Improving Your Nonprofit’s Internal Culture: A Mini Guide

Imagine you’re an entry-level nonprofit employee. What workplace culture would you want to be immersed in every day?

• Workplace A’s Culture: Each day starts on a positive note at this workplace, because everyone feels welcome and valued. All employees share the same vision and similar values, and individual contributions are celebrated.
• Workplace B’s Culture: Employees feel disconnected from the organization’s goals. There are frequent conflicts between team members and a high turnover rate, which impacts the organization’s morale and productivity.

The answer here is obvious—you would rather experience Workplace A’s culture! As a nonprofit leader, achieving this ideal at your organization may feel daunting. But with the right approach, a positive internal culture is well within your reach.

In this mini guide, we’ll help you get a strong start by looking at the benefits of a strong internal culture and walking through some strategies you can experiment with.

Strengthening Your Organization From the Inside Out

As a nonprofit, most of your work is outward-focused. Every day you provide services to your beneficiaries, whether that means caring for homeless pets, tutoring at-risk high school students, or running sports events for the community.

Because of this emphasis on others, it’s natural that, from time to time, the focus on your internal team will slacken. But letting your internal culture fall by the wayside will eventually negatively impact your team’s enthusiasm, productivity, and even retention rates.

Think of focusing on your internal culture as strengthening your nonprofit from the inside out. When your internal team is thriving, you can do more for the beneficiaries you serve because your team operates like a well-oiled machine with greater synergy and impact.

In addition to serving more beneficiaries in better ways, you’ll also experience other benefits as you prioritize your internal culture. These include:

• Increased employee engagement. A healthy organizational culture makes your team members more committed to their work and more productive. A strong culture can also encourage creativity and innovation; as employees feel more connected to your organization and invested in the cause, they’ll be more inclined to experiment with new ideas and solutions that can help your organization flourish.
• Enhanced recruitment and retention. If you want the best employees to work for you—and stick around!—you need to show both prospective and current employees that you value them and want to make their employment experience a positive one. As a bonus, finding and holding onto top talent for the long term will help your organization save on hiring costs.
• Strengthened brand image. Your organization relies on outside support to move its mission forward, and your donors, volunteers, corporate partners, and community connections want to associate with organizations that take care of the people working for them. Enhancing your internal culture is one way to strengthen your organization’s brand and demonstrate that you care about your employees, which can signal to outside stakeholders that your organization lives its values.

Astron Solutions’ guide to nonprofit HR explains that building and strengthening your organization’s working culture is an important initiative usually led by human resources (HR) professionals. However, as you begin to make improvements to your culture, remember that everyone has a part to play in making your workplace a great place to be. And as leaders, interns, and employees commit to doing their part, you’ll experience all the benefits listed above and more!

8 Nonprofit Culture-Strengthening Strategies To Try

As with any internal improvement, you’ll be most successful with your culture-building efforts if you have the right strategies on your side. Here are eight strategies to weave into your approach:

1. Revisit your values and vision. To ensure your internal culture supports your organization’s overarching goals, you’ll need to align your culture-strengthening efforts with your guiding principles. With your values, mission, and vision at the forefront of your efforts, you’ll make decisions that are best for your team, stakeholders, and beneficiaries.
2. Assess your current culture. Start by evaluating where you are. What are the good things about your current internal culture? Where are the weak spots? Now is the time to solicit feedback from your employees. This will be valuable because, as a leader, your day-to-day experience at the organization will not be the same as, say, an entry-level employee’s experience. Pay close attention to their suggestions and comments, and plan to act on the information.
3. Review your compensation strategy. How your employees are compensated affects their attitudes about their jobs, which affects their behavior in and feelings about the workplace. Revisit your compensation strategy to ensure your employees are compensated fairly. Adopt a total rewards approach that incorporates both direct compensation like cash and incentives and indirect compensation like benefits and perks.
4. Encourage open communication. To feel like they’re truly a critical part of your organization’s success, employees need to be kept in the loop. Encourage open communication between employees by providing them with robust communication tools (this is especially important for remote and hybrid teams). Also, make a point to be more transparent with employees about what is happening at higher levels in the organization. Sharing the good and not-so-good with your employees will enhance trust.
5. Invest in employee development and growth. No one wants to work a dead-end job. Foster a culture of continuous learning and improvement by investing in and promoting employee development and growth. Whether you’re hosting lunchtime seminars on auction item procurement or covering employees’ professional association membership fees, you must show them that your organization is a place where they can have a long and successful career.
6. Promote collaboration and teamwork. To be an effective nonprofit, your team needs to know how to work well together behind the scenes. Create opportunities for teams to get to know each other and collaborate on a variety of projects. Ask managers to pay attention to each employee’s special skills and find ways to help them shine so that everyone is bringing their best to the table.
7. Recognize and celebrate achievements. No one likes for their hard work to go unseen! Show your employees that you appreciate their contributions by creating a robust employee recognition program. eCardWidget suggests trying out ideas like giving social media shoutouts, creating an Employee Wall of Fame, sending eCards, and setting up fun experiences (like a cooking class or field day) for the team to enjoy together.
8. Encourage a healthy work-life balance. Employees need to know that you care about their well-being, and one of the most effective ways to communicate that is to help them find a healthy work-life balance. Encourage them to take their vacation time, disconnect from work after hours, prioritize their physical and mental health, and take advantage of flexible work arrangements. You can reinforce the importance of work-life balance by leading by example!

Achieving a healthy and positive workplace culture isn’t something that will happen overnight. Prepare to take your time implementing these strategies into your approach and regularly review your progress. Even after you’ve reached a point where you’re satisfied with how your culture looks and feels, remember to conduct regular reviews and seek feedback from your employees. Your culture will continue to evolve and change over time, so actively managing it and doing what you can to positively influence it will be essential.

How an HR Consultant Can Help

Even with the right strategies in your back pocket, making substantial and sustainable changes to your nonprofit’s internal culture may still feel daunting. Your internal HR team may already be stretched thin with other priorities, or you may not have a fully fleshed-out HR team yet due to your organization’s size.

That’s where an HR consultant can help! An HR consultant is an outside expert in all things HR, and many work specifically with nonprofits. They can provide an objective third-party perspective on your current culture, along with tailored suggestions for improvements. Plus, they’ll guide you as you implement the suggested changes and help you navigate any difficulties!

To hire your own HR consultant to help with culture building, follow these steps:

• Determine your goals and needs for working with an HR consultant.
• Meet with your board of directors and outline guidelines for the hiring process and the consulting engagement.
• Build a hiring team to help you find a consultant who is the right fit.
• Research consultants, starting with online searches and getting recommendations from trusted nonprofit colleagues.
• Draft a request for proposal (RFP), a document that outlines your needs and expectations, to submit to the consultants you’re interested in.
• Reach out to your top candidates to establish a rapport and submit your RFP.
• Once you’ve received completed proposals from your top consultants, review the proposals and narrow down your list.
• Choose the consultant you want to work with, sign a contract, and get to work improving your culture!

Improving your nonprofit’s internal culture allows your organization to strengthen itself from the inside out. And when your employees enjoy working at your nonprofit, your impact on your community will be greater! Use the strategies outlined in this guide and consider working with an HR consultant to get a head start on your culture-strengthening efforts. You’ve got this!