Care at work — what is it? What does it look like? Is it even possible? I don’t know about you, but so much of my own career working in the nonprofit sector has looked a lot like overwork, burnout, long hours, and limited resources — all alongside performative gestures of “care.” In fact, I don’t believe I have ever met a nonprofit employee who at some point did not feel overworked and undervalued. We’ve been to the pizza parties, we’ve heard the HR statements about how we’re one big happy family, we may have even genuinely liked our supervisors and coworkers as people. But when care and humane practices are not valued and embodied at an institutional and cultural level, as well as operationalized in tangible and meaningful ways, it becomes performative at best, and perpetuating oppression at worst.
I am sure that if you’ve stayed in the nonprofit sector for any amount of time, commitment and passion to the work and your organization’s mission has never been a question. But the truth is that living within a Capitalist society that prioritizes productivity over care means that the majority of the workforce will experience exploitation, depleting work practices, and inhumane expectations — and the nonprofit sector is not exempt. Even though it might sound frivolous or unnecessary, a lack of care within our institutions is costing us a lot and keeping us from truly achieving our goals toward equity and inclusion. We can expect communities to trust us to meaningfully care for their stories, experiences, needs, and visions if we cannot embody that care internally — with our teams, in our systems, and in our work practices. So what can that actually look like? I’ll show what some of it has looked like here at OF/BY/FOR ALL.
The Evolution of Care at OF/BY/FOR ALL
Over the past two years, care has emerged as a central priority at OF/BY/FOR ALL — in regards to how we cultivate relationships with our Change Network members, but first and foremost in our own organizational culture with our team. When our CEO Courtney Harge took the helm of the organization two years ago, she made some bold, and rather unorthodox moves with the primary focus of her first year being to build a foundation of care for our team to feel held, supported, and valued — not just for our work contributions, but as human beings. Some pivotal actions Courtney took included:
1. Overhauling our tech systems to make our jobs easier.
This required serious investment of organizational time and money. We hired an amazing firm 1909 Digital to audit our tech stack, simplify our processes, and moved from free apps to paid apps with the underlying goal of resourcing our team to do work smarter, not harder. This initiative reduced confusion and misalignment, exposed gaps in our tech, clarified processes and team roles, and created greater ease and harmony for our time, not just in our individual jobs, but also in how we all worked together.
2. Implemented a culture of rest.
Being heavily influenced by writers and thinkers like adrienne maree brown and the Nap Ministry, Courtney actively resisted grind culture and encouraged radical rest within our team. She encouraged us to set our own work hours that aligned with our life needs, and actually honored those time boundaries. Our distributed team works at all different times, with All Team meetings set with consent, and we work our hours around family, parenting, our own community advocacy work outside of OF/BY/FOR ALL, as well as around our own self care needs. She instituted a week-long organizational ritual rest called Maycation when we hold no meetings, have no deadlines, don’t tend to external requests, and are given the option of either quietly and easefully doing some work, or taking time off.
3. Clarifying our roles and responsibilities.
This is an aspect of care that I think many people, from regular staff to managers and leadership, do not often recognize as an aspect of care… but it is! Feeling confused about one’s role, being asked to give labor that is outside one’s scope of responsibilities, as well as giving labor that is undercompensated is a huge drain on a team’s energy, morale, trust, as well as personal and collective wellbeing. Being a young organization, we had struggled for some time trying to figure out the right roles that met the organization’s need at this time. And, not having clarity around our roles and responsibilities made it very difficult to create appropriate boundaries and work practices that honored our humanity and work/life balance. In Courtney’s first year of leadership at the organization, she led a robust process wherein we each engaged in numerous conversations around what we’ve been doing, what’d like to be doing, what the organization needs, and how we can restructure our roles and responsibilities appropriately. All of this also helped us to establish a compensation structure that was also more equitable. This took a lot of time and intention, but getting to a place where we were clear about our roles and understood where our responsibilities began (and ended), we were each more empowered to enact healthy work boundaries, be more productive, focus our energy appropriately, and ultimately felt more valued and cared for.
