Nonprofit Staying Power

Long-term charity employees say mission is one reason they remain

Kate Hillas stayed in the same job for 20 years and says she rarely got bored. Ms. Hillas, 50, who retired

in June as head of development at the Madeira School, a private girls’ school in McLean, Va., says one big reason she stuck around so long was because her duties evolved so much during her tenure, as she sought to build a bigger and more effective fund-raising office.

“The program has expanded considerably since I first came here,” she says. “So the job has always been changing, even though I have stayed as head of the development program. The job was so fluid, I always had new responsibilities and opportunities, and that kept it fresh for me.”

Although she opted to leave the school, partly because she wants to find a job that will allow her to travel less and spend more time with her family, she says the mission and the people at Madeira kept her motivated to stay in her post for two decades.

“I have this belief in what the institution does,” she says. “I don’t think I would have had the same desire to stay if I didn’t feel so strongly about it.”

Charity employees who stay at the same organization for 20 years or more tend to echo Ms. Hillas’s sentiments. Laura Retzler, founder and director of Nonprofit Recruitment Services, a Seattle business that helps nonprofit groups find chief executives and senior fund raisers, informally interviewed 65 people who hold those positions to learn more about how organizations find and keep good workers. Her research, she says, revealed that the most common reasons people stay at their jobs are the charity’s mission, their co-workers, and money, along with opportunities to learn.

‘New and Old Talent’

Stephen Pratt, director of learning and community at Bridgestar, a project of the Boston nonprofit-consulting organization Bridgespan that helps charities recruit senior managers and board members, says he encourages charities to get a mix of “new and old talent.”

“You want a culture that on one hand respects the hard work that people do in an organization and rewards that hard work,” he says, “but on the other hand, the culture is open to new people and new ideas.”

Nonprofit groups spend a lot of time dealing with turnover and the costs of replacing employees who leave. For example, a survey by the Association of Fundraising Professionals, released in July, found that 25 percent of charity fund raisers had changed jobs in the past year (The Chronicle, July 22). And observers of the nonprofit world suggest that it will see a shortage of workers in the future as many baby-boomer generation charity leaders retire or leave to work in government, business, or elsewhere.

“You’re going to have this enormous outflow of talent and leadership in the sector,” Mr. Pratt says. “And because the sector has not had the resources, organization by organization, to invest in leadership development and leadership succession planning, the way the for-profit sector has, we’re really much more acutely in a position to be slammed by this.”

Seeking Excitement

Nonprofit organizations don’t often have to spend much to create an environment that makes people want to stay for years and years. Many long-term nonprofit workers share Ms. Hillas’s taste for challenge, excitement, and growth. Often the employees create challenging tasks for themselves, and credit their organizations with giving them the freedom to work on those tasks.

Dennis Persons, who works at the American Red Cross national headquarters in Washington writing materials that help the charity’s employees and volunteers, began working for the organization’s Las Vegas branch in 1982, serving as health and safety coordinator for Clark County. He says that one reason he has stayed so long with the same charity is that he hasn’t been allowed to grow complacent — for example, he switched to his current position after serving as a disaster specialist for 20 years.

“At some point in your career, you come to a point where you hit the wall and you’re just not being as effective, and not coming up with the creative answers that you used to get,” he says. “I don’t feel like I had reached that place, but I didn’t want to reach that place, either.”

Other nonprofit employees say that collaborating with other charities to help them accomplish larger-scale goals has helped them stay engaged with their work.

Judy Carter, who has been executive director at the Capital Area Food Bank of Texas, in Austin, for almost 19 years, got together with other organizations to improve the efficiency of food distribution in her state. In 1997, Ms. Carter, along with three other food-bank workers and four state employees spent six months developing a distribution method that cuts down on what she calls “administrative nightmares,” and is more efficient in supplying meat and canned fruits and vegetables to clients.

“Rather than having a mass-distribution once a month, our agencies are able to distribute the commodities [food] daily,” she says.

She says that large-scale projects like the distribution project have been a key to keeping her passion for her work alive.

“It is hugely rewarding to be a part of something that is good,” she says, “to say, ‘Wow, this really works.’”

Professional Growth

Long-term employees also say that their organizations have encouraged professional-development opportunities. Last year Doris Heiser, development and donor-services director at the Greater Milwaukee Foundation, earned a Community Foundation Transatlantic Fellowship, a program sponsored by the German Marshall Fund and the King Baudouin Foundation, which took her out of the country for almost a month. Ms. Heiser came to the Milwaukee foundation in December 1984.

“It’s a terrific program that matches up European foundations with an American, and American foundations with a European,” she says. “I went to England, but first I went to Brussels and met with 11 other German Marshall fellows, so I was gone out of my office for over three weeks.”

Ms. Heiser, who worked with the Cumbria Community Foundation, in Northern England, says she learned about the importance of community foundations in different countries, and was able to share ideas about fund raising and endowment building with Cumbria’s board members and supporters.

The foundation made it easy for her to take the opportunity. “I kept getting paid, and it didn’t even count as vacation time,” she says. “That obviously is not the kind of thing that every nonprofit would allow, for someone to be gone for three weeks and encourage it, as opposed to making it difficult or having to take up your vacation. I felt very encouraged. There was support for me as a professional, in my personal growth.”

