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Building Inclusive Employee Experiences in the Non-Profit Sector

Tue, 03 Mar 2026 07:03:41 GMT

Building Inclusive Employee Experiences in the Non-Profit Sector

Employee experience encompasses every interaction, policy, and cultural dynamic an employee encounters in your organisation—from recruitment to departure. An inclusive employee experience ensures that every individual feels valued, empowered, and psychologically safe to bring their authentic self to work, so they are more motivated and productive.

It’s easy to assume that not-for-profit organisations with a social mission naturally create inclusive workplaces. In reality, they often face challenges, such as limited budgets, lean teams, and lack of know-how, that make it hard to prioritise inclusion initiatives.

When Inclusion is Neglected

Misalignment Occurs : Employees may feel disconnected if workplace practices don’t reflect the organisation’s mission-driven values.
Burnout Escalates: Members of underrepresented groups often shoulder extra burden. This may show up as needing to explain their experiences, handling microaggressions, or feeling pressure to represent an entire group.
Attrition rises : Talented employees leave when they don’t see a path for growth or belonging.

Creating an Inclusive Employee Experience

Leaders can champion inclusion at every stage of the employee lifecycle, taking into consideration how culture is influenced by ideas, institutions, interactions and individuals. This framework, proposed by Stanford psychologist Hazel Markus, reflects the four key drivers of culture and levers for culture change. Here’s what you can do to create a more inclusive workplace culture:

Attraction and Recruitment: Cast a Wide Net

Review Your Brand: Audit your website, job descriptions, and mission statements. Do they explicitly communicate your commitment to diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI)? Do your photos and stories represent a diverse community?
Expand your Talent Sourcing: Move beyond traditional recruitment channels. Post openings on job boards dedicated to diverse candidates, partner with organisations serving underrepresented communities, for ethnically diverse candidates or for candidates living with disabilities, and encourage employees to refer candidates from diverse backgrounds.
Standardise Assesments: Implement a structured interview process with clear criteria to evaluate all candidates for the same role. This reduces unconscious bias and ensures a fair assessment.
Offer Flexibility: Accommodate different needs of candidates by offering virtual interview options and flexible scheduling. This is especially helpful for people with caregiving responsibilities, disabilities, and full-time jobs.

Onboarding: Set the Tone for Belonging

Confirm DEI Commitments: Ensure you clearly communicate anti-discrimination policies, codes of conduct, and available support resources (e.g, Employee Assistant Programme, mental health benefits such as medical coverage for psychiatric treatment) to employees from their first day on the job.
Assign Peer Mentors: Pair new hires with experienced colleagues who can help them navigate the organisational culture and build connections, ensuring they feel welcomed and supported.
Offer Flexible Work Arrangements: Where possible, offer flexibility in work hours and location, such as remote working or hybrid options. This demonstrates trust and supports employees with diverse needs, from parents to neurodiverse individuals, allowing them to balance work and personal responsibilities.

Development and Growth: Empower Every Voice

Offer Equitable Rewards and Recognition : Audit your reward systems. Are you recognising and promoting only a certain type of work style or background? Implement mechanisms to celebrate contributions that align to your organisation’s values, such as inclusion and teamwork.
Make Learning and Development Accessible: Provide growth opportunities for all. Even in the face of budget constraints, you can get creative, for example, partnering with other non-profits to share training costs, seeking grants for professional development, or bartering services for training access.
Provide Inclusive Benefits: Check your compensation and benefits for equity gaps. Does your health insurance cover domestic partners and mental health services? Do your parental leave policies support all parents?
Meaure Employee Engagement: Regularly use anonymous quick pulse and more comprehensive engagement surveys to assess the employee experience in your organisation. Share the findings and, most importantly, be seen to act on employee feedback.

Offboarding: Part as Allies

Conduct Meaningful Exit Interviews: Treat exit interviews as a critical learning opportunity. Ask candid questions, including questions about the individual’s experience with inclusion and psychological safety. Ensure confidentiality to get honest feedback.
Act on Feedback: Use the insights from exit interviews to identify systemic issues and address them. This demonstrates that employee feedback leads to real change.
Stay Connected: Invite departing employees to stay connected as alumni, through newsletters, social media and/or in-person events. This turns former employees into lifelong ambassadors for your mission, extending your community and impact.