4. We worked less.
Yes, you read that right. We actually worked less. The work we were doing to restructure, build clarity, practice healthier work culture norms, and build team cohesion required a lot of our focus and energy inward. We invested in a partnership with Harriet’s Apothecary to lead a series of workshops and coaching sessions around healing justice, healthy work economies, anti-oppression embodiment, and personal growth. We took critical looks at our work practices, assessed whether or not they were serving our goals humanely, and paused/stopped work that was not. We had conversations around our organizational values that ultimately supported Courtney to revamp our values, and enact practices and behaviors to embody those values. As we gained increasing clarity around our roles, we determined what work we had previously doing that was no longer in alignment with our role clarity, and shifted those things off our plates. Building a culture of rest and humane workload also meant that we set limits on what could be accomplished in any given week, negotiated, made compromises, and re-prioritized projects and tasks with the acknowledgment that not everything can get done. This ultimately enabled us to step into our work and our roles with greater agency, energy, clarity, and focus — we began to work better, more cohesively, more intentionally, and with greater ease and feeling of elevated wellbeing.
5. We aligned internal care work with external care work.
After learning so much about how care had transformed our own team and our own understandings of our work, we also began to see the importance of integrating care practices into our Change Network program and relationships with our members. Under the leadership of Associate Director of Curriculum Jana Lynne Umipig, we implemented Protocols of Care into our Change Network Member Calls to support our members across a broad range of cultural contexts, have processes in place to address harm, and to build trust. We continue to learn and expand the ways we implement care with our members, as we also continue to explore the way care shows up internally among our team.
Even as we experienced great success with our Change Network program, over the last few years, OF/BY/FOR ALL has experienced its own growing pains in figuring out who we want to be in the pursuit of building the beautiful, revolutionary future where all are included, represented, and thriving. We began to realize that while our work centered on helping other organizations resist oppression and build new, more equitable worlds, that same oppression will always insidiously find ways to show up in every space of our lives — including at work.
Care has been an essential antidote to fighting oppression in our workplace, and in establishing a culture of work that is aligned with our values and our commitments to equity. With this lens, care is constantly finding new ways to show up in our work and transform our program, our organization, and all of us as individuals. I’ve outlined above just a few ways that that looked like for us, but our care work continues to evolve and grow. As a result, over the past two years, everyone on our team expressed increased morale, feeling more energized about our work, feeling more creative and productive, more aligned and trusting, as well as feeling happier and healthier in our own lives.
So how do you think care could show up in your organization? To start, consider some of the areas below where you can begin implementing care practices throughout your organization. Then download our Care Inventory Checklist for more examples of how care could show up in your organization, and assess whether care is an area where your organization can grow.
Prioritizing Mental Health
Working in the nonprofit sector can be incredibly rewarding, but it can also be emotionally taxing. Staff members are often working directly with individuals and communities who are facing difficult situations. This can take a toll on their mental health and wellbeing. Employers must prioritize mental health by providing employees with access to mental health resources such as counseling services or mental health days. By prioritizing the mental health of employees, employers can create a healthy and supportive work environment.
Encouraging Work-Life Balance
Nonprofit work can be demanding, and it's easy for employees to burn out if they don't have a good work-life balance. Employers should encourage work-life balance by offering flexible work arrangements such as remote work or flexible hours. This can help employees take care of their personal responsibilities and reduce stress. Employers can also encourage employees to take breaks and time off when needed to prevent burnout.
Providing Professional Development
Nonprofit employees are often passionate about their work, but they may not have access to the same professional development opportunities as those in other industries. Employers can show that they care about their employees by providing professional development opportunities such as training programs or leadership development courses. This can help employees grow in their careers and feel valued in their roles.
Conclusion
In conclusion, care is essential in the nonprofit workplace. Nonprofit employees are dedicated to making a difference, but they also need support and resources to take care of their mental health, maintain a good work-life balance, and grow in their careers. By prioritizing care, nonprofit employers can create a healthy and supportive work environment that helps employees thrive and helps us get closer to actualizing our commitments to equity.