The Happy, Healthy Nonprofit: Strategies for Impact Without Burnout - Hardcover

by Beth Kanter (Author), Aliza Sherman (Author), Vu Le (Foreword by)

Steer your organization away from burnout while boosting all-around performance

The Happy, Healthy Nonprofit presents realistic strategies for leaders looking to optimize organizational achievement while avoiding the common nonprofit burnout. With a uniquely holistic approach to nonprofit leadership strategy, this book functions as a handbook to help leaders examine their existing organization, identify trouble spots, and resolve issues with attention to all aspects of operations and culture. The expert author team walks you through the process of building a happier, healthier organization from the ground up, with a balanced approach that considers more than just quantitative results. Employee wellbeing takes a front seat next to organizational performance, with clear guidance on establishing optimal systems and processes that bring about better results while allowing a healthier work-life balance. By improving attitudes and personal habits at all levels, you'll implement a positive cultural change with sustainable impact.

Nonprofits are driven to do more, more, more, often with fewer and fewer resources; there comes a breaking point where passion dwindles under the weight of pressure, and the mission suffers as a result. This book shows you how to revamp your organization to do more and do it better, by putting cultural considerations at the heart of strategy.

• Find and relieve cultural and behavioral pain points
• Achieve better results with attention to well-being
• Redefine your organizational culture to avoid burnout
• Establish systems and processes that enable sustainable change

At its core, a nonprofit is driven by passion. What begins as a personal investment in the organization's mission can quickly become the driver of stress and overwork that leads to overall lackluster performance. Executing a cultural about-face can be the lifeline your organization needs to thrive. The Happy, Healthy Nonprofit provides a blueprint for sustainable change, with a holistic approach to improving organizational outlook.

Front Jacket

If you're reading this, you may have begun your nonprofit career with a burning passion to contribute to a cause and maybe, over time, that passion started to dwindle and you feel you are burning out, creating a toxic situation for you and your organization. If you recognize this is happening to you, stop suffering now and read The Happy, Healthy Nonprofit.

Finally, you and other people like you who are the life force of nonprofits worldwide, get authoritative, straightforward guidance on tangible ways to take care of yourself in order to maintain optimal performance. Through the singular humor and piercing insight of two highly respected innovators, learn what it takes to sustain yourself to work more effectively on your organization's mission. Gain access to a set of well-vetted blueprints to evaluate your own burnout level, create a plan to revitalize yourself, and take real steps to transform the way you treat yourself and how you work.

This guide is a powerful lens that identifies the stresses and challenges that everyone in the nonprofit sector faces and provides practical advice from a wide range of social change activists sharing their personal turnarounds and triumphs by incorporating happy, healthy habits into their everyday routines. The second part of this revolutionary movement expands self-care principles throughout your organization and then beyond to the entire industry. We all need to support each other on our quest to make the world a better place. The WE-care philosophy encourages organizations to shift their cultures to support their staffs' well-being with the same priority given to external stakeholders. From real-world tips for conducting walking meetings to making a commitment to take real vacations and completely break from technology--this single volume has everything you need to develop a culture of well-being within any size organization. Quickly and easily, you can:

• Gain a meaningful understanding of the causes and symptoms of burnout and their effects on the 5 Spheres of Happy, Healthy Living
• Create a fully customized self-care plan with the included ready-to-use individual self-care assessments and handy checklists
• Get your organization-wide adoption of a well-being program off to an impressive start in six essential steps

The Happy, Healthy Nonprofit gives nonprofit leaders and staff an effective approach to impacting their causes in greater ways through a sector-wide attention to self-care.

Author Biography

BETH KANTER was named one of the most influential women in technology by Fast Company and is the award-winning author of The Networked Nonprofit books. She is an internationally acclaimed master trainer and speaker.

ALIZA SHERMAN is a web and social media pioneer; founder of Cybergrrl, Inc., the first women-owned, fullservice Internet company; and Webgrrls International, the first Internet networking organization for women. She is a motivational keynote speaker and the author of ten books, including Social Media Engagement for Dummies.