No matter where you stand in the sector, you can help to maximize investment in the nonprofit workforce. You don’t have to be a funder — or wait for a funder — to invest in your team and yourself.

We encourage nonprofit board members, CEOs, emerging leaders, and all nonprofit professionals to integrate talent-investment in your organizational priorities, strategic plans, budgets, upper and middle management activities, and fundraising. Over time, we plan to keep adding more content to this Toolkit specifically for nonprofit professionals.

We recommend that nonprofit professionals start with the resources listed below, and then explore from there.

Where to Start for Nonprofits

Case Making

Helping you make cogent arguments for investing in nonprofit talent.

Top Reasons to Invest in Nonprofit Talent

Provides succinct language and anecdotes that can be used to introduce the concept of talent-investing to foundation staff and board trustees and to communicate the compelling reasons for investing in nonprofit talent. Read ›

Nonprofit Myths & Realities

Provides alternative views about some of the harmful assumptions that continue to inform nonprofit leaders’ attitudes and behaviors toward the nonprofit workforce. Read ›

The Investment Deficit By the Numbers

Infographic offers data on the deficit of investment of the nonprofit workforce. Read ›

How-To Guides

Practical guidance for baking talent-investment into your work.

Talent-Investment Menu

Outlines the different investment partners, key roles, spheres of investment levels, and where along the talent-investment continuum funders can focus their talent-investments. Read ›

Talent-Investing Across All Grant Types

Explores how talent-investments can be baked into all types of grants including program/project, general operating support, and capacity building. A grant in talent-investment can stand on its own as a fourth major type of grant. Read 

Who Drives Change in Talent-Investing?

Addresses two overlapping questions – 1) Who or what is the “subject” or “target” of the intervention? and 2) Who gets to drive the problem analysis, objectives, content, and format of the intervention? These are key questions funders should ask when considering how to structure their investments in grantee talent. Read 

Field Stories

Brief, original accounts chronicling how funders invest in grantee talent.

Evelyn & Walter Haas, Jr. Fund

A deep respect and appreciation for the power of effective leadership is in the San Francisco-based Evelyn & Walter Haas, Jr. Fund’s DNA. Read the foundation’s field story to learn more about their talent-investments that support national movements including immigrant rights and LGBTQ rights. Read ›

Pierce Family Foundation

The Pierce Family Foundation offers a variety of sophisticated investments in mid-level managers and emerging leaders in their grantee organizations and other nonprofits in the Chicagoland area. Read ›

The Harry and Jeanette Weinberg Foundation

Talent development remains an imbedded priority within the Baltimore-based Harry and Jeanette Weinberg Foundation’s work. Learn about this foundation’s talent-investments in the Weinberg Sector Skills Academy, Leading Edge, and the Weinberg Fellows Program. Read ›

Talent Justice

Investing in equity and inclusion in the nonprofit workforce.

Talent Justice | Report: Investing in Equity in the Nonprofit Workforce

Produced by Fund the People and the Center for Urban and Racial Equity, this comprehensive report offers important findings on the challenges and opportunities of investing in intersectional racial equity in the U.S. nonprofit workforce.

Talent Justice | Executive Summary: Investing in Equity in the Nonprofit Workforce 

This brief summary offers important findings on the challenges and opportunities of investing in intersectional racial equity in the U.S. nonprofit workforce.

Talent Justice | Toolkit: Investing in Equity in the Nonprofit Workforce

These resources can be used by nonprofits and funders to take action to increase their investments in talent justice at all stages of the nonprofit career lifecycle.

Invest in Equity Inside in the Nonprofit Workforce

Our brief statement argues that increasing equity and inclusion in nonprofits is inextricably intertwined with investing in the nonprofit workforce. Read ›

Literature Review

Examines how foundations have discussed and addressed investing in equity and inclusion in the nonprofit workforce. Read ›

Discussion Guides

Advancing productive dialogue on talent issues.

Talking Talent for Nonprofits

Helps nonprofit leaders conduct internal discussions about why and how to invest in staff development, and how to mobilize your funders as allies in these investments. Read >

Talking Talent Between Funders & Nonprofits

Supports funders and nonprofits to explore the mutual benefit of investing in the nonprofit’s staff development. Read >

Resource Listings

High-quality, curated content from across the social sector.

Glossary of Terms

Offers definitions for key phrases used throughout this Toolkit. One of the signs that the field has not prioritized investment in the nonprofit workforce is the lack of useful language with which to discuss it – so we are road testing some new terminology. Read ›

Reading List

A selection of key writings on the nonprofit workforce – helpful for your own background knowledge or for a nonprofit-related “book club”, fellowship cohort, or association. Read ›