Do Funders Understand the Nonprofit Burnout Crisis?

Fund the People: A Podcast with Rusty Stahl

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 the nonprofit workforce!

Even though we haven’t been publishing, we've been busy behind the scenes! At the start of this episode, you’ll get a sneak-peek into some of the things we’ve been working on.

Then we dive into new research from the Center for Effective Philanthropy (CEP) with major takeaways and commentary on the state of the nonprofit workforce. Our guest is Elisha Smith Arrillaga, Ph.D., Vice President of Research at CEP. She shares her journey into social change work, and offers valuable insights on the research findings. We explore two important studies:

1. A survey of nonprofit executives examining “the state of nonprofits in 2024,” with a focus on employee and executive burnout.

2. A survey of foundation professionals, exploring grantmaker attitudes and responses to nonprofit burnout.

Fund the People was honored to be part of the research rollout in Summer 2024. We were featured as a resource in one of the CEP reports. Rusty was interviewed for an article about the research. And we contributed a guest post on the CEP blog. In 2023, we hosted a session at CEP’s conference to share examples of how funders can respond to nonprofit burnout, and invited the foundation CEOs who were our panelists - Jamie Allison, Desiree Flores, and Jennifer Roller - to share their work on a special podcast mini-series.

Elisha Smith Arrillaga, Ph.D. Biography

Elisha Smith Arrillaga, Ph.D. manages CEP’s Research team, leading the creation, development, analysis, and release of various research projects and initiatives relevant to the philanthropic sector’s most pressing issues. Prior to CEP, Dr. Smith Arrillaga was a faculty fellow and professor of practice in philanthropy and education policy at the University of Texas, and she served as executive director of several national and state level nonprofits, including the Dana Center, a national center on math and science education equity and the Education Trust West. Dr. Smith Arrillaga has also served on a range of state and national advisory groups including Google’s Equitable Artificial Intelligence Research Roundtable and has spoken widely at conferences, published articles and op-eds and has been interviewed by various media outlets, including Forbes, the New York Times, and CNN.

Resources

The Center for Effective Philanthropy

State of Nonprofits 2024: What Funders Need to Know

How Foundations are Supporting Grantee Wellbeing

Building Movement Project Race to Lead

Report: Burnout a Major Concern in Nonprofit Sector

One MIND at Work

To Ensure Nonprofit Well-Being, Invest in Wages, Workload, and Working Conditions

Funders: Let’s Stop making Nonprofits Choose Between Balanced Budgets and Burnout

State of the Nonprofit Sector 2023: What Funders Need to Know

Funders, Listen Up: It's Time to Invest in Nonprofit Workers

Funders Supporting Nonprofit Workers podcast playlist - 3 part series from Fund the People Podcast

Strengthening Grantees: Foundation and Nonprofit Perspectives

Nonprofit Challenges: What Funders Can Do

Guide to Investing in Grantee Talent

Funding that Works Academy

Related Podcast Episodes:

Funders Support Nonprofit Workers in Age of Burnout, Part 1 with Jamie Allison, Walter and Elise Haas Fund

Funders Support Nonprofit Workers in Age of Burnout, Part 2 with Jennifer Roller, Raymond John Wean Foundation

Funders Support Nonprofit Workers in Age of Burnout, Part 3 with Desiree Flores, General Service Foundation

Understanding Funders’ Blindspots (CEP’s Grace Nicholette and Phil Buchanan on the FTP Podcast, November 2020)