By: Michael Chan, Responsible Business Lead, Johnson Stokes and Master

Navigating the Transition from Nonprofit Founder to Chief Executive Officer Led Organisation

paola.carrillo@connectedgroup.com (Paola Carrillo) — Sat, 21 Sep 2024 04:12:40 GMT

At ConnectedGroup, we have engaged multiple founders who, due to different reasons, have made the decision to hand their organisation over to new leadership. We have learnt this transition can come as a challenging yet pivotal moment in the journey, and it requires careful navigation to ensure continuity, as well as unhindered growth and progress.

Given the challenges, and both successful and less impactful examples that we have encountered, we are sharing our insights (that could be used as a guide) for both the founder, the board, and the incoming CEO, on how to manage this transition smoothly.

To the Founder:

1. Stepping back from day-to-day operations and specially from decision making will be difficult and emotional. It’s important for you to prepare mentally and emotionally, focus on the long-term benefits of bringing in new leadership for organisational growth (go back to when you started thinking about this transition, hold on to the reasons that took you to making this decision). It is easy to dream about the upsides but, you will need to prepare yourself for a journey with numerous obstacles to overcome. Remember, you have created this organisation, and you want to see it last and thrive, with or without you. That legacy will be your greatest achievement.

2. Work closely with your board to define the role (Ensure the Board’s full commitment to this process. A healthy succession process involves more board time than usual), be clear about what you want this new person to achieve and where their authority will begin and end. If you are planning to still be involved in the organisation, state how your new role will operate and ensure an effective transition plan to migrate to this new position step by step.

3. Prepare formally, and in detail, for when the time to hand over the organisation comes. Document your processes, data, contacts, and important information. This will facilitate the transition and will ensure that data is preserved, and critical information is not lost in the process. This will help your incoming CEO to find their way into the organisation and limit the amount of base level questions.

4. Take the time to work on a recruitment plan. According to the Stanford Social Innovation Review, leadership in the sector is scarce, searches for chief executive officers often turn up only one to three qualified candidates, compared to four to six in comparable private sector positions. As you plan, think of questions critical to your organisation and your mission, consider your current organisational situation and the challenges this person should tackle and overcome, and define the strengths the incoming CEO should possess.

5. Ensure your Board and/or Advisors are fully onboard in this process and agree a clear methodology that ensures you are assessing candidates against the same criteria and goals. It often helps to agree a scoring system against the key competencies to provide a rational comparison. Don’t be led by personality fit alone – focus clearly on the goals you highlighted and the person’s ability to meet those goals.

6. Once you have chosen the right candidate to join the organisation, make sure to create a supportive and empowering environment for them. Avoid the ‘ Founder’s Syndrome ’, come to terms with the fact they are not you, and will likely act and make decisions differently, and that different is not necessarily wrong. Offer ongoing support without micromanaging, or failing to relinquish power, provide the space for them to lead and make decisions independently, but remain to be available for advice and guidance if needed. Ensure the board is equipped and empowered to directly support the candidate in this transition.

7. Plan a structured handover period, provide opportunities for the CEO to meet the team, stakeholders, understand ongoing projects, and familiarize themselves with the organisation's operations. Be open about your decision, publicly support your new CEO to inspire confidence and continuity within the organisation (introduce them to your major donors, partners, and community to help grow and establish relationships – give them access to your network) – this will slowly build trust between you. As BoardSource states, in order for a transition to be successful, both internally and externally, good communication is paramount.

8. Research conducted by Standford Social Innovation Review found that 45% of boards work out a continuing role for their outgoing founders. Handing over the organisation to a new CEO doesn’t mean you need to completely disappear. Consider transitioning to a strategic advisory role within the organisation, but make sure to make this a platform from where you can continue to contribute, and not a place from where you’ll remove the CEO’s freedom to lead.

9. As your new CEO starts to take on the reigns of the organisation, support their initiatives for innovation and change. Recognize and celebrate milestones and successes under their new leadership and serve as an advisor if some decisions inevitably don’t go as planned.

To the Incoming CEO:

1. Before you even decide on whether to accept the position or not, ensure that you deeply understand the organisational mission, vision, values, and impact. Make sure these values and interests are aligned with yours, and that you share the same passion to serve that group of beneficiaries . Passion for what you do, and the impact you have, will be one of your key drivers to fulfilment and ultimate success.

