Segment 6 | How people are supported
Engagement, communication and wellbeing during change
This segment looks at how nonprofit organizations support their people when change is underway. The data show good intentions but uneven follow-through. Communication is the most common support mechanism, while structured attention to workload, wellbeing and manager capability often trails behind.
Listening and engagement checks
Just over half of organizations say they regularly assess staff engagement, culture or stress during change, though practices vary widely by size. Mid-sized nonprofits are the most attentive, while the smallest are more divided and the largest far less consistent. As scale increases, change becomes more complex but structured listening tends to decline.
How organizations offer support
When asked What does your organization do to help staff cope with or avoid feeling overwhelmed by too much change?, most respondents indicated their organizations help staff cope by communicating, not by pacing or resourcing change differently. About 35–40 percent rely mainly on updates, town halls or informal check-ins. One in five adjusts pacing or timelines, and roughly the same share provides wellbeing resources such as counselling, flexibility or training. Another quarter offer little or no consistent support at all. Intent to help is widespread, yet systematic measures remain rare.
Support for managers
Manager support is widely recognized as critical yet remains weak. Nearly two-thirds of respondents rate it only slightly or moderately effective, and just one in five call it effective or very effective. Mid-sized organizations fare somewhat better than large ones, where fewer than half see their managers as even slightly effective.
Without confident, well-briefed managers, even strong top-level intent struggles to reach frontline teams.
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Pattern insight:
The missing middle persists. Manager capability remains the weakest link between leadership intent and staff experience during change.
Addressing stakeholder concerns
When asked how effectively they address stakeholder concerns, most respondents place themselves in the middle of the scale rather than at either extreme. Those whose leaders have been trained in change-management practices report noticeably better outcomes: low-effectiveness ratings fall by roughly half compared with organizations without trained leaders. Structured exposure to change practice clearly strengthens credibility and responsiveness.
Responding to concerns and resistance
Early engagement and transparent communication remain the dominant strategies for managing resistance in the dataset. More than half of organizations rely on these approaches to build understanding and trust before opposition hardens. About one in four use feedback loops such as surveys, focus groups or co-design workshops to adapt plans. A smaller group concede they have no structured method at all, responding only as issues arise.
Barriers to engagement and energy
Insufficient resources and staff capacity are the clear front-runner, cited by 59 percent overall and far ahead of any other factor. The pattern diverges sharply by size. In the smallest nonprofits with 1–5 staff almost 40 percent selected “none of the above,” suggesting engagement usually holds. In the largest with more than 1,000 staff challenges stack up: 67–97 percent cite limited capacity, more than half cite limited involvement and competing priorities, and up to three quarters point to weak leadership support, alongside recurring communication gaps.
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Pattern insight:
Capacity limits are the strongest drag on engagement, compounding with size as communication gaps and competing priorities multiply.
Volunteers and the wider community
Among organizations that work with volunteers, about half involve them actively in planning, decision-making and implementation. Around one in four engage volunteers only occasionally, and a similar share have volunteers who are not included at all. Where volunteers are treated as partners rather than observers, change tends to be smoother and community ownership stronger.
Culture as enabler and barrier
Culture cuts both ways. Around 40–45 percent of respondents describe their organizational culture as a strength that supports change through collaboration and mission commitment. Another 35–40 percent experience culture as a barrier marked by hierarchy, risk aversion or slow consensus. The remaining fifth describe mixed environments where both tendencies coexist. Culture therefore acts as a magnifier: It strengthens what already works and amplifies existing weaknesses.
Segment 6 reflection
Across the sector, people experience support for change most clearly through human connection: communication, trust and empathy. Formal wellbeing programmes or pacing adjustments are still the exception. The data suggest a simple equation: organizations that listen early, equip their managers and align culture with mission create the conditions for resilience when everything else shifts.