Soapbox Engage Blog

On every commercial airline flight, a flight attendant instructs the passengers that, if cabin pressure changes during the flight, they should put on and adjust their own oxygen masks before assisting others.

Similarly, before your nonprofit can make a genuine difference in the lives of its beneficiaries, your internal team has to thrive. The key to this is honing your organization’s approach to employee retention.

If your staff members find personal fulfillment in their day-to-day work and have a clear vision of how they can progress in their careers at your nonprofit, you’ll retain the talent that powers your mission. In turn, you’ll fuel your ability to do more good, whether that means designing new programming or effectively engaging donors.

To help you boost retention, we’ve created this guide that covers four actionable tips for improving the employee experience at your nonprofit:

1. Prioritize effective onboarding.
2. Offer learning and professional development opportunities.
3. Build trust through transparency.
4. Refine your compensation strategy.

As you work to improve employee retention at your nonprofit, leverage the guidance of an outside expert, like a nonprofit HR consultant. A consultant can help you see the gaps in your retention strategy and help design and implement new programs and policies that will make the employee experience more positive.

Let’s begin!

1. Prioritize effective onboarding.

To improve the employee experience at your nonprofit, you have to start at the beginning of the employee lifecycle with the onboarding process.

Your organization’s human resources team will facilitate onboarding. During this process, you set the tone for the employee’s experience with your organization. Of course, you’ll train the new team member in the duties and responsibilities outlined in their job description, but you’ll also kickstart the process of integrating the new employee into your organization’s larger culture.

According to the Society for Human Resource Management (SHRM), here are a few questions to consider when assessing your nonprofit’s current onboarding strategy:

• When does onboarding start, and how long does it last?
• What impression do you want new employees to walk away with on their first day?
• What do new employees need to know about your organization’s culture and work environment?
• What role will your HR team, managers, and co-workers play in onboarding?
• What goals should new employees be working toward throughout the onboarding process?

You should also make a plan for measuring the success of your onboarding process and requesting feedback from new employees. This way, you can not only assess their readiness to step into their roles but also make onboarding improvements that will benefit new employees in the future.

2. Offer learning and professional development opportunities.

One of the best ways to provide opportunities for your employees to find personal fulfillment in their roles is to offer continual learning and professional development opportunities. Plus, when your employees are consistently refining their skillsets and learning how to drive more value in their roles, they help your organization offer better services to beneficiaries.

There are a number of ways to facilitate continued learning for your nonprofit’s team. Here are a few to consider:

• Taking online courses: Online courses can be an affordable and efficient way to train your team in different areas. Plus, many of them are free, like the courses offered on NonprofitReady.org.


• Attending conferences: Conferences represent a unique opportunity to gather with other nonprofit professionals and learn industry best practices. Additionally, they allow you to build your network and speak to vendors about nonprofit-specific tools that can improve your operations. Check out NXUnite’s roundup of nonprofit conferences to see some upcoming options.


• Knowledge-sharing between teams: Invite team members to teach each other about different topics through workshops or lunch and learn activities. For example, a member of your tech team might present on how they use search engine optimization strategies to boost your organization’s visibility online. Or, your grant writer might provide insight into how they find grant opportunities for your organization.


• Listening to nonprofit-specific podcasts: Podcasts are another free and engaging way to level up your team’s learning. Some popular picks include The Nonprofit Podcast, Good to Growth, and First Day Podcast.

Look for ways you can actively promote learning and professional development opportunities, and make it easy for employees to tap into them, whether that means covering conference registration fees or providing time during the workday to take online courses. As your employees see and take advantage of opportunities to learn, grow, and advance in their nonprofit careers at your organization, they’ll be more likely to continue working with you.

3. Build trust through transparency.

To increase your chances of retaining your employees, you should also ensure that you’re helping every team member feel like an insider at your organization. This means being transparent about everything, including the good and the not-so-good.

For example, Astron Solutions’ guide to communicating compensation emphasizes the importance of providing the “why” behind compensation decisions. If you are transparent with your employees about how salaries will be affected by recent budget cuts, for instance, they will be more understanding of the outcomes and feel that they’re included in the compensation conversation.

Being transparent about both the positive and the negative will help your employees see that your nonprofit cares about them and their employment experience. Plus, it will encourage better communication from your employees, meaning you’ll be able to gather more useful feedback from them and further strengthen your internal operations.

4. Refine your compensation strategy.

You can’t improve your organization’s approach to employee retention without taking a critical look at your compensation strategy.

Nonprofits sometimes find it challenging to compete for talent or retain their current employees because of the competitive nature of the job market. After all, due to tight budgets, they can’t always offer financial compensation at the same level that for-profit companies can.

However, your nonprofit can still offer competitive compensation by leveraging a total rewards strategy, in which you offer both direct and indirect forms of compensation:

• Direct compensation includes elements like salary, bonuses, allowances, and overtime pay.


• Indirect compensation includes things like health insurance, retirement benefits, PTO, your organization’s internal culture, and perks.

This holistic approach to compensation can help your organization strike a healthy balance between your budget, culture, mission, and retention goals. After all, when your compensation strategy helps to enrich multiple areas of your employees’ lives, they’ll be more satisfied with their jobs and eager to continue pushing your mission forward.

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Retaining your organization’s employees is critical to your nonprofit’s continued success in serving its beneficiaries because they are the power behind your mission. So, if you’re looking to serve more beneficiaries, meet your fundraising goals, and continue on a sustainable path to accomplishing your mission, turn your focus first to your internal team.

By implementing these four tips, you’ll make your nonprofit a better place to work and thus set your organization up to do more. You’ve got this!

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Guest post by Jennifer C. Loftus, MBA, SPHR, PHRca, GPHR, SHRM-SCP, CCP, CBP, GRP.

Jennifer C. Loftus is a Founding Partner of and National Director for Astron Solutions, a compensation consulting firm. Jennifer has 23 years of experience garnered at organizations including the Hay Group, Parsons Brinckerhoff, Eagle Electric Manufacturing Company, and Harcourt General.

Jennifer has held volunteer leadership roles with SHRM, New York City SHRM, and WorldatWork. She serves as a subject matter expert to the SHRM Learning System and as a SHRM instructor. Jennifer is a sought-after speaker for local & national conferences and media outlets.

Jennifer has an MBA in Human Resource Management with highest honors from Pace University and a BS in Accounting summa cum laude from Rutgers University. Jennifer holds Adjunct Professor roles with Pace University, Long Island University, and LIM College. Jennifer received the 2014 Gotham Comedy Foundation’s Lifetime Ambassador of Laughter Award.