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Class Action

Bridging the class divide

What can be done about low-paid, low-quality jobs at nonprofit organizations?

Staffing the Mission works for change on two fronts, giving both nonprofits and funders concrete ways to make life better for diverse nonprofit employees.

Read more in the Staffing the Mission Report

  • Call for nonprofit burnout jobs stories:

    • Are you currently working (or have you worked) a burnout nonprofit job? We want to hear from you. Share your experience here! Watch Jamila’s and Marni’s stories below.

    Foundation staff and board members: Staffing the Mission works with foundations to promote practices among grantees that are aligned with the vision of the world that funders aim to create.

    SURVEY OF FOUNDATIONS: It will help Staffing the Mission if you take this confidential survey on your practices that support or impede decent staff jobs at your grantee organizations.

    “While in general I think a lot about disappointing and unethical low wages across the [not-for-profit] sector, I hadn’t thought about how we could take a stand as a funder… This is cool stuff and I’m learning.” – Izzy Waxman, Mazon Canada

    Class Action hopes to inspire a wave of foundations and donors committed to supporting their grantees to meet a set of benchmarks on wages, benefits, hours, decision-making input and working conditions.

    Resources for Nonprofits

    The Staffing the Mission project helps nonprofits express their values through their compensation and personnel policies. The videos and blog posts below give concrete steps for nonprofit managers.

    Staffing the Mission was featured at a national conference of nonprofit managers, Elevate. Here’s what Laurie Goldman and Betsy Leondar-Wright had to say.
    Class Action Nonprofit Workplace Webinar
    Equity in hiring: Advice from Ceciry Rodriguez to nonprofit employers
    A presentation on Staffing the Mission for nonprofit sector scholars at ARNOVA conference

    Staffing the Mission in the Media

    Blog posts:

  • “Five Human Resources Tips for Valuing Your Nonprofit Staff” by Lyn Freundlich, member of the Staffing the Mission Advisory Council
    • “Tips for Developing a Values Based Compensation Structure” by Lyn Freundlich

    Nonprofits during COVID: Are you asking the right questions? by Jonathan Spack

    Damaging Dishonesty between funders and grantees by Betsy Leondar-Wright

    Los Angeles Alliance for a New Economy (LAANE), a community organization founded in 1993 that focuses on economic development, is featured in the Staffing the Mission report because it has implemented some best practices in their pay structure and transparency practices.

    Article:

  • Low Pay and Poor Working Conditions Forced a Vital Nonprofit To Shut Down. I Was Complicit In Its Demise” – article by Lisa Ranghelli in The Chronicle of Philanthropy gives a shout-out to Staffing the Mission

    • Radio and Podcasts:

    Better pay and benefits are major pieces in the larger puzzle of increasing class and racial diversity in the nonprofit sector and reducing wage gaps in the US.

    Class Action inspires action to end classism and extreme inequality by providing tools, training and inspiration to raise awareness, understand the relationship of class and race, shift cultural beliefs about social class, build cross-class solidarity and transform institutions and systems.