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by CORA DANIELS.
I was exhausted.
I can say “was” because today I have that post-sabbatical glow, thanks to the paid sabbaticals offered by my employer, the Bridgespan Group.
For my time off, I traveled for five weeks consecutively across two continents — the first half with my 76-year-old mother and the second half with my husband, sans kids. It was the longest break from work, and email, of my career, and I treated each day as a special gift — a time to reconnect and recharge with two of the most important people in my life.
Anecdotal evidence suggests nonprofit sabbaticals are on the rise, but they are still far from the norm. Extended paid leaves, like the one I enjoyed, are even rarer.
As a middle-aged Black woman working at a nonprofit, it’s hardly surprising that I was worn out. In an op-ed earlier this year for the Chronicle of Philanthropy, Sayu Bhojwani pointed out that exhaustion is the norm for women of color. The Center for Effective Philanthropy’s new report on the state of nonprofits finds that burnout for nonprofit staff and leaders remains a top concern with “half of nonprofit leaders feeling more concerned about their own burnout than this time last year.”
My work focuses on fighting racial inequity. Given the relentlessness of racism in all its forms, I’m frequently in battle mode — and exhaustion is a natural response. Elisha Smith Arrillaga, one of the co-authors of the CEP report, acknowledges that the current legal and political attacks on diversity, equity, and inclusion programs and on general efforts to advance equity have intensified the challenges and increased burnout, especially among leaders of color.
That’s why being able to talk about exhaustion in the past tense feels like a powerful milestone to me. After all, dismantling oppression and building a more equitable future is impossible when one is operating from a state of exhaustion.
“We’re relying on nonprofit leaders, many of them people of color, many of them Black women, to literally save the world — and we treat them as if they are disposable. It is not a surprise that burnout is high,” shared Jamie Allison, executive director of the Walter & Elise Haas Fund, on this season of Bridgespan’s podcast Dreaming in Color, which I help produce.
Allison, the first Black woman to head the 72-year-old family foundation, challenged her fellow funders: “Philanthropy plays a role in creating those conditions, and we can play a role in creating better conditions.”
Last year, the foundation launched the Endeavor Fund, a $24.5 million investment that Allison sees as a step toward upending philanthropy’s acceptance of burnout as a byproduct of nonprofit work and instead recognizes the importance of worker well-being. The fund provides nonprofits $500,000 a year for seven years so they can pay their staff better wages and offer benefits that contribute to wellness.
Black women and other leaders of color are increasingly leading the fight for rest. Tricia Hersey, founder of the Nap Ministry, which focuses on getting people to slow down, argues that rest is a form of resistance and therefore necessary for Black liberation. She told NPR: “Rest disrupts and pushes back and allows space for healing, for invention, for us to be more human. It’ll allow us to imagine this new world that we want, this new world that’s liberated, that’s full of justice, that’s a foundation for us to really, truly live our lives.”
Rest and Social Change
A conversation I had a few years ago with Andrea Caupain Sanderson, then CEO of Byrd Barr Place in Seattle, sparked my interest in the idea of rest as critical to achieving social change. The discussion was supposed to be about how Caupain Sanderson’s identity as a Black women shaped her as a leader. But the importance of rest kept bleeding into our talk.
While at Byrd Barr Place, she co-founded BIPOC ED, a multicultural collaborative of more than 240 nonprofit leaders of color from across Washington state working together to promote wellness and restoration. At the time of our talk, BIPOC ED was just getting off the ground, but seeing what it has become today, I realize that healing and wellness are central to Caupain’s Sanderson’s approach to leadership because she is a Black woman.
The organization, which Caupain Sanderson co-leads with two other women of color, is grounded in the belief that nonprofit leaders of color often have the extra work of caring for those harmed by inequitable systems. In response, it aims to normalize rest by offering grants for one-month and three-month sabbaticals; creates tools and resources to help organizations establish sabbatical policies; and brings together nonprofit leaders of color for collective healing, rest, and self-care.
Caupain Sanderson characterizes BIPOC ED’s work like this: “What we’re doing is movement building. This is an important ingredient in the quest for a just and equitable world.”
I couldn’t agree more. Right now, while I still have my post-sabbatical glow, the challenge is how to sustain it. Counting down to the next sabbatical or vacation isn’t the answer. After all, there is a reason that during the safety instructions on an airplane, parents are reminded to put on their own oxygen mask before that of their child — because you can’t care for others while gasping for breath.
Too many of us on the quest for a just and equitable world exist on the spectrum of burnout. But Allison from the Haas Fund is right. Philanthropy can fund in abundant ways that help create a culture that rejects exhaustion as a sign of hard work and instead sees it for what it is: a symbol of an underresourced nonprofit sector that is prevented from reaching its potential. The sooner that shift happens, the better, because oppression doesn’t get tired.
See Original Article at The Chronicle of Philanthropy
