Episodes

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...

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 o...

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 b...

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 a...

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 Pr...

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 ra...

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...

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 ...

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 t...

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, e...