Offering Support to California Health Nonprofits and Their Executives
 xecutive leaders in the nonprofit health sector have stressful jobs. Even so, many of these skilled leaders find their careers fulfilling – and have difficulty imagining working anywhere else. Many executives essentially dedicate their lives to their agencies while neglecting their own personal needs and overextending themselves year after year. A recent survey of executive directors of charitable organizations nationwide found that three-quarters of them did not expect to remain in their positions five years from now. Burnout was often cited as a reason behind their transition plans.
The California Wellness Foundation (TCWF) had observed these job-related health issues – those facing nonprofit health organizations in California and those experienced by their executives – and developed its sabbatical program as a response. Modeled after the Durfee Foundation’s successful program that targets Los Angeles County nonprofit leaders, TCWF awarded its first sabbatical awards, as a statewide program, in 2003.
 The departure of a valuable executive leader due to burnout, job-related stress or stagnant productivity can be detrimental to a nonprofit health organization’s success. The TCWF program aims to impact the stressors facing both individual leaders and organizations as a whole. It offers grants of $30,000 to nonprofit health organizations in California, enabling their executive directors to take paid leaves for as long as six months. Up to $5,000 is also awarded to each organization for the professional development of managers and staff who will assume extra responsibilities during the executive director’s absence.
“The challenges before these organizations are clear,” said Gary L. Yates, TCWF president and CEO. “Addressing the stresses experienced by nonprofit leaders by offering several months of paid time away from the office is one important strategy to improve the health of these leaders.”
TCWF made a two-year grant of $573,000 in December 2002 to CompassPoint Nonprofit Services to design and implement the program. Following a successful pilot period that resulted in 12 sabbatical awards, TCWF assumed responsibility for administering the program in 2005. Since then, another eight organizations received awards and recipients for 2006 will be announced this fall.
Health of Leaders
For executives at California nonprofits, particularly those whose organizations make up the health care safety net that provides care for more than six million uninsured adults and children, the demand for their organizations’ services continues to grow. To keep up, many executives find themselves overseeing dramatic organizational growth, resulting in larger staffs to supervise and new facilities to manage.
 “Before my sabbatical, we had grown from one to six clinics over a period of 15 months,” said Dave Jones, chief executive officer of Mountain Valleys Health Centers in Bieber and a 2003 sabbatical recipient. “I was feeling extremely stressed and overwhelmed. I often found myself shutting people out.”
Managing these growing organizations impacts how executives function outside the office as well as on-the-job.
“My sabbatical came on the heels of just having completed several major projects, including construction of a new clinic facility,” said Jane Garcia, chief executive officer of La Clinica de la Raza in Oakland and a 2004 sabbatical recipient. “I think I was just functioning, having a hard time envisioning the future. My interactions with staff were starting to be curt, and my family complained of the same thing.”
As a result, one of TCWF’s aims for the sabbatical program was to provide an opportunity for leaders to take time away from the office to consider how they could adopt healthier personal behaviors to prevent burnout once they returned to the job. These varied experiences all resulted in time for reflection, avoiding stress, and opportunities for adopting healthier habits such as exercise and better attention to nutrition.
Health of Organizations
For many of the sabbatical recipients – and for their agencies’ boards of directors – feeling confident that their organization would manage its operations effectively during their absence was a concern that needed to be addressed.
“After studying programs like the Durfee Foundation’s, we recognized that for an agency to operate smoothly during an executive director’s extended absence, investment in agency management capacity was critical,” said Sandra Martínez, TCWF program director who oversees the sabbatical program. “For a number of organizations, receiving a sabbatical award was the impetus for challenging the executive director, the management team and the board of directors to focus clearly on building the agency’s management strength.”
Common areas of training or technical assistance for agency managers included supervision and delegation skills, additional education in financial management, executive coaching for the individual who would take on the daily tasks of the absent executive, and group team-building exercises. The boards of the awardees’ agencies were encouraged to monitor the sabbatical planning and support senior management staff stepping up into leadership roles.
“The extra training for my management staff enabled me to delegate more responsibility upon my return,” said Mountain Valleys Health Centers’ Jones. “I realized there were many things that were better handled by others.”
“I learned much along my personal journey, and here are a few of the most obvious lessons that I learned:
- Learn to trust more…that people, places and things will work itself out.
- It is OK to have fun and you are never too old to do so.
- To be proud of my accomplishments and who I am.
- Be more attentive to my intuition.
- Allow time for myself for rest and nourishment.
- Accept the fact that I am a community leader and knowing that, must learn to step back to allow others to grow and blossom.
- Know that the organization and the cause that I am a part of will and can go on without me.
Richard Zaldivar, executive director of The Wall*Las Memorias Project and a 2005 sabbatical recipient, who kept a blog during his sabbatical. |
Lessons Learned – Program Impact
TCWF believes that awarding sabbatical leaves to experienced, long-tenured executives is an effective strategy for improving the well-being of the nonprofit health sector and its leaders. Interest in the program on the part of executives is strong, based on the volume of applications received each year.
“When planning for the program began, we wondered if having time off to think and reflect would lead executives to opt not to return to their jobs and find new career opportunities,” TCWF’s Martínez said. “Happily, this has not been the case. In most instances, sabbatical recipients have returned to their positions with renewed focus and dedication.”
 After three years, it is too early to draw definitive conclusions about the program’s impact on the nonprofit health sector. Nonetheless, anecdotal evidence and reports from these organizations suggest that time away from the job is beneficial.
“As we learn more about the lasting impact of the sabbaticals on the health of executives and on the management capacity of the organizations, we look forward to sharing our findings with other foundations,” Martínez said. “Supporting nonprofit leadership is vital if organizations are going to be effective in meeting the health needs of underserved California communities.”
For more information about the TCWF sabbatical program, visit www.tcwf.org.
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