Upgrading Nonprofit Workplaces
We know nonprofit workers are overworked, under-paid, and deal with burnout in the face of overwhelming needs and crises. We would all like to see better nonprofit wages, workloads, working conditions, and support for the wellbeing of nonprofit staffers. But how do organizations actually move from burnout factories to bright spots on the map? Who's paving the way? And what can the rest of us learn from them?
To answer those questions, Fund the People established the Upgrading Nonprofit Workplaces Initiative, a multi-year study that documents the stories, tactics, results, and lessons-learned from nonprofits and funders who are making significant improvements to nonprofit jobs and workplaces. Helmed by our research lead, sociologist Betsy Leondar-Wright, Ph.D., Upgrading Nonprofit Workplaces was launched in December 2024 during the California Talent Justice Summit.
Case studies
We've partnered with All Due Respect to highlight the recommendations in their Sustainable Jobs Toolkit, and further illuminate those recommendations with inspiring new stories from the field. The results? Our new Case Study Series. Throughout 2026, we're publishing a total of eight case studies. Each will draw on interviews from the Upgrading Nonprofit Workplaces Initiative, and connect the story back to one key recommendation in the Sustainable Jobs Toolkit.
CASE STUDY 1: Hours of Work
CASE STUDY 2: Professional Development
Reports
In 2025, we studied the innovative talent-investment effort of the Walter and Elise Haas Fund. We examined the impact of their 'endeavor fund', a new portfolio of seven general support grants that explicitly encouraged seven Bay Area social justice organizations to use the funds to invest in good jobs for their staff over a seven-year period. With data from the first two years of this experiment, the resulting report (available below) offers six dramatic findings. These findings indicate that when funders encourage and enable nonprofits to invest in good jobs, it's not only beneficial to the staff, but it has an immediate positive affect on the quality and impact of programs.