice problems and reform movements for The Appeal. She has studied Western European sword-fighting as a martial art, is passionate about strength training, and lives with her spouse and three rescue cats in Michigan.

**Please note the Inside Philanthropy articles are behind a paywall.

Links to these and more resources are found on our podcast's show notes page.