2. Do your homework. Take the time to learn about the organisation (Who is your founder? Why did they decide to start the organisation in the first place?), go through the organisational mission, culture, values, and history - again. Learn about your immediate environment, other similar organisations and key stakeholders. Meet those stakeholders, staff members, and volunteers to grasp their perspectives and insights. The more you know, the better equipped you will be to take on the role.

3. Understand that the founder will likely be having an emotional time handing the organisation over to you. Respect their emotions and vision while bringing your unique style and ideas to push the organisation forward. Don’t let push backs discourage you, don’t take it personally, communication will be key at the time of facing challenges.

4. Establishing trust is critical. Engage with the founder, board members, and staff openly and respectfully. Listen actively to understand their vision, concerns, and expectations. As you listen to their concerns and expectations, conduct a full assessment of the organisation's operations, finances, programs, and challenges. Develop a strategic plan aligned with the mission while using the data you have gathered in addition to adding fresh perspectives and innovative ideas.

5. If you have been chosen as the person to lead the organisation in this new chapter, you are likely bringing skills and knowledge that are required at this point in time. Don’t feel the need to replicate what the Founder has done or even become like them; it will be an impossible task to achieve. Work on building on the foundation that has been given to you and add value through your knowledge and experience.

6. Your opinion matters. If you feel you are not being heard, be assertive, constructively critical, and give tactical solutions. Raise your concerns in a timely and respectful manner. Remember, this is a process (sometimes a difficult one), and setbacks are normal and expected.

7. Communication (again) will be key to your own and the organisation’s success. To build trust, encourage open and transparent communication at all levels. Keep stakeholders informed about your vision, plans, and decisions. Build relationships with the staff, volunteers, board members as well as the founder.

8. Gear up with strength and determination, the journey won’t be easy. A Mckinsey & Company article noted that, as demonstrated through academic research, traits such as drive, resilience, and risk tolerance make CEOs more successful.

Transitioning from founder to CEO marks a significant milestone in the evolution of a not-for-profit organisation. Although this rarely comes as an easy, stress-free process, if all parties are accepting of change, promote communication and collaboration, respect the organisational mission, and set healthy boundaries, then both CEO and founder will have a greater chance of ensuring a successful transition. This will set the stage for continued impact and growth.

If you are a founder thinking of handing your organisation over to a senior leader, or a senior leader who has taken over an organisation, and would like to have a conversation about this, contact us at info@recruit4good.com

In addition to the reference sources quoted in this article – we also found ‘ Making Founder Successions Work ’ to be an insightful work.

By Paola Carrillo

Making the Transition from Corporate to Not-For-Profit in Hong Kong

mat@connectedgroup.com (Mat Gollop) — Tue, 18 Jun 2024 11:02:25 GMT

Making the Transition from Corporate to Not-For-Profit in Hong Kong

Our social purpose at ConnectedGroup has led us to speak with many individuals in the ‘third sector’ covering semi-government funded institutions, societies, professional bodies, charities and social enterprises. These conversations and insights from both employers and jobseekers alike have informed our opinion on how to best make the transition from a corporate career into one with a more deeply defined social impact. It’s a question we are asked on a regular basis, so we wanted to put our thoughts in writing.

In this article we look at the considerations, misconceptions, and available resources to enable someone considering this move to make the most informed choices. Whilst our commentary is specific to the Hong Kong market, many of the elements are transferrable.

Your 'Why?'

The first factor to determine is, what is driving you to make this decision? We have been approached by candidates who identify issues such as ‘I want more work/life balance’, or ‘I want to work with less politics and/or bureaucracy’. We gently steer these candidates away from a sector where resources tend to be short, missions become all-consuming, and complex stakeholder management is standard.

Instead, it is best to start with what causes you are passionate about and then identify where your skills and experience will have the greatest impact. From here you should go in ‘eyes open’, understanding that you will work hard, often with limited budgets and supporting headcount, but that the impact in your chosen area will offer the reward and sense of purpose that the corporate sector can fail to supply.

Different causes will require different skills in varying contexts and so, asking yourself as to whether you want to work with children, the elderly, animals, the environment, on housing issues, healthcare, education etc. will be a good foundation from which to explore your options.

The Financial Compromise

Once you have defined your drivers, you will need to understand the financial reality of working in this sector. There is a reason why there are higher numbers of early career contributors who migrate to corporate after a few years and later career transitioners who come back the other way. Unfortunately, as a rule, doing good pays less. Therefore, it is common to see people either do it before their costs or saving demands start to grow or, wait until they are financially stable and then make the move.

