Effective Ways To Motivate Your NonProfit Team

Whether it’s a for-profit or non-profit organisation, it’s very important to keep your team motivated and enthused to be successful. Many nonprofit organisations can hire great talent but fail to retain them. And one of the key reasons behind losing them is a lack of motivation.  In this type of organisation, you must be able to motivate your nonprofit team.

No matter how dedicated a team truly are to your cause, if they feel not supported, neglected or taken for granted, they will start to look for opportunities elsewhere. Hence, any nonprofit organisation needs to reevaluate their management and HR strategies at regular intervals ensuring that they’re keeping their team engaged and motivated.

Leading a team of disengaged employees is never easy. However, it’s possible to attract, motivate and inspire team members to keep working hard and stay longer.

How To Motivate Your Nonprofit Team

Follow these best practices and tips on how to motivate your nonprofit team in 2023.

1. Share your vision and set goals

It’s very important to let your team know what they are working towards to feel inspired and motivated. Every employee in your organisation should be aware of your vision and final goals.

This will encourage your team to work closely to achieve the expected results. Set clear and measurable goals allowing your teams to track progress and experience success.

Also, this will make your employees feel valued and motivated, which will boost productivity.

2. Encourage teamwork

It’s the responsibility of any nonprofit organisation to continuously encourage and promote teamwork to achieve shared goals. Team alignment is key. Without that, it’s difficult to work together cohesively and attain success.

This will not only boost productivity but keep your employees more engaged and feel less isolated. Conduct team building activities at regular intervals to build strong team spirit and strengthen bonding between team members.

When hiring new staff, along with the required skills and experience, see if they will gel well with the rest of the team and workplace culture.

3. Offer flexibility

It’s not always money that’s behind the lack of motivation in your nonprofit team. Be open and offer flexibility to your employees to work as per their style and requirements. Remote or hybrid working is one such factor that continues even post-COVID. Focus more on how to offer better work-life balance, higher job satisfaction and improved productivity.

4. Offer skill training

Continuous learning is key for employees’ personal and professional success. Offering skill training to employees will not only improve their skills and knowledge but also build their confidence, improve productivity and work more effectively. At the same time, you need to ensure that your employees understand its value and how their work fits into the organisation’s mission and set goals.

5. Celebrate their success

You must celebrate big or small wins of your employees to stimulate the feeling of inclusion, collaboration and social bonding. It can be done in many ways such as

• • announcing the entire team or company
  • give a hand-written note
  • shout out on a social media
  • gift an extra paid holiday, skill certification course or a ticket for an event
  • offer a new responsibility with some bonus

6. Ask for their feedback

Employee feedback boosts motivation. It makes them feel good and inclusive. Additionally, It helps the team to avoid any big mistakes, keep things on track and create a transparent and friendly work environment.

7. Make them learn from their mistakes

No one is perfect. Employees are bound to make mistakes but the way you deal or handle it can make a huge difference whether they’ll stay or leave.

Encourage your team to learn from their mistakes, identify areas for improvement and provide needed support. Try to address their problem quickly, know exactly what and why it happened and work together for a practical solution to avoid such mistakes in the future. Avoid the ‘blame game’ instead focus on how the team can work more closely and build a sense of ownership.

8. Provide surprise rewards/incentives

Offering financial rewards for your employees’ hard work in the form of bonuses, incentives, extra commissions etc does help boost their performance, motivation and participation.

9. Show your trust

Trust is a foundation for any nonprofit organisation. If you don’t show your trust, they won’t trust you either. Showing your trust in your employees not only helps in improving motivation and productivity but also they are likely to stay longer and support you during difficult times.

10. allow them to lead

No better way to motivate your employees is by allowing them to lead a specific meeting/event/project/team. This will help you to recognise their leadership skills, show your faith in them to do bigger things and offer them valuable experience to help in their career.