Episodes

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 w...

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 intermedi...

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...

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 ho...

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...

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 ...

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 nonprof...

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 capa...

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 ho...

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 2...

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 Ho...

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 Foun...

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...

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 f...

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 t...

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 ...

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, ev...

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 understa...

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 challe...

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...

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 ...

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 impossibl...

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...