Why It May Feel Like Your Staff Have One Foot Out the Door: A Look at the Latest Social Impact Staff Retention Report

Our team worked closely with Nonprofiteer, Evan Wildstein, when we covered his parental leave in 2024. Concerned with the health of the social sector, and with over two decades of experience building sustainable nonprofit organizations from the inside – he is an advocate and voice for the sector and co-leads the Social Impact Staff Retention project in partnership with Michelle Flores Vryn.

The 2026 Social Impact Staff Retention (SISR) report shares key findings from their recent survey and indexes the last three years of data to highlight recurring trends. While the SISR report features American data, we see many of the same challenges here in Canada, and believe the recommendations are useful for Canadians too.

Key Findings

Here are some findings that jumped out to us:

7 in 10 nonprofit workers are looking for/considering a new job this year. The main reasons people are looking to leave include:

too much responsibility, not enough support (60%)
inadequate benefits/compensation (53%)
unsupportive management/leadership (53%)

Do any of these challenges feel familiar? Or resonate with you?

On the flip side, employees that aren’t looking, and plan to stay have this in common:

strong alignment with the mission (75%)
hybrid/remote flexibility (72%)
good, encouraging work environment (66%)

It’s not surprising that giving your employees flexibility in how, when, and where they do their work has a big impact on their well-being and retention. When averaged over the last three years, remote/hybrid flexibility with work environment is the top reason employees stay in their jobs. We know flexibility is a powerful tool for employee retention. We see first-hand that when teams give their staff autonomy over the ways they work – whether it’s flexible hours, or remote or hybrid options – people do their best work, they’re more productive, and less likely to burn out. This does not mean that you need to go 100% remote. It simply means being flexible, and may mean different strategies for different workers.

We see how remote/hybrid work has a positive impact on the well-being of parents, on workers caring for aging parents, and on neurodiverse team members too – more on this later!

Strong alignment with mission and a good, supportive work environment also resonate with experiences we see across Canada. Through our coverage service we embed Balanced Good team members into organizations, and we see less turnover, greater productivity and overall well-being improve when teams live their mission and values, and their leaders are supportive and treat staff as people first.

How we work

At Balanced Good our team is fully remote, with flexible hours – most team members work a 32-hour week and can choose to spread it over 4 or 5 days. We support each other when things come up – whether it’s a kid home with the flu, another snow day, or a parent recovering from surgery who needs some support. We understand that our team members are people first, and that to be successful and productive they need to be supported.

We get to work with many different organizations across North America, and what we see time and time again are people that are leaving roles – and the sector entirely – because they have unrealistic workloads. They’re often being asked to cover two or three people’s jobs, salary and compensation structures are unclear, and worse, sometimes workplace bullies are ignored despite their impact on the team’s mental health. Employees just don’t have support they need.

Solutions

The 2026 report reinforces this reality and notes that of those looking to leave their jobs, only 35% say they plan to definitively stay working for non-profits.

It is striking when you stop to think about it. We know we need to keep passionate, talented and smart people working for the causes they care about to make social change possible.

There are solutions though, and they’re not as hard as we think. Wildstein, shares “Persistent turnover and uncertainty come with serious risks; shrinking leadership pipelines, institutional memory, and the sector’s overall capacity to deliver impact. However, SISR data offers a roadmap. Many of the strongest retention drivers are cultural and managerial, not (necessarily) financial. If nonprofit organizations were to treat staff the same way they do mission delivery, the coming years might mark a healthier and more durable sector—not a talent crisis.”

And, SISR Co-Lead, Flores Vryn talks about how change can be simple in small, everyday decisions, sharing, “Where do we go from here? I don't think the answer lives in another burnout panel or toolkit. I think it lives in something smaller and harder to take stock of. It’s in the everyday choices managers and leaders make. This can be a decision not to scrutinize someone's sick day or, as a board member, to question whether this year's revenue goal is reasonable. We offer this research as a kind of mirror. What will you do with what you see? It’s within that reaction that the real change begins.”

What does this bring up for you? Do you think small, simple changes can help retain your team? To read the full report, (and get snazzy infographics to help back up your case for change!), visit: thenonprofiteers.com/sisr