In previous articles, you learned the fundamentals of building resilience for your nonprofit and how to measure your nonprofit’s fundraising resilience. Today we will cover the second key indicator of resilience – people. We’ll define what “people” resilience means and how to track that key indicator so your nonprofit can see the implications of these risks before it becomes detrimental to the health of the organization.
First, though, let’s start with a story to illustrate why tracking “people” resilience is so important. A professional colleague in our network recounted an experience he was having on a nonprofit board. The organization was amid a large capital campaign for the organization – the largest and most ambitious they had ever done. The board was heavily involved, including our colleague who sat on the development committee. The Chief Development Officer was a well-spoken and experienced executive in this specific segment of the nonprofit sector and very adept at keeping the committee focused on the campaign, including soliciting donors. Over the course of this three-year campaign, our colleague noticed a high turnover in the development organization. The only consistent person was the CDO. Curious, our colleague began quietly asking around – how many staff had come and gone before he joined the board?
“Several” was the answer. In fact, during our colleague’s time on the board, there was nearly total turnover in the department. The public reasons for the departures were varied – moving, took another role, time off with family, etc. Our colleague began paying closer attention to the CDO’s behavior in board and committee meetings and noticed a drop off in board volunteers for their annual flagship event. He found out the CDO was also alienating donors. However, the capital campaign and annual fundraising targets were being met so there was no discussion or escalation at the board level. Several board members took the CEO aside to ask about the turnover in the CDO’s department as well as soured feelings of board members. Yet the CEO saw no reason to pursue further and remarked, “The goals are being met and we have big targets. What is the issue here?”
Unfortunately, as our colleague learned, a nonprofit executive can meet or even exceed the “What” of the goal – raise $X by this date – but the “How” of the goal can be poorly implemented. In fact, the “How” of that goal carries equal weight for the long-term health of the organization. If the board and senior leadership of this organization had a dashboard tracking people resilience, the issues surrounding this CDO would have been more obvious.
What is people resilience and how do you measure it?
“People” resilience can be defined as the ability for a nonprofit organization to attract, retain and benefit from highly productive staff, leadership, volunteers, board members and even, in some cases, program recipients. It’s not just limited to staff. Some organizations, like food banks and senior centers, rely heavily on scores of volunteers. Many food banks were hard hit during the pandemic when their most reliable and regular senior volunteers stayed away due to health concerns.
There are several measurements you can use, yet easily trackable ones for your leadership and board dashboard are:
- Staff Turnover: Tracking voluntary and involuntary turnover can help share trends in organizational morale, staff comp, benefits, etc.
- Staff Tenure: Tracking tenure of staff and benchmarking against a healthy distribution. A healthy distribution typically looks like: 20-30% long-tenured, 40-60% mid-tenured and 20-30% short-tenured. We’ll define more on tenure below.
- Worker’s Comp Claims or Sick Days: tracking how many are taken for some organizations can be a leading indicator of stress and low morale.
When implementing these indicators for the first time, the organization’s leadership will want to assess for a period as there may be external factors beyond the organization’s control that impact turnover. As many nonprofit employers in California, New York, and Washington D.C. can attest, the regional high cost of living makes it difficult for organizations to retain employees based on compensation.
Unfortunately, there isn’t a baseline metric for staff turnover across the nonprofit sector. As a reference point, The Bureau of Labor Statistics shows the average voluntary turnover rate is approximately 13% in 2025 which is down from 17.3% in 2023. Various nonprofit sector advocacy organizations such as the Council of Nonprofits and Famcare indicate through their nonprofit leader surveys that turnover for the nonprofit sector may be as high as 20%.
The Bureau of Labor Statistics shows the average voluntary turnover rate is approximately 13% in 2025, down from 17.3% in 2023.
Your organization’s leadership should aim to create your own baseline and benchmark for staff turnover and tracking it is the first step. If your organization is already tracking turnover, then adding tenure might be a good addition to understanding your “people” resilience. Tracking involuntary turnover is important as well and should sit alongside voluntary so staff leadership and the board understand trends here as well. For example, if involuntary turnover trends higher with the implementation of a new program or with a new segment of program clients, could there be something else happening here. Again, there isn’t a standard baseline for this so we recommend tracking it for 2-3 years to understand the baseline and then discuss among leadership and the board a way to establish a benchmark.
Having a healthy mix of long-term, medium-term and short-term tenured staff is best practice across sectors. A short-tenured staff is someone with less than two years working at an organization, whereas a medium-tenured individual ranges from 3-5 years and a long-tenured staff member is over 6 years with the same organization. An entirely long-tenured team might demonstrate a healthy organization with happy employees and leaders, but it may lead to resistance to new ideas or stagnation. The team may be relying on an outdated way of approaching their mission. Whereas a team that is too short-tenured may lead to a loss of institutional knowledge, be a symptom of toxic culture or leadership problems, or point to poor onboarding and training.
Lastly, tracking workers’ compensation claims or sick days may show an organization in stress or a toxic work environment, especially if it’s primarily an office-based environment. Having served on a nonprofit board many years ago, I learned from the benefits broker that there were a high number of workers compensation claims for the organization. I only discovered this after the Executive Director parted ways with the board. While the organization did work in an already high stress environment, the claims were due to a toxic work culture. Had the board had worker’s comp claims as a “people” resilience indicator, they might have been able to address the toxic culture earlier.
However, we advise caution when beginning to track this metric. Some nonprofit segments have naturally higher workers compensation claims due to the nature of the work such as healthcare settings or warehouse-based (e.g., food banks) roles. We recommend you work with your benefits broker to establish year-over-year trends for your organization and if the broker has data across similar nonprofit organizations, that can also provide useful data.
Launching Your Tracking System
Let’s return to our earlier CDO who excelled at bringing in large donations but had high staff turnover and alienated donors. If the leadership tracked and shared staff turnover with the board, it might have been able to see staff turnover trends in the development department. Now some nonprofit leaders might view this metric as an overreach by the board. Isn’t it the Executive Director’s or CEO’s job to monitor and manage staff? Yes, it is their job to manage these issues and yet it is the board’s job to monitor the overall health of the organization and provide guidance to the Executive Director.
If you’re ready to begin tracking fundraising and people resilience, you don’t need a fancy software system. Simply starting with a spreadsheet report for your board will go a long way in showing your organization’s resilience.
In the next article in this series, we’ll explore how technology and facilities resilience indicators can round out your organization’s risk assessment.
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