Organizational Wellness and Community Needs
Insights from Nonprofit Partners from Across California
Community-based organizations are navigating extraordinary complexity. Federal policy shifts, funding uncertainty, heightened community fear and increasing demand for services are reshaping what it takes to sustain organizations and care for staff while remaining deeply accountable to community.
To better understand what nonprofits are experiencing in this moment, Sierra Health Foundation and The Center at Sierra Health Foundation surveyed funded partners across California to understand their organizational wellness and community needs.
The California nonprofit community has shared perspectives that reflect both strain and strength: emotional fatigue alongside resilience, heightened risk alongside deepened mission commitment and increasing community trust alongside limited resources.
What Nonprofits Shared
Across regions, organization sizes and issue areas, partners described common realities and unique circumstances. Together, their insights underscore a central truth: consistent and increased investments from private and public funders are needed in the organizations and people doing the work.
Mission commitment remains strong
Flexible funding matters most
Collaboration is expanding
Sierra Health Foundation and The Center at Sierra Health Foundation are using these learnings to shape grantmaking, nonprofit support and peer funder engagement. We offer them here to support shared learning across the nonprofit and philanthropic field.
Why We Asked: A Perspective from Chet P. Hewitt
Recent federal policy changes affecting immigration enforcement, Medicaid, food assistance, and public funding are not abstract issues for nonprofits. They translate directly into rising demand, increased stress on staff, and greater risk for the communities organizations serve. In this context, philanthropic support plays a critical role in sustaining the nonprofit sector as a core civic infrastructure.
The Organizational Wellness and Community Needs Survey reflects our commitment to listening to nonprofit partners and honoring their experience. What we learned belongs first to them. We are sharing these perspectives in the hope they help the broader charitable sector better understand the conditions nonprofits are operating under—and respond in ways that strengthen both people and organizations.
Our understanding of wellness is broad and practical. It includes financial stability, staff well-being, safety, trust, adaptability and strong community relationships. A nonprofit’s ability to serve is deeply connected to the health of its people and its organizational culture. These insights are an invitation—to listen more closely, partner more deeply and respond more effectively in this challenging moment.