Within the charitable not-for-profit ecosystem, if we oversimplify, there are two ends of the philanthropic spectrum, giving and spending.

At the giving end are the foundations, family offices and corporate philanthropy units who issue grants and donations. The largest example in Hong Kong is the Charities Trust at the Hong Kong Jockey Club. At the time of writing, they give more than the Gates Foundation and only have plans to increase their impact. At the spending end are the charities whose programs, resource management, interventions and advocacy are where the action happens.

The foundations will tend to offer more generous compensation that can include bonuses. Their focus is on measuring the impact of the money they donate, based around whatever their strategic goals are, and they generally don’t need do any additional fundraising. The charities on the front line however must work at both raising funds and delivering programs. They are judged on the percentage of each dollar that delivers impact and, consequently, salaries are lower, and bonuses are uncommon. It is worth noting that the term ‘foundation’ in the name, doesn’t guarantee that the organisation operates as a grant giving operation.

Larger charities will have bigger budgets to may better salaries and (potentially) other benefits however, roles within these entities hold a higher likelihood of requiring you to have existing non-profit experience before entering.

There are other organisations that don’t fall neatly into these categories, such as academic institutions (who also do their own fundraising) and professional membership associations, but this article is more focused on the ‘giving to spending’ element that we have outlined.

Before you invest time and resources (on both sides) into a long interview process, make sure that you have benchmarked and understood the budget. With this as a common issue, it should be easier to raise earlier in the process than when moving to another corporate. You can also ask a specialist recruiter like us or, speak to other people in the sector.

The Purpose Payoff

When thinking about where you want to apply your talents, consider what type of work will provide you with the greatest sense of purpose and achievement.

At the foundation end of the spectrum, you will be removed from the day-to-day operations of a charity. Your influence may be more diffuse, and your view of the impact will be measured more in metrics and financials. It will however likely be at a much bigger scope and scale. It’s important to note that some foundations will be more deeply involved from creation to delivery than others.

At the grass-roots level, you can see the direct outcomes. Removing someone from a homeless situation, providing services to under-privileged children, caring for the elderly, or being involved in animal rescue will of course help you experience positive change in real time. It is also important to consider that there are some emotionally challenging elements to this type of work, and you need to ensure that you are equipped to handle these as well. To extend this, the nature of ‘impact’ isn’t always as clear as in the commercial world. Financial indicators can offer a simpler visual cue to monitor progress but the extent of impact on people is often harder to define and longer to materialize.

In between are other causes that will still take time to deliver results. Systemic change is a long game, particularly when you increase the geographic scale and complexity. Modern day slavery is a good example of this. Environmental impact causes also slow to deliver progress at any scale when trying to influence policy. Any form of advocacy/lobbying work that requires government action will always take time to work through the appropriate channels. However, results can come significantly faster if the government is driving initiatives via NGO run programmes.

Having a clear view from the outset of exactly what type of purpose will drive you most effectively will give you the best chance of a sustainable and meaningful career in the sector.

The Transition

The best way of gaining insights and understanding before making the move to the charitable field is to volunteer. You can do this in three ways.

1. Get out on the front line. By giving your time to support front-line activities, you can get a real sense of what an organisation is trying to achieve. You can do this directly or via other channels which we have listed in our resource section.

2. Donate your professional skills. Charities are often under-resourced and need support in areas such as technology, marketing, finance, strategy, and planning. Sometimes called ‘strategic volunteers’, these roles may be advertised directly or can be directed through capacity building organisations or via corporate enablement platforms (listed later). This type of work can come in 2 forms – 1 in a more advisory capacity to support internal initiatives or 2, in the form of leading/driving an initiative and these projects require chunks of committed time.

3. Become a board member. Depending on your strengths, you may be able to volunteer your time and insights on a board or committee. These are not necessarily simple to join but, a well-run board will have clear ideas about the skills and experience that will add value and you can look for alignment. This is a fantastic way to understand how charities run and the challenges they face. It can also prepare you for working with boards as an Executive Director/CEO which those moving from corporate roles will likely have had less direct exposure to. Of the 3 options outlined here, this route requires the most commitment over the longer term and so, cause alignment is again critical. See the resources section for links to board training resources.

