27: The Five Conditions Every Nonprofit Team Needs to Actually Thrive

You didn't become a nonprofit leader to spend your days managing conflict, navigating HR investigations, and losing sleep over staff dynamics. But here you are.

If the culture inside your organization feels like it's running you instead of the other way around, this episode is the one you've been waiting for.

Marcia Beckner breaks down why even the most mission-driven nonprofits quietly unravel from the inside out and what it takes to fix it at the root. Culture problems are never isolated incidents. They're patterns. And when those patterns go unaddressed, turnover costs mount, funders pull back, and the leader carries the weight alone.

In this episode Marcia walks you through the Culture CARES Accelerator, a five month executive mentoring program that stabilizes you as a leader before ever touching the team. You'll hear the full CARES framework in action and how one client went from a team in crisis to no people problems and a $20 million fundraising goal hit two months early.

If this resonates, the next step is a 90 minute call with Marcia. No obligation. Just clarity on what's possible.

Timestamps: 

00:00 Culture Problems Get Complex 

01:31 Why Leaders Reach Out 

03:37 Culture Signals and Costs 

04:57 Culture Is the Growth Engine 

05:56 Introducing the Accelerator 

06:50 Start With the CEO 

09:14 Leader Stabilization Steps 

10:43 Shift to Team Culture 

11:17 CARES Framework Explained 

15:13 Measure and Build Roadmap 

16:37 Client Turnaround Story 

19:55 Next Episode and Closing

In the next episode a real client shares what the Culture CARES process looked like from the inside, including how their team hit a $20 million fundraising goal two months ahead of schedule.

Ready to stop fighting fires and start leading your mission?
Book your 90 minute call with Marcia → https://culturecares.com/burnout-to-boundaries/ 

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Visit the Culture CARES Website → culturecares.com 

Explore the Podcast → culturecares.com/podcast

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Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:00

