Episodes

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 HopeWell, a major foster care nonprofit in Massachusetts. When he took management of the $25 million budget with hundreds of staff, there was no internal capacity that you would expect from an HR team. Since then, he has leveraged government and philanthropic investments to b...

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 Foundation. As they say on the Foundation's website, "Social justice work can be affirming, invigorating, and nourishing. But for leaders in the struggle, the work can also be rife with conflict, overwork, isolation, trauma, and oppression...we have heard movement leaders strugg...

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, incentivized and have the funding they need to pay appropriate thriving wages. This is the second in our special three-part series based on Fund the People's presentation at the Center for Effective Philanthropy Conference in Fall of 2023. Our session focused on how funder...

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 for Effective Philanthropy conference in fall 2023. In this first episode of the series, you'll learn from a foundation executive director who's leading an important new experiment in how funders invest in the workforce of grantee organizations. The Executive Director is Jam...

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 to intentionally create a multi-generational, multiracial nonprofit workforce. The more we push long-serving leaders to get out, the more resistance we get. The more we push emerging leaders to stay put, the less likely they'll be to stay in their organizations and in the...

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 ideas. Go to the episode page on our podcast page fundthepeople.org/ftp_podcast⁠⁠ to listen and get a transcript of this episode. We invite you to learn from all the amazing past guests and episodes of Fund the People - A Podcast with Rusty Stahl at ⁠⁠⁠fundthepeople.org/ft...

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, even by line items in the budget. To borrow language from George Overholser’s great article on buying, not building, frozen funds are great for “buying” programs, but are terrible for “building” the very organizations that run the programs. In a just and effective system, 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 understand why private foundations are expected to pay great salaries and benefits, while public charities are expected to compensate with poverty wages, this episode succinctly explains the legal underpinnings of this difference. The double standard must be at the center of our c...

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 challenging this idea and reframing the issue. The Bridgespan Group is a major consulting firm serving foundations and nonprofits that was co-founded in 2000 by two Bain and Company executives. In the early days of 2006, Bridgespan caused a huge stir in the sector when they decla...

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 no way an adequate response to the challenges confronted by the nonprofit workforce. And you’ll learn the concept of turning the funding formula upside down, so staffing issues are treated with the level of attention that they need and deserve. Resources: Flip the Funding...

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 they face in supporting their staff. And many funders fear that their grantees may become too reliant on them for staffing costs. If and when we can alleviate these fears, we can unlock new momentum for talent-investing and talent justice. This episode is part of our Rusty'...

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 impossible to prove that investing in nonprofit workers can improve programs and their impact. In this episode... You'll hear a compelling argument based on new data about the state of the nonprofit workforce. We share data about the link between people and impact from the for-prof...

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 of our Rusty's Rants and Reflections series. The series offers Rusty's provocative reflections and ideas about investing in the nonprofit workforce. Go to our website for a transcript of this episode and links to the resources discussed in the episode. You can find all th...

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 of Nonprofits that show that investing in staff is the #1 need among nonprofits. And it’s not just this year; we discuss research going back a decade that shows the disconnect between funder and nonprofit perspectives on this issue. This episode, which is based on a blog pos...

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 been, where we are now, and what all this means for you. Then we're featuring one-on-one interviews with luminaries in the nonprofit field. Stay tuned!

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 and their communities. Host Rusty Stahl sits down with Kenneth Jones, Chief Operating Officer and Chief Equity Officer of one of America’s major foundations, The John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation. They discuss why and how MacArthur Foundation has increased the am...

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 President of Finance and Grants Management. Tetrault manages all of the Foundation’s budgeting, accounting, financial, and grantmaking policies and operations. Katie shares how and why the Foundation’s recently changed from paying only 10% toward “indirect costs” on project and...

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 race and gender. Our guests are Trina C. Olson and Alfonso T. Wenker, co-leaders of the consultancy Team Dynamics and co-authors of Hiring Revolution: A Guide to Disrupt Racism and Sexism in Hiring. In this conversation, they share powerful, practical approaches to the hiring...

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. This is one of many powerful findings in new research about the wellbeing of the nonprofit workforce. How does it relate to what’s happening in your nonprofit community? In this episode, you’ll get important new data on the health of the nonprofit workforce. Drawn from th...

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 vision for where to go on these issues. So we’ve got an important, helpful, and mind-expanding conversation for you today. The brilliant consultant and thought-leader Mala Nagarajan returns to our podcast to share six practices that nonprofits can use to de-link privilege (...

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 their team seeks to provide more equitable and effective grants to the organizations they support in the U.S. and around the world. Our guests today are the ones making challenging operational decisions, guiding changes to organizational policy, practice and culture, and exec...

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, economic, and health crises that have impacted organizations in recent years. The Resilience Initiative has developed a highly-responsive approach that is increasingly focused on the well-being of nonprofit people and organizations. You’ll hear from the two top-notch consulta...

Welcome to the first installment of our special series, “Smashing the Overhead Myth – Once and For All.” In this episode, we hear the story of Funders for Real Costs, Real Change, a learning collaborative among a dozen funders who sought to better understand how they could do their part to end the nonprofit starvation cycle. These funders examined the realities of overhead and indirect costs in their grants and grantee organizations – and some are making major changes as a result. Our guest is...

In this episode, we speak with Jan Masaoka, CEO of California Association of Nonprofits (CalNonprofits), and one of the most respected and outspoken organizers, advocates, authors, and capacity-builders in the nonprofit sector. Jan recently announced her departure from CalNonprofits, and she shares sage wisdom (and rage!) on a range of issues including advocating for a better relationship between government and nonprofits, addressing the “overhead” myth, funding full costs, dealing with nonprof...