As we have mentioned, charitable organisations are resource short and so, the lost productivity from the recruitment of candidates who haven’t fully thought through the transition is significant. Making sure you have spent time fully exploring the potential move is also a commitment to the cause you are thinking of supporting.

Skill Transfer

Our final piece of insight before providing some resources is into how your corporate skills might best translate into the social sector. This guide is high level but should help provide some general direction on a function-to-function basis. It is better to think about what skills you have concrete evidence of having delivered that you can leverage, rather than just your future potential (because this will be the likely foundation of any assessment process):

Resources

To support the planning of your move, here are some resources that might be useful. A list of all registered section 88 charities and a more user-friendly directory via the Foundation for Shared Impact can help you target organisations that are cause aligned.

Volunteering

Social Career is a good website that connects volunteers with opportunities
Asian Charity Services is a capacity building organisation that looks for volunteers to give their professional skills and insights to assist NGOs to develop
HandsOn Hong Kong is an NGO that promotes and runs 200 volunteer activities a month, supporting a wide range of causes
Time Auction is a platform that can connect you as an individual with volunteering opportunities as well as helping corporates engage their staff in meaningful and measurable activities
We launched ConnectedTalent in May 2024 to candidates looking for Board & Advisory roles and this talent pool will be accessible (for free) to the not-for-profit community in Hong Kong.

Permanent Opportunities

We identified that whilst the job boards will advertise not-for-profit roles, the sector did not find this a useful way of identifying candidates who were fully focused on an NGO career. As a result, we launched www.Recruit4Good.com – a free resource to the not-for-profit community and one where you can set up alerts to identify interesting roles.
It is also worth searching for organisations that sit within your passion/purpose target and checking their career pages.

Board Training

The Foundation for Shared Impact provide a wealth of information and insight for social impact driven organisations. This includes Board Director Training and they also produced a recent piece on Stakeholder Management which is useful context.
Also well regarded is the FT Board Director Programme that is run from both the UK and Hong Kong.
Hong Kong Exchanges & Clearing have some online resources – at the time of writing they are a little dated but still broadly relevant.

If you would like to list your resources here, please contact info@recruit4good.com

Reading List

Leaving Microsoft to Change the World & Purpose Incorporated by John Wood
Good to Great and the Social Sectors by Jim Collins
Give & Take by Adam Grant
The Purpose Economy by Aaron Hurst
Let My People Go Surfing by Yvon Chouinard
Humanizing the Economy by John Restakis
The Book of Hope by Jane Goodall
IKIGAI by Hector Garcia and Francesc Miralles

Salary Survey Terms

Fri, 30 Jun 2023 08:01:07 GMT

Salary Survey Terms of Engagement

Terms of Agreement

Proposal of Participation in Salary Survey
Hong Kong

Dear Participant,

At ConnectedGroup , via our Recruit4Good initiative, we aim to collect and analyse compensation data within the not-for-profit sector in Hong Kong, to develop an understanding of prevailing compensation rates and benefits.

Scope of Work - Objectives
Through data gathering and analysis, our survey will help you to benchmark your employees´ salaries against the industry average, and to ensure that your compensation packages remain competitive. This will allow for you to make informed decisions relying on accurate and up-to-date data. By agreeing to participate via e-mail, you agree to these terms and within a period of 2-3 months a report will be generated with the conclusions to our findings.

Fees and Charges

All participants will receive a free copy of the survey report once it is completed. There are no costs to participants.

Terms and Conditions of the Survey

By completing the survey, you will provide us with some general background information that will help us identify the nature and size of your organization, number of staff and fundraising capabilities.
You will provide us with your employees´ salary data, including base salary and bonus.
All data provided will be kept strictly confidential and will be used solely for the purpose of this survey, results will be shared amongst participants in the form of an aggregated report.
The deadline for submitting data is started in the invitation e-mail. Late submissions will not be accepted.
We understand the information provided may be sensitive. Participation in this survey is voluntary, but we encourage you to participate in order to gain valuable insights into the non-for-profit market in Hong Kong.

Legal Clauses / How Do We Get Started?

By sharing the name, contact number and email of your representative in response to our invitation, you acknowledge reading these terms and agreeing that ConnectedGroup Ltd can collect, process, use, and store the information provided via the survey with the aim to deliver an aggregated salary survey report.