Sabbaticals Strengthen Leaders and Nonprofits: Here’s How to Recharge

Iliana Tavera deserved a break.

Haven Hills, where she has been CEO since 2015, went through a period of terrifying demand during the pandemic. Calls to its domestic-violence hotline nearly tripled, and the charity struggled to find enough space for survivors who were coming in for shelter. Meanwhile, she also had to protect her staff from the unknown impacts of the virus. She was on call 24/7.

Tavera didn’t take a day of vacation in two years. But once she pulled Haven Hills through the aftermath of the Covid era, she had a moment of clarity: She loved her work — and she had to stop doing it.

“As a leader, you’ve got to realize when you need to step away,” she says. She explains why she decided to take a three-month rest: “I love this organization. And there’s a lot that I can still do here — a lot of good that I can still provide. I want to be here, and that required that I step away from it for a little bit to recharge and come back excited about this work.”

During her sabbatical last summer, she vacationed in Europe for two months and spent time relaxing at home. Haven Hills shut off access to her email, affording her the space to reflect on her career and her future. By the end of August, she was rejuvenated and ready to return.

Tavera says the change in perspective was exactly what she — and her charity — needed to thrive.

“It was fully understanding that no organization is about one person, right? And that sometimes we undertake tasks and responsibilities that don’t make sense for us because we think that only we can do it,” she says. “That was liberating — coming back and understanding that there are other people here that enjoy that work as well, or that it makes more sense for them to be responsible for certain things.”

Tavera and four other nonprofit executives spoke to the Chronicle about their recent sabbaticals. Here are their top tips on how and why to take time to recharge, even during challenging periods.

Listen to trusted advisers or coaches who recommend time away

Jacob Martinez says his sabbatical wasn’t his idea. In fact, he was initially reluctant to take time off from Digital Nest, the group he founded in 2014 to empower Latino youths. However, the Silicon Valley Community Foundation — one of his trusted funders — insisted he reconsider.

He recalls they were persuasive: “‘We’re going to get a wellness coach for the organization. We’re going to do an assessment of the organization’s health. We’re gonna give you a small grant — we’re going to fully fund it.’ So I said, okay, I’ll do it for the Nest.”

Over the six-month period before his leave began in July 2023, an executive coach worked with Martinez and his chief operating officer, Antonia Franco, whom he tapped to serve as interim CEO during his leave. When he returned after seven weeks away, Franco did not hand back all of the tasks, which freed up Martinez to focus on his top priorities.

“She knew this is what the organization needed — for me to get out of the weeds,” he says. “[She would say,] ‘I got this, Jacob. You don’t need to be involved in all these meetings.’ It was a bit of relief for her, too, and gave her a lot of authority and really positioned her within this organization differently. We’ve been able to maintain that.”

Working with a coach also helped him clarify how he could keep balance in his life post-sabbatical.

Martinez’s assistant changed his email password the day he left to prevent him from accessing any of his work accounts. But he quickly realized he had been using his work email to log into Netflix and his personal bank account.

“My coach at the time was like, Aha, there’s the problem. No separation between you and your work life. It’s all one,” he recalls. “I hit a wall — like, oh my gosh, I’m so interwoven within what I do.”

Martinez says two years later, he’s still working on finding some hobbies outside of work — he’s considering woodworking, pottery, or glass blowing — and enjoying the process.

Stepping back — with careful planning — allows others to step up and grow

Daniel McPhee, executive director of the Urban Design Forum, returned from a three-month sabbatical in July. He says he saw his break as a chance for his team to shine this year.

“I really wanted to make sure that the organization was strong outside of my influence,” McPhee says. “To feel like the board and the staff were managing and leading this organization to the same extent, I really wanted to take a step back and allow them to step up into new roles and responsibilities.”

