The Nonprofit Science Podcast

Nearly nine in ten nonprofit workers say they’re passionate about their job. So when almost everyone has it, what is that word actually telling you, and what should a leader watch for instead?

New research followed nonprofit employees across four surveys over two years, starting just before the pandemic, to track something snapshot surveys miss: how passion changes over time. The findings complicate a lot of conventional wisdom.

In this episode we get into how passion changes over time, what separates the passion that sustains people from the passion that burns them out, and why this matters for your mission.

What counts as a volunteer? Research into fifty years of Australian volunteering data shows the answer has been rewritten again and again, and that what gets counted tends to lag well behind what the sector says it values.

Think about the person who spent three hours organizing your storage closet. Or the community member who drove two hours to get discounted instruments for your program. Or the handful of people who share every post you publish. Most volunteer databases don't have a box to track any of them.

In this episode we trace how a definition gets built and what happens in our own organizations when what we say we value and what we actually count drift apart.

Your executive director comes back from a conference convinced the nonprofit should run more like a business. You roll your eyes and think “we’ve been down this road before.” We know the argument. Yes, nonprofits are technically businesses, but our bottom line is impact not profit. The current conversation pits these two standpoints against each other.

But, new research says the business-versus-mission framing is the wrong one. Nonprofits don’t run on two competing values, they run on several at once, from mission to money to professional standards to faith. It turns out, the organizations that thrive aren’t the ones that pick a winner. They’re the ones that integrate.

In this episode we dive into a study of six nonprofits, three that combined their competing values productively and three that didn’t. We discuss the four elements that separated them and what to do with all of this information in your own nonprofit.

Most board packets are full of numbers boards don't act on.

New research looked at a decade of financial data from the largest nonprofits in the country and asked a simple question: which financial signals do boards respond to? It turns out, many of the indicators we build our reporting around, including revenue, expenses, profit margin, and savings margin, show no measurable effect on board action.

There's one measure boards do respond to, but by the time it moves, the financial decline has usually been underway for years. Boards catch the problem late enough that fixing it means cutting programs instead of adjusting course.

In this episode we get into what board capture is, why it happens without anyone acting in bad faith, and what to do with all of it depending on which chair you're sitting in.

Is your organization as ethical on the inside as it is on the outside? Most nonprofit leaders answer yes without hesitating, and they're usually thinking about the mission. But a workplace isn't ethical just because the organization does good in the world. It's built or lost in the small moments like who gets interrupted, who gets the benefit of the doubt and how conflict gets handled.

In this episode, we dig into research that asked 74 nonprofit employees to describe a real moment when ethical values were at stake in their workplace. The patterns across those stories produced a framework built from four relationships.

You'll learn the four pillars of an ethical workplace climate, how to figure out where your own climate is thin, and what to do when you're the one living inside a workplace climate that isn't working.

Sitting in a budget meeting defending your numbers can be brutal, especially when the honest answer to "how did you land on these?" is "last year's budget, adjusted by feel." You run a lean operation, but the same pattern shows up every year: too much of one thing, not enough of another.

For-profit companies solved this with a tool called demand forecasting. The catch was always cost and expertise, which kept it out of reach for nonprofits. Until now. In this episode, we dig into new research on forecasting for nonprofits, and a surprising finding about which method actually works.

You'll learn how to predict what your programs need using data you already have, what to do when that data is a mess, and how the same approach strengthens grant budgets, in-kind asks, and the case you make at budget time.

What if the storytelling practices you were trained on are quietly causing harm and you don't even know it? In this episode, host Sheela Mahajan sits down with Diana Farias Heinrich, founder of Habra Marketing and host of the Ethical Nonprofit Summit, to dig into the ethics of nonprofit storytelling. They cover the power dynamics hiding in everyday language, why "donor as hero" is more problematic than it sounds, the difference between false urgency and real urgency in fundraising appeals, and Diana shares her four-step framework for making sure the people whose stories you're sharing actually have a say. If you've ever felt like the storytelling norms you inherited don't quite sit right, this one's for you.

LINKS:

Ethical Nonprofit Summit

If you're tired of icky-feeling, transactional storytelling, the Ethical Nonprofit Summit is where you'll find your community. Join us May 6-7, 2026 (9 AM-1 PM PST each day) to learn from expert speakers and connect with fellow fundraisers and storytellers who are transforming the sector. Head to ethicalnonprofitsummit.com/science to register.

Use code SCIENCE15 to save $15 on regular price tickets!

How do you know your program is working? You know it works and you see it every day. But translating that into evidence that satisfies stakeholders? That's where things get complicated.

In this episode, we dig into peer-reviewed research to understand why impact measurement is so challenging and what works. We explore the five factors that make measurement credible, why starting with purpose beats starting with methods, and how learning-oriented cultures turn data into real decisions. Plus, we use the SIGNALS framework: a seven-step approach for tackling measurement challenges systematically.

Whether you're struggling with funder requirements, drowning in data that doesn't get used, or just looking for a smarter approach, this episode offers research-backed strategies you can apply immediately.

"Collaboration" has become one of the most diluted words in the nonprofit sector. Funders push for it, grant applications require it, and yet most partnerships are coordination at best, administrative burden at worst.

Dr. Priyanka Brunese and Pallavi Gupta of Saath Partners have spent years researching why some cross-sector partnerships create genuine value while others stall out. In this episode, they break down the spectrum from cooperation to true partnership, explain why most nonprofit collaborations get stuck in transactional mode, and introduce the concept of collaborative advantage.

We dig into real examples, including how one homeless shelter built a network of shared-value partnerships that expanded services without expanding budgets. We also get honest about what goes wrong: operational misalignment, power dynamics, and partnership fatigue.

If collaboration has felt like more trouble than it's worth, this episode offers a different path forward.