Introduction

Let’s have an official conversation about this. Many nonprofit, community-based organizations have toxic environments.

You stay for a lot of practical reasons. Your paycheck and family’s welfare may be tied to accepting the toxicity. You may be early in your career and really want the specific topic area experience that the job position offers. Whatever your reason, know that your reasons for staying are not a reflection of something being wrong with you. Not everyone has the privilege to chart an interviewing campaign for a new job.

This 2 Tips is focused on acknowledging and working around the toxicity in your org which will likely take time to end.

What options exist to safeguard your sanity and wellness? Check out the video and list at the bottom!

Know that the proposed options are methods for navigating the way we do work in this country with all of the hurtful, power-loaded vestiges from the Industrial Revolution. 

Tip 2

Subversively introduce wellness actions and ideas that can shift the culture incrementally without anyone noticing.

Subversively Introduce Wellness Actions & Ideas

Here are a series of small steps that can be undertaken in slow, organic ways. You can use these steps to bring new values to grow within your organization. You can also laugh to yourself that you are improving wellness factors in your org even with toxic leaders at the helm.

1 |  Recommend and encourage the adoption of domestic violence and intimate relationship violence policies and procedures.

2 |  Recommend and encourage the adoption of policies and procedures to resolve and prevent sexual harassment (which can often be crimes and should be treated as such) and sexual assault crimes.

3 |  Recommend and encourage the adoption of flextime as an option for talent retainment and the research on successes with flextime.

4 |  Recommend and encourage the use of free services such as crisis hotlines with call and texting options. These can be included around the offices and in the organizational newsletter.

5 |  Recommend and encourage the use of counseling through innovative means like remote counseling, walking counseling, etc.

6 |  Identify when regional wellness events are available and share these with organizational leadership and colleagues as affordable professional development and capacity building opportunities.

Why did we develop 2 Tips videos?

We know that many professionals and organizational leaders do not have the funds to partner with specialists (like us) and/or the time to strategize on what might seem like extra projects.

We launched these 2 Tips videos to support you with making tweaks, adjustments, and refinements in programs and operations — doable for busy professionals like you!