Building Context & Culture into Wellness at Work

Like the activists and communities we support, those of us working at nonprofits are prone to burnout — funding is tight, to-do lists are long, the issues at hand are complex, and most of us are forced to wear many hats at our jobs. But consider this: 20-odd staff members at a movement support intermediary gather via Zoom. They’re stretching, they’re learning the benefits of herbal teas, they’re telling stories, they’re collaging with art paper and upcycled copies of National Geographic, they’re making ice cream.

In the summer of 2021, Movement Strategy Center (MSC) was invited to apply for a grant from Chan Zuckerberg Initiative’s (CZI) Fund to Advance Racial Equity (FARE), part of a leadership initiative to provide expanded and equitable services for movement leaders. MSC was awarded $250,000 through this program, with half earmarked for leadership work among key members of the Movement Strategy Network (MSN), and half to fund an innovative, two-year wellness program pilot for core MSC staff.  

Mohini Tadikonda, MSC’s Chief Advancement Officer recalls, “Our Senior Leadership Team had noticed a real need for wellness support for our internal staff.” She explained, “our jobs support the frontline organizations out there doing the hard work, but we often neglect the staffers doing the crucial behind-the-scenes work — we neglect ourselves.” Mitigating staff burnout was imperative and while “ideas had been thrown around, there was no budget to support them.”

An email from CZI arrived just in time. “They were responding to [a Letter of Intent] I sent the year before that fit into one of their current leadership initiatives, and I asked if we could modify it slightly to support staff wellness programming.” Fortunately, our partners at CZI “thought it was a great idea, and still very aligned with their leadership initiatives.”

Two years later, the almost universally-celebrated MSC Employee Wellness Program combines discretionary wellness stipends, context and education around the Transformative Movement Building framework MSC was founded on, self care, and a series of fun, culture building activities — like ice cream making — that create camaraderie in the face of our mostly remote work conditions.

Walking the Walk  

MSC’s ethos is built around The Practices of Transformative Movement Building, a concept and resource that divides movement work into four pillars. These include leading with Audacious Vision; a Deep Embodiment of the values at the heart of the vision; building Radical Connection around the work and community; and using all of that — vision, embodiment, and connection — to seek and accomplish ultimate goals, Strategic Navigation.

As MSC has grown and evolved over nearly 25 years, partnerships and staff members have come and gone. Many of those individuals are still an integral part of our movement ecosystem, but new partners and staffers now populate our organizational chart. Without question, we are all passionate about a Just Transition, the intersectional issues of racial, gender, and environmental justice, and the need for a shift in power and control of wealth within philanthropy. Newbies couldn’t help but be less familiar with the concept of Transformative Movement Building — and how wellness, centering, and creativity are so essential to the just world we all envision.  

The idea was to fill this knowledge gap while prioritizing health and wellbeing. To do so, MSC’s small Communications Team — also relatively new to the Transformative Movement Building concept — pitched a dynamic lineup of programming aiming to educate, inspire participation, promote holistic wellness, and strengthen community within the organization. The program, Rooted in Transformative Practice, included opt-in individual and group benefits and activities to inspire joy and creativity across four quarters.

The First Year

Each quarter focused on one of the aforementioned tenets: Audacious Vision, Deep Embodiment, Radical Connection, and Strategic Navigation. 

Quarter One, Audacious Vision, asked what we need to create the world we imagine, and featured a collage workshop with artist/activist Aisha Shillingford of Intelligent Mischief, and a visioning workshop with Root. Rise. Pollinate!, both MSN partners. Deep Embodiment truly spoke to stance, breath, and awareness, and how the mind-body connection is so essential to the work. It centered around a group workout session with Joylabs, affiliated with MSN partner Beloved Communities Network, along with a stipend for a one-on-one consultation with a Healing Clinic Collective (HCC) practitioner. HCC, a fiscally sponsored project of MSC, connects people in need of holistic healing to natural and traditional healers in reiki, astrology, nutrition and immunity-boosting, and other modalities. Radical Connection considered the bigger we, trust, and mutuality, and offered staffers an opportunity to volunteer in their communities. Finally, Strategic Navigation asked staffers to consider how conflict can move the work forward and build collective self awareness as we connect vision with purpose. It included training sessions with Weyam Ghadbian of Weyham Healing & Conflict Transformation, another MSN member.

Tadikonda added, “all of this was intended to emphasize the importance of building strong relationships for our communities, our work, and our health to thrive, while adding dimension and context for those of us working from behind the scenes of our frontline partners.” 

That intention spoke to another tenet of MSC’s longtime ethos: Beloved Community. The intersection of these concepts was driven home in one of the final wellness workshops of the year, hosted by Anasa Troutman, a member of MSC’s board and founder of BIG We Foundation, an MSN partner. She declared, “Beloved Community is our North Star,” and what we need “to move the world forward” so we “can experience safety, joy, abundance, and love.” These are the building blocks of full wellness: “Our right to believe what we believe, the ability to change our minds, healthy capacity to transform conflict, and leading with compassion.” 

