We Nonprofits Suck at Employee Benefits

This post is based on my top LinkedIn post of all time. Over 65,000 individual users have read it. Follow me on LinkedIn for more content like this!

My focus is nonprofit strategy and leadership, not HR and benefits. But our sector’s abysmal benefits are hurting our strategy and undermining the longevity of our leaders.

Can we blame folks for leaving for greener pastures?

Every organization I work with talks about wanting to invest more in employees. But few nonprofits go all in like FoodCorps and their co-founder and CEO Curt Ellis.

From their founding 14 years ago, they’ve offered what some would call radical employee benefits.

A partial list includes:

• Health, dental, vision, AD&D, life insurance with HRA and HSA

• Flexible Spending Account (FSA)

• 401(k) match up to $3,000

• 5 weeks of time-off

• 12 Federal holidays and your birthday

• 2-week winter break

• 4-week sabbatical every three years

• $3,000-5,000 bonus for colleagues covering others’ sabbaticals

• Half-day Fridays

• 16 weeks of paid parental leave

• $10,000 lifetime benefit for fertility support

• $7,500 lifetime benefit toward surrogacy and adoption

• $500 annual professional development stipend

• $500 home office stipend

They couple all this with a robust performance evaluation process including 360-degree feedback.

Before you dismiss this as impossible for your organization, hang on a second.

Don’t say, “We could never afford that,” before asking yourself:

• What would offering even some of these benefits mean for our recruitment of new employees?

• What effect would this have on our retention of top talent?

• And how would our mission advance due to those two effects?

Credit: One of my favorite podcasts, Successful Nonprofits with Dolph Goldenburg. Episode published 12/3/2024, “World-Class Benefits for Nonprofit Teams with Curt Ellis.