Influx of funding would ease nonprofit labor shortage

Kristen Schlapp, chief operating officer of Quincy Community Action Programs, has had difficulty finding early childhood education teachers.John Tlumacki/Globe Staff

In laying out the crisis of nonprofits unable to hire enough staff given the labor shortage, Diti Kohli underemphasized a major cause: funders (“Nonprofits struggle for staff in tight market,” Page A1, Jan. 14). Large foundations could step up with more private funding to make nonprofit jobs competitive, with family-supportive wages and reasonable hours.

The Staffing the Mission project of the organization Class Action works on two fronts to prevent nonprofit burnout: helping nonprofits make improvements to staff jobs and, more importantly, working with funders on how their grant-making could better support sustainable jobs at grantee organizations. Doing the first without the second is a dead end.

Betsy Leondar-Wright

Arlington

The writer is the coordinator of Staffing the Mission and an associate professor of sociology at Lasell University.