Not every organization has the means to do without a top fund raiser for weeks at a time, of course. But charities that want to retain employees should work to provide training opportunities or other job-related resources when possible, says Paul C. Light, professor of public service at New York University and director of the Center for Public Service at the Brookings Institution. Mr. Light oversaw a 2002 study of 1,140 nonprofit employees conducted by the center.

“The biggest complaint from nonprofit employees,” he says, “is not pay and benefits, but resources — decent information technology, access to training, a decent place to work, a safe place to work, enough employees to do the job.”

People Power

Many nonprofit veterans say that they enjoy the people they work with, and the culture of their organization. Overwhelmingly, they say that their opinions are respected, their efforts are appreciated, and they feel free to go to the executive director or board members with their problems. And longtimers appear happily free of micromanaging bosses or board members.

Bob Lennon has spent a total of 25 years at the Opportunity Center, a group in Wilmington, Del., that helps provide jobs to people with disabilities. (He left the organization in the mid-1970s to work for a for-profit company, but returned in the early 1980s.) He has held different positions at the center and currently works in community development. One reason he stays, he says, is his charity’s democratic atmosphere.

“On many occasions in team and management meetings, I’ve witnessed one individual reverse a position held by a group of people by persuading the group, in some cases one person at a time, to support an alternative option,” he says. “Reaching decisions by consensus can be more cumbersome than following majority rule, but when it’s recognized that everyone’s input counts, people are encouraged to voice alternatives and attempt to change minds by persuasive logic.”

Suzanne Durham, executive director of the YWCA affiliate in Birmingham, Ala., who started with the organization in 1979, says it is important to create an appreciative and fun working environment with frequent celebrations of group and individual accomplishments.

“I like to say we like to make mountains out of molehills. We celebrate the smallest things,” she says. “When new commodes came in, we popped champagne. Because we’re in a 1925 building, new commodes and new plumbing are big stuff. Whenever a major gift came in, we had a celebration.”

Many long-term employees say that money is not what keeps them at their charities. But many of them also say they feel fairly compensated.

“Money has not been a big factor for me,” says Ms. Carter, of the Austin food bank. “I don’t care about it. I need to do something that is stimulating.” And yet, she adds, “I am well taken care of — I am not complaining about the compensation at all.”

Ms. Carter is not alone. In the Brookings study, 34 percent of nonprofit employees said they were motivated to take their jobs because of salary and benefits, while 61 percent said they took their jobs for the “chance to make a difference.”

For organizations that do not offer large salaries, flexibility and special benefits can keep employees happier longer, say nonprofit veterans.

“We have day care in the building, so if you’re a staff member you get day care at half price,” says Ms. Durham. “And not only is half price great, but the comfort and security in knowing that you can pop downstairs and see your child or drop in for lunch has just been a great benefit. I don’t think folks realize it so much at first. I don’t think it’s a great recruitment tool, but I think it’s a great retention tool.”

Still, Mr. Light of Brookings worries that the low pay at many nonprofit groups could lead to big problems keeping the best employees over the long haul. “It’s not only the most highly motivated work force in America, it’s also the most easily exploited work force,” he says. While an employee may stay at an organization for a few years with lower than desirable compensation, Mr. Light says, they won’t put up with it forever. “What we hear in our interviews with long-serving nonprofit employees is that they’re not willing to take the pay cuts, year after year after year,” he says. “At some point they have to take care of their actual financial needs.”

Changing Duties

Nonprofit veterans say they actively avoid burnout by taking on new projects or even changing positions. But some long-term employees haven’t had to switch jobs to keep growing.

The Greater Milwaukee Foundation, which employs two other 20-year veterans in addition to Ms. Heiser, provides opportunities to staff members who want to start new projects, according to James A. Marks, who has been vice president and director of grant programs since 1984.

The abundance of new projects he takes on, he says, spares him from getting bored.

During his tenure at the foundation, he has led the grant maker’s Families With Children in Poverty effort, which gave assistance to first-time parents in poor Milwaukee neighborhoods; and he has participated in the foundation’s Neighborhood and Family Initiative, co-sponsored by the Ford Foundation, and Leading by Example, an effort to ensure that the foundation’s board, staff, and grants reflected the diverse makeup of Milwaukee’s population.

Mr. Marks says that what he appreciates about his job is “that sense of autonomy and responsibility — if there is an area where the foundation says, ‘We want to get into this more,’ being able to take that ball and run with it.”

His co-worker, Jane Moore, director of research and development, who also joined the foundation in 1984, agrees that the foundation’s willingness to give employees opportunities to lead is a reason she has stayed for so long. “You have a lot of latitude to achieve,” she says. “The key is hiring excellent people and giving them some opportunity to do what it is that they do best. For those that have been around the longest, that’s certainly been the case.”

Mr. Marks adds that through these efforts, the organization has grown, which encourages him to stay put. Since 1984, the foundation’s assets have increased from about $32-million to $376-million. Twenty years ago, the foundation gave about $2.6-million annually, and today it gives almost 10 times that figure, $24.9-million.

“I can remember when we first started, the foundation was really not much of a player in this city,” he says. “And today I feel that we really are. That comes about not just because of what we’re doing, but because of the fact that we’ve grown the way we have. If we were still the same size that we were 20 years ago, I don’t think I’d be here.”