Throughout the year, staffers were gifted journals, sent copies of Tricia Hersey’s book Rest Is Resistance: A Manifesto, invited to various social and culture-building gatherings, tastings, and conversations, offered access to wellness apps, and gifted stipends to support their wellness on their own terms. While the program offered recommendations on ways to spend that money (a yoga session for Deep Embodiment; a donation to a local cause for Radical Connection), our colleagues could use this benefit for a fun meal out, workout gear, a visit to a spa, or whatever wellness meant for them.

Staff Talks Back

MSC employees completed a survey about their experience with the program at the end of each quarter. No one had a problem with their wellness stipends, but respondents were enthusiastic about the program at large.

When asked if the program helped or harmed, 95% of respondents reported the program “helped” or “helped a lot.” One respondent noted an improvement in their physical and mental health, noting the monetary provisions allowed them to invest in wellness activities that might otherwise be out of reach. Another reported the program “helped me rest and reflect” while deepening “my understanding of the Practices of Transformative Movement Building, which is crucial for understanding my role and discussing our work externally.”

Surveys showed the program made strides toward improving staff physical and mental health, fostered a deeper sense of connection to Transformative Movement Building, and increased access to wellness opportunities inside and outside of work. More than that, individuals felt the program was instrumental in fostering a positive workplace culture, boosting morale, and increasing staff engagement and productivity. Many shared a strong desire to continue and expand these wellness investments both for core staff members and, when funds allow, to our MSN members and fiscally sponsored projects. More than a series of events, this was a movement towards embedding wellness into the very fabric of MSC’s culture.

Connecting Wellness to Our Broader Movements

As an entity, MSC believes in community leadership and co-creation — so it was no surprise when survey results also showed that some employees were interested in getting involved in future programming. At the same time, MSC’s People & Culture team was finally fully staffed and functioning after a restructure. As such, the program is now overseen by the People & Culture team, with planning and ideation help from both the Wellness and Employee Experience Committees. These new, cross-functional teams are dedicated to designing and promoting culture building and wellness opportunities.

Thanks to this collaboration, Year Two built on the foundational themes established during Year One. Priorities included Deepening Engagement, which supported employee wellbeing and staff connectivity, and Expanding the Framework, which allowed staff to continue learnings around Transformative Movement Building. Crucially, the program’s goals were continually refined to ensure the wellness opportunities on offer align with the evolving needs of our staff, MSC’s organizational objectives, and the broader environmental and social justice movements we support.

Bridgette Bell, MSC’s People & Culture Director, is a key advocate for the program. She said, “It is important for this programming to exist within the context of these larger struggles, recognizing that the health and resilience of all of us contribute significantly to collective efforts in these areas.”

She continued, “funding for such programming is, of course, critical.” We are currently seeking funding to support a third year of programming and/or make the initiative sustainable in the absence of dedicated funds. Bell hopes “the program will continue fostering wellness within MSC, regardless of funding constraints.” As for the goal of piloting the concept for our greater ecosystem, she envisions “connecting with partners to extend wellness initiatives beyond the organization.”

Looking Ahead

Regrettably, this project was funded for just two years. While CZI was excited by our program and its results, their priorities and focus areas have changed. We are thankful that CZI is sharing our story and working with us as a thought partner, but these financial limitations are proof positive that prioritizing funding for wellness, culture, and infrastructure is a challenge for both funders and grantees with tight general operating support resources.

Unfortunately, funding gaps like this are quite common. Tadikonda noted “a trend among funders who shift their priorities suddenly — they pilot something, they are excited about it, and, too often, right when a project has proven its value and is ready to move to the next level, the funder’s focus shifts and grantees are left trying to find ways to continue the work they started.” She continued, “It’s especially frustrating when you know the project is something important, where we are seeing the benefits and we have the metrics.”

These shifts have become more profound since the Supreme Court rejected Affirmative Action at colleges and universities in 2023, with implications for DEI initiatives in the workplace and within the philanthropic sector.  

Holistic wellness in nonprofit work will never come from a single grant. This evolution requires consistency and dedication, including human resources professionals who are interested in much more than their workplace’s efficiency and compliance; who audaciously envision an equitable world we all long for. This is one of the reasons MSC’s human resources team renamed themselves People & Culture.

We couldn’t be more proud of our innovative program’s successes and how it offers an exploration into what wellness can look like in the workplace. The question lies in how to convince philanthropy at large to fund programming like this. Our initiative is a testing ground and a pilot program. It’s bigger than MSC; bigger than even our greater ecosystem. This is a concept that can foster and integrate an ethos of authentic connection, radical abundance, and organizational wellness for transformative social change and progressive philanthropic organizations nationally. 

As one of our survey respondents noted: “Wellness is not always easy to prioritize, and a lot of us face burnout. But collective efforts like these, and support systems like these, are helping build a culture of resilience and holistic wellbeing at work.”