When we last caught up with the Durfee Foundation a year ago, we focused in large part on the effects of the COVID pandemic on the funder’s sabbatical program for nonprofit leaders. The same set of interlocking crises that radically increased the need for these sabbaticals also made it impossible for many nonprofit leaders to take them, making their funding for such extended breaks all the more critical.
Today, Durfee is happy to report that every sabbatical awardee to date has either been able to travel to their chosen sabbatical location or is in the process of scheduling the trip. But that’s not all, because Durfee has launched a new program. This one is for the entire staff of organizations that are too small for their leaders to qualify for Durfee’s sabbatical program. For small teams, a leader on sabbatical could result in too large of a burden on the rest of the organization. But other supports, ranging from a shorter sabbatical to the ability to purchase certain luxuries, were both urgently needed and could potentially provide teams at these smaller organizations with the kind of healing lift they needed to allow them to continue their work.
In March, the foundation announced the first 15 nonprofit winners of the Lark Awards: $30,000 each to small, Los Angeles-based nonprofit community organizations for the sole purpose of supporting “the collective care and renewal” of everyone on the teams. Durfee also moved fast to get the new awards up and running: The first cohort of Lark Award winners was announced less than two years after Durfee staff came up with the idea. And better still, Durfee has been getting calls from funders across the country who want to learn how to start a similar program.
For Durfee, the Lark Awards are part of an effort to “double down on the idea that we invest in people,” said Durfee Executive Director Claire Peeps, “and that organizational sustainability ultimately is about sustaining the people” who work in those organizations. This is particularly true in the wake of the ongoing COVID pandemic, which is “very much not over” and continues to impact nonprofit workers even as, in Peeps’ experience, some in philanthropy are pulling back on the extra supports the sector provided its grantees in the first heat of the crisis.
Peeps said that the initial idea that grew into the Lark Awards came about during conversations in October 2020. Durfee program managers Stella Chung and Mary Cruz had identified several nonprofits in need of support that didn’t meet requirements that ensure nonprofits are able to absorb the impact of a leader’s three-month sabbatical on their operations. Additionally, what about the staff at those nonprofits?
“Stella’s and my prior experience working in the nonprofit sector, and having friends and colleagues currently in that field, really shaped and inspired the approach to have this grant be focused on the collective organization rather than just individual renewal, which is more of the focus of the sabbatical,” said Cruz. By focusing on the collective care of the entire team at an organization, Durfee hopes to “ultimately lead to a culture shift away from burnout in the nonprofit sector.”
After getting board approval that November for a $90,000 pilot program to serve three trial organizations — Inclusive Action for the City, LA Más, and LA Compost — and to learn from those organizations’ experiences, Durfee’s staff came back to the board with a proposal for the full Lark Awards, which was approved in July 2021. Applications for the first cohort opened in November. In March, Durfee’s board voted to increase the inaugural cohort to 15, and two months later, the initial group of Lark Award winners was announced.
Why did Durfee move so quickly to get the Lark Awards off the ground? “One of the things that we’re talking about internally is the importance of common sense,” said Peeps, which in this case meant not getting “mired down in proving what we can see in front of us (nonprofit employee stress and burnout) before we decide to do something about it.”
Although Durfee didn’t choose to conduct multiple studies or surveys before moving the money, Peeps said the funder did learn from the experiences of its pilot program awardees.
“They came back and said it was hard to spend money on yourself when you’ve never had the capacity, much less the instruction, to do so,” she said. “It’s hard not just to put money directly into programs.” When given the funds and the encouragement to spend them on activities or items that provided personal, not professional, fulfillment, staff at the pilot nonprofits indulged in activities including time with family and a staff camping trip. Others opted for time away from the colleagues they interact with every day. One staffer used her Lark pilot funds to buy books for herself.
“She had never bought books in her whole life,” Peeps said, “and for her, that was an amazing luxury, to be able to buy books.”
One surprising result of the pilot program, Peeps said, was that pilot groups commenced first-of-their kind conversations about how staff are doing and what they need to feel supported. One of the groups, for example, radically changed its vacation policy, now encouraging staff to take a minimum of 10 days’ vacation while simultaneously offering unlimited vacation. Another innovation was a decision to have everyone take a break simultaneously so staff weren’t faced with the prospect of either answering emails while trying to rest and relax or returning to an overflowing inbox and frustrated coworkers.
Some of the pilot nonprofits’ responses to receiving money to care for their teams “were more radical than I thought they would be,” Peeps said.
At least some other funders are intrigued by the example the project is setting. Since the Lark Awards announcement, Peeps said, Durfee has been contacted by several other funders, including large community foundations and a smaller, family-run organization — and at least a few of those funders got in touch after being approached by their own grantees.
The idea to call Durfee about its Lark Awards “didn’t come from foundation to foundation. It came from nonprofit to foundation,” Peeps said. “So I think there’s a cultural change. Nonprofits are feeling a little bit more empowered to speak up for themselves. When we started our sabbatical program 26 years ago, that was not the case.”