When culture problems reach a certain level of complexity, they usually require more than advice or a random team building activity. They require thoughtful strategy, consistent support, and a process that the organization can rely on long after the immediate problems are solved at the root. Welcome to Nonprofit CEO Spark, the podcast for bold leaders ready to navigate growth and change with energy and confidence. I'm Marsha Beckner, nonprofit founder, former executive director, and culture strategist with nearly 20 years in the social impact world. Each week, I help nonprofit leaders stop spinning out, set boundaries, and design inclusive cultures where all staff can thrive. If you're ready to reignite your leadership without sacrificing your well-being, hit subscribe and let's spark your next chapter together. This episode is all about what it's like to work with me. And usually when nonprofit leaders reach out to me, it's because they're describing a very specific problem that has suddenly become urgent in their organization. Sometimes it's an HR investigation that has escalated. And sometimes it's the board is worried about legal or reputational risk from this HR situation that is getting out of hand. And other times it's a growing tension inside the team that the leadership team isn't backing you up. There's other problems like people are frustrated with each other. The vibe in the office fills off. You see people at a table that may be like not talking to each other, and the meetings feel like you're working with a group of people that are really dreading being there. And it even looks like they're disengaging. And what really worries you is that your high performers are like tired of working with others in the organization that are bringing people down. Sometimes the leader describes something more personal. And this is where things get a little scary for them. They tell me that they're not sure if they are the right leader for the organization in its next stage of growth. They feel like they're constantly reacting to situations when they'd rather be focused on the vision, the strategy, connecting the dots between policy and community impact. And they talk about needing help with difficult conversations because they're afraid to disappoint someone and they're afraid to feel misunderstood. They talk about staff members who are not performing well or behaving in ways that are destructive to the team. And they talk about the weight of responsibility they carry and having to move mountains alone is a common feeling. Underneath all of those conversations, there is a quiet realization they feel like things have gotten out of control. And that's the moment when leaders decide they want support. And what we often discover fairly quickly when we begin talking is that these situations are really isolated incidents. They are signals, they are patterns. They are patterns that the culture of the organization has been evolving on its own rather than being intentionally designed. And when the culture develops by default, even very strong organizations start to experience strain over time. And eventually the signal gets louder. And sometimes these people complaints turn into HR investigations. And sometimes they lead to regrettable turnover that can cost up to 200% of a person's annual salary. Think about that. Turnover is highly expensive, and it's a risk that nonprofit leaders really need to take seriously. Sometimes they create reputational risk when the board is concerned that external community members, donors, funders are seeing this leadership, high-profile turnover that is very expensive. And leaders and funders can really sense internal dysfunction and they will start to back off, which is a very high risk for an organization. And this is why culture is not a nice to have. I will die on this mountaintop. It's an operational issue and a financial issue. I believe that 99% of your success depends on your people. And that leads to something I say often in nonprofits, leaders, and boards alike. Culture is your growth engine. When culture is unhealthy, organizations lose enormous energy, time, and money through burnout, disengagement, turnover, and internal conflict. And when your culture becomes healthy, inclusive, and intentional, something very different happens. Leaders regain clarity and confidence, teams collaborate easily, and the organization begins moving forward with real momentum again. Donors notice the stability, funders notice it, partners notice it, and people can feel when a team is rowing in the same direction. This is the foundation of the work I do with nonprofit organizations. So, how do I work with nonprofits? Well, the primary way I support leaders through this work is through a five-month mentoring program called the Culture Cares Accelerator. It is not a workshop, it is not traditional coaching, it is a structured executive mentoring process where we work closely together to stabilize leadership, measure the organization's culture honestly, and design the systems and agreements that will allow the entire staff to move forward with clarity and trust. Because when culture problems reach a certain level of complexity, they usually require more than advice or a random team-building activity. They require thoughtful strategy, consistent support, and a process that the organization can rely on long after the immediate problems are solved at the root. And interestingly, the first place we begin is not with the staff or with the systems. We begin with the executive director and the CEO. Nonprofit CEOs and EDs carry such a high responsibility that often without a confidential place where they can step back and think strategically about what they are navigating, things can go awry. So many leaders tell me privately that they feel alone in their role. They wonder who they can vent to. And it's not just about vingt, it's about problem solving. They may have an incredible team around them or they may have a dysfunctional team. But either way, the reality of being the person ultimately responsible for the organization, for the success of the board and the success of the staff and the community impact, it's very isolating. Every decision carries weight and every personnel situation has ripple facts across the team. Many leaders feel like they need to appear confident and composed, even when they are quietly trying to figure out the best way forward alone. And that's why the confidential nature of this partnership matters so much. Inside the Culture Cares Accelerator, there is space to talk honestly about the decisions and conversations that feel difficult, the situations that feel complicated, and the leadership moments that require courage. We talk through those situations together before they happen, and we think through what is best, not only for one individual or team, but for the health of the entire organization. And that perspective often changes everything for the leader. Instead of feeling like they are guessing their way through the dark, they begin to make decisions with intention and clarity. And within the first couple moments of our work together, I often hear something to the effect of they feel like a different person, both personally and professionally. They say that their family members see a calmer, less stressed version of themselves, and their team members and their board begin to notice that they are operating with more clarity, calm, and courage. They discover feeling calmer and more confident on the inside, and they stop replaying conversations in their head at night, wondering whether they said the wrong thing or handled something poorly. Now I want to walk you through this signature system that happens in this five-month program. First, we focus on the leader and we help the leader stop spinning out and set healthy boundaries. Because until you have a stable CEO or executive director, everything is a ripple effect from that leader. So together we work on assessing your strengths, your motivators, your communication style, your preferences. And we really begin to recenter and ground the leader in their own unique talents and strengths. And then we do an energy audit and we figure out where is energy leaking where it shouldn't be. And oftentimes leaders will tell me, oh, I know I should be delegating more, but I think it's just faster to do myself. That's an energy leak when there are other team members, perhaps that could take a lot of things off your plate. So you can focus on the big picture of fundraising and board engagement and vision and strategy. You'll learn how to take your hands off of tasks and delegate effectively. You'll free up the mental space and recalibrate a balanced workload. And this is where they often tell me, wow, I feel like a different person now that I've had a chance to step back from all the tiny details. And you'll notice that you're leading with more confidence and conviction. You'll have the tools to navigate change, group dynamics, and tough conversations. And you'll gain or you'll regain that respect and credibility, especially in high-stakes situations. So once the leader feels like really grounded and centered and feels more like themselves again and energetic, we turn to the team in the culture. And this is where the culture cares process comes in. And we design a healthy, inclusive, empowering culture where your staff can thrive. We'll activate a simple system