Investing in Equity
in the Nonprofit Workforce

Talent Justice | Executive Summary

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

Our Talent Justice research explores the following dimensions of inequity and opportunity associated with three broad phases of nonprofit career development:

  • Access to Nonprofit Work: How unpaid and underpaid apprenticeships and entry-level jobs contribute to exclusionary entry-points into nonprofit work
  • Advancement and Retention: How the uneven distribution of mentorship, professional development, compensation, and benefits makes nonprofit careers unsustainable
  • Ascension to Positions of Leadership: How the lack of thoughtful investment in equity and inclusion before and during the process of executive transition, executive recruitment, and executive onboarding maintains an exclusionary top-tier of leadership in the sector

We explore what funders can do to encourage and enable nonprofits to do better and how grantmaking and fundraising practices can be a powerful part of the solution.