As the nonprofit workforce crisis evolves in 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 podcast episodes, 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:
A survey of nonprofit executives examining “the state of nonprofits in 2024,” with a focus on employee and executive burnout.
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. Links to these and more resources are below.
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 A Report of CEP's Nonprofit Voice Project
How Foundations are Supporting Grantee Wellbeing a CEP “Research Snapshot”
Building Movement Project Race to Lead
Report: Burnout a Major Concern in Nonprofit Sector (article from Public News Service with quotes from CEP and Fund the People)
To Ensure Nonprofit Well-Being, Invest in Wages, Workload, and Working Conditions (Rusty’s CEP blog guest post in response to the 2024 Nonprofit Voice research)
Funders: Let’s Stop making Nonprofits Choose Between Balanced Budgets and Burnout (a roundup of CEP guest blog posts in response to the 2024 Nonprofit Voice research)
State of the Nonprofit Sector 2023: What Funders Need to Know (Report on CEP’s Nonprofit Voice Project)
Funders, Listen Up: It's Time to Invest in Nonprofit Workers (Rusty’s CEP blog guest post in response to the 2023 Nonprofit Voice research)
Funders Supporting Nonprofit Workers podcast playlist - 3 part series from Fund the People Podcast
Strengthening Grantees: Foundation and Nonprofit Perspectives (2018 Report on CEP’s Nonprofit Voice Project)
Nonprofit Challenges: What Funders Can Do (2013 Report on CEP’s Nonprofit Voice Project)
Guide to Investing in Grantee Talent (A Resource in Fund the People’s Toolkit)
Funding that Works Academy (A Resource from Fund the People)
Related Podcast Episodes:
Understanding Funders’ Blindspots (CEP’s Grace Nicholette and Phil Buchanan on the FTP Podcast, November 2020)