to gather staff input and show that they've been heard. Your people will enjoy collaborating together again and develop a sense of belonging again. You'll co-create a strategic roadmap for greater impact and engagement. Let me tell you a little bit about the CARES framework. So CARES is an acronym for commitment, appreciation, respect, engagement, and safety. And picture it like a pyramid, like the Maslow's hierarchy of needs, which is the science of human motivation. And I'm a psychology major myself, an organizational psychology major. So I've always been a geek around what makes people tick and how can we improve dynamics so that they work better together and ultimately enjoy going to work, which is what we want for our people to enjoy going to work, to enjoy who they're working with, because that's how you get the high performance and the high productivity that you need to achieve your mission. So we've got that pyramid with cares at the top. The sea of commitment is at the peak, and that's a culture of accountability. And we want our team members to have a sense of ownership over the culture that you're building together. This isn't just a CEO executive level job building culture. What CEOs and executive directors can do best with building culture is to set the tone. Say that I'm building a culture that is healthy, empowering, and inclusive. And I want everybody to join in to the building process. And that's where the CARES framework is what we measure with the staff. So the C starts as a culture of accountability where everyone shares accountability for doing this work together. And then we've got A, which is a culture of connection. And it's really a way of recognizing and appreciating and valuing people. And what I find when I'm doing the CARES process and strategies with lots of organizations is that appreciation could always be better in every organization. And it's not that you're doing it wrong or failing. It's just one of those systems that you got to put in place. And once it's activated, it goes on its own, it stays top of mind because ultimately people want to feel valued, respected, and appreciated at work. And that's how you can access the best parts of each other. And then at the center of the CARES pyramid is the R, which is respect. It's a culture of inclusion. And I know every nonprofit leader listening to this now knows that this is what they want to build. Diversity, equity, inclusion fits right in the center. It is a stamp that everything revolves around a culture of inclusion. It's building that sense of belonging inside your team because once you have that sense of belonging, everything else can reverberate and work stronger in your organization. And then we have E, which is engagement. And this is a culture of learning, growth, development, motivation. People go to work in organizations so that they can advance and they can learn and they can become better. Hopefully, those are the people that you've hired in your organization that are there to, you know, accelerate their own learning path and work where they're passionate for a cause that they're passionate about. And so this engagement is really critical. And then the base of the pyramid is S and that's safety. It's building a culture of psychological safety and security. And the reason it's at the base and why it is actually the most important level to get right is because you want people to feel safe in order to do their best work. If people are coming into an environment of fear and threat, and they're not sure if when they share an idea, if it's going to be shot down or if their voice is truly going to be heard, you're not going to be able to get that culture of inclusion and connection that you want. So again, the CARES process is commitment, appreciation, respect, engagement, and safety. And how we start this part of my signature system is that we measure, I have a 27-point assessment. It's anonymous, we send it out to the staff and we get their honest feedback and we see where we're at at the baseline. And with no judgment at all, we all start somewhere. And if it hasn't been measured this way in the past, then there's going to be areas of strength and areas of growth. And we take it as data. And this is a very data-driven approach to seeing where your culture is today and developing a roadmap for the future. So after we get the results, we aggregate the data and we share with the staff in a transparent way. This is where we are today. And together, we're going to co-create the CARES roadmap going forward. And so then we design together the next 90 days to address all of the issues and to figure out where our strengths are so we could double down on those. And usually within a 90-day period, you can get so much done with a focus on changing culture proactively and intentionally. And then once we have everybody's buy-in and everybody helping us towards the future of our culture, then you'll just notice that people start to feel like they can relax, their shoulders like relax when they're going into work. They know they're all in it together. And I want to just share a story about what happened recently with a client. So when I started working with this organization, there were people that weren't talking to each other. There was a lot of unrest. There were some people in the staff that were very condescending to others. And it just was a toxic workplace. And the CEO thought, I don't know if I'm the right person to fix these problems. I said, you absolutely are. And we started, we partnered together. And within a couple months, this person said that he felt like a completely different person, both personally and professionally, because we worked on these internal, self-doubt, people-pleasing kind of tendencies that a lot of us have. You're all servant leaders. If you're listening to this podcast, you're a servant leader and you're putting others ahead of yourself. And so you're the perfect person for me to work with because we can definitely partner together. Cause sometimes that's a blind spot in helping you achieve what you want to achieve. And over the next few months, we did the culture cares process and the team took the assessment. We realized that there were some people in the staff, specifically one or two, and this was about a 15-person team. And there's one or two that were really dragging down the rest of the people. Some people actually started calling in sick because they didn't want to work with a specific person who was condescending and disrespectful to them. So, you know, we worked through like a performance improvement plan for the person that was aggravating the rest of the staff with her behavior, ended up letting her go. And the rest of the staff felt such relief. But having a partner in this process for the CEO executive director to make these difficult decisions is so key. And I remember this when I was an executive director and I had a mentor who helped like just walk me through some of these difficult conversations where I was afraid to be misunderstood. I was afraid to be not liked or that it would be taken the wrong way. So I know exactly what it feels like for my own executive director experience to have someone walking me through this process. And we did the CARES assessment, we did a visioning session where the staff co-created their 90-day roadmap. They took action right away. And by the time the Christmas party happened, I got a call the next day. And he said, You won't believe this holiday party was so different than prior years. Everybody was happy to be there. They came in on their day off to join the celebration of our end of the year. He goes, That I have like literally no people problems anymore. I am sitting on my hands today, wondering what do I do with my time? Because I'm not fighting fires. And I was like, that is the best news because now you can work on the big picture things to take your organization into the future. What he told me he wanted to do was work on big strategic partnerships, work on fundraising, work on board engagement. And now you have the space to access more resources and funding and partnerships to really make your organization what you want it to be. And so it was just like the before and after was such a beautiful thing. And this happens with every organization that applies the CARES strategies and frameworks. This is not a one-off result. If you're still listening right now and you're like, wow, that sounds like me, and maybe this could help us, then I invite you to come back to the next episode. We're gonna sit down with one of my clients who will walk us through what it's really like to partner with me on the CARES process. And spoiler alert, they hit their $20 million fundraising goal two months early. Thank you for spending part of your day with me here on the podcast. And always remember, you are meant for great things and you don't have to burn out to prove it. Thanks for listening to today's episode of Nonprofit CEO Spark. If you're ready to turn burnout into boundaries and build a healthy, happy culture where everyone, including you, can thrive. Visit culturecares.com to learn how I support nonprofit organizations like yours. If this episode brought you value, share it with a fellow leader navigating stress and overwhelm. And remember, you are meant for great things and you don't have to burn out to prove it. Until next time, keep leading with courage and confidence.