3 Ways to Improve Your Nonprofit’s Leadership Approach

When it comes to employee satisfaction in the nonprofit sector, the writing is on the wall—nonprofits have the highest turnover rates of any industry. However, this doesn’t mean nonprofit employees aren’t passionate about their work. Instead, think back to that classic saying: “People don’t quit bad jobs; they quit bad bosses.”

At nonprofits, leadership is about more than providing simple guidance or planning fundraising strategies. Rather, leaders are tasked with cultivating a work environment where employees feel inspired to thrive and grow, both professionally and as people.

In this guide, we’ll review tactics for improving your leadership style so that upper and entry-level employees alike feel empowered and ready to succeed.

1. Foster a Supportive, Growth-Oriented Culture

In the nonprofit sphere, a collaborative and compassionate leadership style tends to be effective. After all, your work likely involves building emotional connections, so you should bring the same energy to your leadership approach. When you approach employees with empathy and encouragement, your leadership strategies are more likely to make an impact.

Here are some ways to make your workplace culture more supportive:

• Establish communication best practices. Mutual trust between leaders and employees is built on communication. Provide leadership and employees with several official communication channels. For instance, middle management might meet with direct reports once a week, whereas upper management hosts monthly all-hands meetings to discuss workplace-wide updates with everyone.
• Celebrate achievements. Be sure to highlight employee milestones and accomplishments to improve morale and provide examples of great work. For instance, you might create a peer-to-peer recognition system in which employees can send each other positive messages that shout out various accomplishments, and share them with the wider team during larger meetings.
• Solicit and respond to feedback. Employees have unique insights that can improve your leadership approach. Collect feedback on how you can better support them. Even if you don’t implement a suggestion, respond to it directly and explain why to show employees you seriously consider feedback.

Once you’ve started rolling out these changes, track data about employee satisfaction and performance. For instance, you might ask employees to rank your workplace culture on a scale of 1 to 10 both before and after the rollout so you can gauge progress.

2. Build Internal Growth Pathways

Turnover impacts employees on all levels, including leadership. Even if employees want to lead, they’ll only step up if they are being properly looped into leadership development opportunities. It’s on your nonprofit’s leaders to empower employees’ growth with clear development pathways.

First, ensure that your employees are set up to be successful leaders by investing in leadership skills training.People across your team, from entry-level fundraisers to senior IT pros, have the potential to become leaders with a bit of training. For instance, you might send some team members to an annual leadership conference or purchase leadership development books for interested employees to read on their own time.

Once your team has built a solid leadership foundation, try to promote from within whenever possible. Internal promotion helps you boost the return on the investment you made in your team, as employees are more likely to stay with your nonprofit if there’s a chance they’ll get promoted. To promote from within, create a standardized leadership pathway that outlines the specific steps lower-level employees must take to climb the ranks and earn more responsibility.

3. Build a Strong Team Around You

A leader’s team often shapes their leadership strategies, so why not start strong by cultivating a winning team from the start? Here’s how to get started:

• Revisit your hiring efforts. Hiring is a consistent pain point for nonprofits, especially those on a strict budget. To improve your recruiting efforts, you need to optimize your hiring processes. For example, look back at your standard slate of interview questions and assess whether they help your team gauge a candidate’s leadership potential or organizational fit.
• Conduct satisfaction and strength assessments. As your nonprofit evolves, it’s likely that employees might need to be shifted around to meet your new objectives. For example, if you decide to start a new department, you might move existing team members over rather than hiring from scratch. Conduct regular satisfaction and strength surveys so employees are placed where they can best contribute to your mission.
• Look into hiring external help. If there’s a gap on your team, you might save time, access new perspectives, and improve outcomes by hiring a consultant in that area. Let’s say your head of development is stepping down. Instead of taking months to train a new hire, you could hire a fractional leader from a nonprofit fundraising consultancy to take their place.

Remember, as a nonprofit, you work with a range of people outside of salaried employees, and many of them may be able to step up as leaders. Look to your volunteers and board members to ensure they feel confident in their leadership abilities and provide them with development opportunities.

Whenever possible, revisit your nonprofit’s mission and values to apply them to your leadership strategies. For example, a nonprofit focused on education might center hands-on professional development workshops in its strategy and use its connections in the education space to provide informative lunch-and-learn sessions.

When crafting your unique leadership approach, expressing a genuine interest in your employees’ passions and pursuits is a good starting point. With employee input and passionate, aspiring leaders, you can ensure your nonprofit has effective leadership long term.