He divided his tasks between Urban Design Forum’s director of programs, Guillermo Gómez, and its managing director, Katherine Sacco. The trio spent six months scenario planning to cover every conceivable possibility: “What happens if a project falls apart? What happens if a board member passes away?” It helped them feel confident in their interim roles and protected McPhee from any interruption during his leave, which he spent entirely in Japan.

Showing trust in your team has capacity-building benefits as well. Giving senior staff valuable experience at the helm while you take time to recharge sets up your organization for a healthy future, McPhee says.

“They were ready to rise in their leadership,” McPhee says, “and this really did afford them the opportunity to do so.”

Seek grants to cover your costs; many foundations are open to this form of support

A grant from the foundation All Stars Helping Kids, with support from the Silicon Valley Community Foundation and the Satterberg Foundation, paid for Martinez’s salary, benefits, and travel during his time away from Digital Nest.

Haven Hills received $75,000 from the Durfee Foundation to support Tavera’s sabbatical, which included $60,000 for her discretionary use and $15,000 for the two co-executive directors who filled in during her absence, which they used for executive coaching.

Often these grant programs are regional or limited to executives who meet specific criteria. For example, R&R, the Rest of Our Lives provides matching grants of $30,000 to heads of nonprofit groups that serve Jewish communities in the United States. Since 2005, the Barr Foundation has offered a paid fellowship intended to overlap with sabbatical leave for nonprofit executives in the Boston metropolitan area. Every other year, the Z. Smith Reynolds Foundation accepts applications from charity leaders in North Carolina; the most recent round, in 2024, awarded $40,000 each to five executive directors for six months of paid leave.

Even if a foundation doesn’t have a sabbatical program, you can still apply for grants to support your leave under proposals for discretionary purposes, professional development, or technical assistance, recommends Joanne Smith, president and CEO of Girls for Gender Equity.

She took a sabbatical five years ago and has since helped four other executive directors to plan theirs. While she paid out of pocket for her own leave, she has some tips to help other leaders prepare financially.

“I typically advise executive directors to begin writing it into proposals and earmarking the funds within the organization so that they can cover the expenses that come up, including additional salaries, consultants, training, etc.,” Smith says. “That is an area that funders should support, since [covering a leader’s] salary [while they are on leave] isn’t always enough.”

Sabbaticals are not just for CEOs; offer the benefit to all staff members

Martinez says his sabbatical experience was so transformative that he now sees extended paid leave as a retention strategy for his Digital Nest staff at every level — even young professionals.

“Realistically, nobody stays at a company for 10 years anymore. It’s a hard milestone to hit,” he says.

The policy he’s developing would grant an additional week of paid time off for every two years of employment, with longer sabbaticals available for executives who have been there eight years.

Modeling for your staff that self-care isn’t radical is a vital part of leadership, adds Jennifer Ching, executive director of the North Star Fund, a grant maker with $34 million in assets that supports social-justice organizations in New York City and the Hudson Valley.

The foundation has a longstanding policy that entitles employees to 12 weeks of paid leave for every five years of service. However, when she passed the five-year mark in 2022, Ching delayed her sabbatical because she felt she couldn’t afford to be gone.

“It was actually my colleagues who came to me and were like, you not taking the sabbatical impacts the culture of us saying everyone needs it,” Ching remembers. “You obviously need it and deserve it and you earned it. So, you should take it.”

She says they were right. After her positive sabbatical experience that summer — which she spent traveling, taking care of family members, and completing physical therapy she had been putting off — she felt empowered to counsel other charity heads on making their organizational culture healthier, now and in the future.

Ching observes that leaders often feel uncomfortable about unfinished work. “It comes up in so many ways: the way we martyr ourselves in conversation, or workload, or that we feign our indispensability,” she says.

But a sabbatical is good practice for leaving your job or retirement, she says, whether that’s just around the corner or a few decades away. “A lot of executive directors, many of us get into our roles because we just can’t handle it when things are not done our way.” A sabbatical “opens up those doors that things can be done a different way.”