At Mind Share Partners, we’ve helped create mentally healthy cultures at nonprofits in many sectors--from education to healthcare, anti-violence to climate advocacy. As a nonprofit ourselves, we’re aware of some of the unique challenges that nonprofits face when it comes to mental health at work, such as a persistent lack of resources and complex multi-stakeholder engagement—not to mention working on entrenched problems in biased systems.
Although many best practices apply at any organization, we know that nonprofits, especially those serving vulnerable populations, have distinct needs that require a unique approach. Here’s what we’ve learned about creating mentally healthy cultures at nonprofits.
Show staff that they deserve mental health and well-being support.
If your nonprofit is serving vulnerable populations, it can be easy for employees to compare their situations with those they are serving—and come away with a sense that their relative privilege negates the need for self-care. Show your employees that everyone needs to support their well-being. Individuals that don’t support themselves are more likely to burnout and leave the work altogether. Celebrate employees who take paid time-off (PTO) or set boundaries, encourage leaders to tell stories about prioritizing their own well-being, and build in periods of rest, recognition and celebration.
Train managers to navigate mental health conversations without being therapists.
Managers are the front line in supporting employee well-being. Managers should know how to ask an employee about mental health, without breaking privacy laws, and how to proactively support their team’s well-being. However, managers shouldn’t be therapists. In nonprofits with deep cultures of care, some managers may feel obligated to provide a level of individual support outside their role, expertise, or capacity. Focused training for managers can help them learn to be supportive to individual employees in a way that makes sense for a workplace.
Understand how exposure to trauma might be impacting well-being.
Whether through interactions with students, clients, or biased systems, many employees in nonprofits—especially those working on the front-lines—are repeatedly exposed to trauma. This may be exacerbated for employees who are coming from the communities that the nonprofit serves—for example, a formerly justice-involved person working in a reentry program. Organizations must both acknowledge this experience and respond to it. This means incorporating trauma-informed approaches and language across internal programs, and creating integrated well-being supports for employees, such as time off, accessible clinical support, and peer support.
Recognize the tie between mental health, inclusion, and belonging.
Mental health is tied to inclusion and belonging at work in several ways. A person’s identity, community, and background will impact perceptions of mental health as well as the daily impacts to it—microaggressions and discrimination, for example, will impact mental health over time. In addition, individuals with a mental health diagnosis will experience higher or lower belonging depending on the level of stigma within an organization's culture. Naming the ties between mental health and identity and educating staff about how mental health experiences differ can help create a more inclusive culture.
Nonprofits who integrate mental health into their culture will see lower turnover, less burnout, and more engaged employees—all of which will enable them to better achieve their missions.
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About the author
Jen Porter is the Managing Director & COO, Mind Share Partners
Jen advises and trains companies around the world to create mentally healthy workplaces. Her clients include leaders in the tech, professional services, hospitality, retail and finance industries. Her work on mental health strategy, especially grass-roots initiatives like ERGs, has been published in Harvard Business Review and Forbes and featured at events such as Culturati and the National Human Resources Association. Jen also leads operational strategy at Mind Share, including finance, legal, and HR.
Jen has an M.B.A. from Harvard University and a B.A. in Organizational Behavior, magna cum laude, from Brigham Young University. She has been a TEDx speaker, a Forbes 30 Under 30 Social Entrepreneur, Echoing Green Fellow, and Draper Richards Kaplan Social Entrepreneur.