Modeling and Prioritizing Wellness to Internal Teams in Practice

• Supporting employees as whole individuals by acknowledging their roles as friends, family members, and community members beyond their professional role, can bring connection on a human level, and can lead to more motivated, connected employees, which can also lead to decreased risks of burnout. Wellness initiatives like offering wellness days, sabbaticals, and time to recover after retreats allow individuals to step away and do what is necessary for them to fill their cup so they can show back up and continue doing the good work. Leadership needs to model these practices to model genuine value for these practices.

• Start meetings with check-ins to authentically connect with teams on a human level, especially in remote settings. Each person is going through something at any given moment, and these check-ins are an opportunity to assess the team’s current state and wellbeing, laying the foundation for stronger collaboration, trust, and resilience. In the philanthropy world where empathy and compassion are often core values of an organization, practicing these internally is crucial.

• Recognize team members for where they are and what they do. Recognition is cost-free yet powerful, showing that you’re present and supportive of one another.
  

Protecting Collective Wellbeing for Organizational Resilience

• Normalizing the need to take care of staff well-being is a big baseline to creating resilience. When employees feel met, heard, and supported, there is a greater desire to contribute to this community of work. This can also protect team engagement and reduce turnover rates.

• Especially in working environments with high emotions and high stress in the nonprofit world, providing space for colleagues to arrive with openness and transparency about their emotions can help cultivate an environment for team members to lean on one another in crucial ways in unity and connectedness.
  

• In a world where time is often treated in scarcity and personal wellness is pitted as a competing priority to organizational objectives, there is time. It is, in fact, a necessity to build in time to care for team’s wellbeing, so they can continue being effective workers.

• Working remotely can be challenging, and it can be more difficult to foster organic connections that naturally occur in in-person environments. It's essential to recognize what energizes each team member—whether it’s offering co-working spaces for collaboration or scheduling intentional moments for fun and team-building, such as quarterly in-person gatherings.

• Funders have an opportunity to identify how they can support nonprofits’ resilience by building flexible space and opportunities within funding structures to strengthen organizations from the internal side to live out their missions. This can look like funding: fair pay, connection to mission, opportunity for advancement, connection to community, and more. Doing so allows organizations the chance to feel more security, flexibility, and freedom to move forward the work they do in abundance, creativity, and positivity.