Spaces to Grow

This summer, Spur Local’s Communications and Civic Engagement Intern Kyle Reid created a short documentary highlighting two local arts & culture nonprofits, 826DC and Young Playwrights’ Theater.

826DC helps DC students strengthen their writing skills, share what matters to them, and build a lifelong relationship with writing.

Young Playwrights’ Theater inspires young people to realize the power of their own voices. YPT provides inspiration, tools, and opportunities for young and emerging artists to develop and share their stories.

DC is a place that celebrates art. This is a city of politics, but also a city of music and museums. There is a rich history of, and respect for, creatives performing at their highest. People with this artistic passion are all over the District. There’s so much artistic talent in our youth, but many of them struggle to find places to express themselves outside of the classroom. When children have a passion for the arts and the space for artistic expression, what does that look like? What does that do for them, for their communities?

“It is always important as a community for us to wrap ourselves around supporting every young person to have an education that inspires them, that motivates them, that engages them, that tells them that they matter and that there is a life of possibility out there for them,” said Robyn Lingo, Executive Director of 826DC. “There are so many things in our world that tell young people that what they have to say doesn’t matter, or that they need to fit into this box, or follow these instructions, or do the assignment in this way. I think finding your voice, for me, is more about what we as adults do to create an environment where every young person knows that they are important, that people want to hear what they have to say.”

“There are sometimes limited opportunities for young people to engage with the arts. When we look at a lot of school curricula, a lot of what students learn is focused on testing, and art seems almost like an afterthought. But there are a lot of students who are able to express themselves in ways, through writing, through performance, that they ordinarily don’t feel equipped to do in a normal school day,” said Farah Lawal Harris, Artistic Director of Young Playwrights’ Theater. “This type of work gives young people confidence in themselves. It exposes them to skill sets that they didn’t even know about, and it helps them just imagine a greater world for themselves and even what career options they could explore.”

Credits

Created by Kyle Reid and Amanda Liaw, Spur Local

Featuring (In Order of Appearance):

• Robyn Lingo, Executive Director, 826DC
• Tyonna J., Poet
• Wisdom N., Poet
• Farah Lawal Harris, Artistic Director, Young Playwrights’ Theater
• Amira Al Amin, Playwright of “Dresses that Twirl”

Additional 826DC Footage Courtesy of: Sarah Richman, Associate Director of Communications and Development, 826DC

Additional YPT Footage Courtesy of: Cody Bahn, Communications Manager, YPT

Archival Photos Courtesy of: DC Public Library

Music Courtesy of: Artlist

• Ballerino by Yehezkel Raz
• Midnight Sun by Beneath The Mountain
• Ballerina by Yehezkel Raz
• Icicles by Yehezkel Raz
• The Kid and the Bird by SEA

For five years, Spur Local has been surveying hundreds of Executive Directors at small, local nonprofits across the Greater Washington region to gain insight into their personal and organizational wellbeing. Each annual survey gives a snapshot of how community leaders experience and respond to challenging moments, from COVID-19 to major funding losses. And every survey consistently shows that these leaders, and their teams, are disproportionately vulnerable to burnout.

Our Executive Director, Matt Gayer, has written about the need to invest in our people, and how nonprofits and our sector can better support nonprofit teams to address the higher-than-average voluntary turnover rate. Since 2023, at least 1 in 2 Executive Directors expressed that they recently, were about to, or currently experienced a sense of burnout at the time of completing the survey. Beyond this figure, the qualitative responses we received were demonstrative:

• “I currently feel a sense of burnout and work diligently to hide it. Any sense of wellbeing and self-care is erased by the daily demands.”
• “There is always a crisis or urgent need no matter how hard we try to stabilize operations.”
• “I mostly choose to prioritize my staff’s wellbeing over my own.”

Over the years, it is clear that many Executive Directors continue to face the same issues of burnout, low staff retention rates, and inadequate support. Persistently, the top three barriers to these leaders accessing the care they need are a lack of time, staff capacity, and financial resources. We must acknowledge that these issues are not new. They are systemic, incur long-lasting consequences, and require all of us in the charitable sector to address.

Using general operating support to foster healthy workplace environments

Nonprofits are often expected to give their all without prioritizing their own wellbeing, providing more services with fewer resources and support.

“I think the model leads to burnout all by itself,” said Taylor Mitchell, Executive Director of The Platform of Hope. “One person is your HR person, they are development, lead staff, do budget. No one is all those things… It’s impossible for one person to do it all without getting burned out.”

When asked what type of support would most benefit their organizations, leaders highlight general operating support as key. This kind of funding is what pays for rent and salaries, and can allow them to provide their staff with mental health resources, technical training, HR training, professional development courses, and more. Knowing they can cover the basics alleviates external stressors and creates space for them to implement sustainable staffing practices that increase retention. “Overhead” is not inefficiency, but sustainable investment in the people who drive nonprofit work, allowing for organizations to foster healthy workplace environments in the long-term.

“My organization right now is not able to provide retirement benefits,” Taylor emphasized. “So, to me, it’s not just burnout but not being able to stay long-term because of this. can grow a lot and grow skills but, at the same time, I cannot expect staff to be retained when this is not sustainable long-term.”

Sustaining the work long-term through multi-year funding

Supporting staff wellbeing is especially significant for frontline nonprofit workers. “Burnout is a real issue, not just for leaders but staff,” stated Paula Fitzgerald, Executive Director of Ayuda, a nonprofit that serves over 3,000 low-income immigrants annually. “The work we do is tough. A lot of the people we work with… have experienced crime and trauma. There is a lot of need in that area but that is also a lot for staff to hold.” Increasingly, this includes the emotional duress of being targeted for working in fields like immigrant services.

“A lot of organizations have had to retract or reduce or close down completely, so you lose a lot of the infrastructure,” Paula explained. “In terms of building the future of nonprofit work, it is definitely deterring people from entering the field.”

As nonprofits keep operating in an environment where funding is decreasing immensely, the stability that multi-year grants provide becomes more apparent. In the immediate term, receiving multi-year funding eases the pressure on nonprofit leaders to raise an entire budget from scratch year after year so they can focus on strengthening their operations and deepening their impact.

“Long-term, I see [the nonprofit sector's] resilience being challenged not just financially, but with staff retention as well,” noted Tamela Aldridge, Executive Director of Only Make Believe. “Someone has got to step up. We cannot just look at nonprofits and tell them to do better. We are trying to do the best we can and we keep getting rugs pulled out from underneath us… We are human beings.”

Though the long-term effects of burnout on the sector can be incredibly damaging, a shift in thinking around how we invest in what we value can be just as restorative.

“Multi-year grants are investments in the mission, investments in the community, and investments in the organization. It isn’t about one feel-good moment, but about restructuring what it is we value and how we show up for humanity,” Tamela shared.

Trusting nonprofit leaders and workers

As a charitable sector, we must trust nonprofits to do the work and implement the organizational practices they need to sustain it. As Taylor highlighted, we cannot always see the immediate impact or progress of our work. “You have to keep going, even if you are not seeing it immediately.” Providing general operating support and multi-year funding is a tangible way to enable nonprofit leaders to improve their personal and organizational wellbeing, better retain their staff, sustain services for the communities they serve, and increase the long-term health and resilience of the nonprofit workforce.

This article was written by Leslie Aguilera, spring 2025 Communications and Civic Engagement Intern at Spur Local, in conversation with Taylor Mitchell at Platform of Hope, Paula Fitzgerald at Ayuda, and Tamela Aldridge at Only Make Believe. It was edited by Amanda Liaw, Spur Local’s Communications and Marketing Director.