576. Mental Health Week: Transforming Paid Leave in Nonprofits + Creating Sustainable Work Models for Wellness - Lacey Kempinski

Meet Lacey. As the founder of Balanced Good, she turned her challenges with postpartum depression and anxiety into a powerful mission to reshape parental leave in the nonprofit sector. As a mom of three, she gets how challenging it can be to build a career as a leader in the nonprofit sector while balancing the demands of parenthood💼👶 A sustainable work model isn't just good for people; it's good for business. Tune in to explore how organizations can prioritize wellness, create realistic workloads, and normalize taking breaks to combat burnout.

💡 Learn

• The state of paid leave in the nonprofit sector
• The importance of sustainable work models 
• How to advocate for paid leave

Today's Guest
Lacey Kempinski, Founder + CEO, Balanced Good

Episode Highlights

• Lacey’s story and journey to where she is today (3:55)
• State of paid leave in the nonprofit and impact sectors (6:50)
• Impact of paid leave (9:25)
• Advocating for paid leave (17:00)
• Building a parental leave plan in a day (19:45)
• Activation (22:50)
• A powerful moment of philanthropy (24:05)
• Lacey’s One Good Thing: Give yourself grace and give others grace. (26:05)
• How to connect with Lacey + Balanced Good (27:20)

For more information + episode details visit: weareforgood.com/episode/576.

This episode is part of our Mental Health Week series. Explore all the episodes, find resources + more at weareforgood.com/mentalhealth.

Chapters

• 0:01 Balancing Work and Parenthood in Nonprofits
• 5:20 Paid Leave in Nonprofits
• 12:28 Creating Sustainable Work Models for Wellness
• 22:31 Promoting Grace and Presence at Work
• 26:52 Connecting With Balance for Parental Planning

Transcript

Speaker 1: 0:01

Hey, I'm John.

Speaker 2: 0:02

And I'm Becky.

Speaker 1: 0:03

And this is the we Are For Good podcast.

Speaker 2: 0:06

Nonprofits are faced with more challenges to accomplish their missions and the growing pressure to do more, raise more and be more for the causes that improve our world.

Speaker 1: 0:15

We're here to learn with you from some of the best in the industry, bringing the most innovative ideas, inspirational stories, all to create an impact uprising.

Speaker 2: 0:23

So welcome to the good community. We're nonprofit professionals, philanthropists, world changers and rabid fans who are striving to bring a little more goodness into the world.

Speaker 1: 0:34

So let's get started, becky, what's happening?

Speaker 2: 0:38

Hey, john got a friend in the house today.

Speaker 1: 0:41

Yeah, I mean we had been trying to get Lacey on the podcast and, let's be clear, this was our fault.

Speaker 1: 0:45

but not hers Like we've been wanting her to be on the podcast for like a year and a half, since we first met her, because, my friends, you're here on mental health week. We're talking about taking care of ourselves, and Lacey is one of those people that are wired to just show up with care. And she's not only doing this for people, she's doing this for people even in our community. And that's when we first met Lacey. We were at a conference in New Orleans and she was actually covering, you know, stepping in during a paid leave for Evan Wildstein in our community. Right, evan has been pouring into this place. He was a new parent and she was able to connect the dots for him, and that's just one of the pieces of why I love her story so much. But she just comes to this sector with a perspective that what can be opened up. I love this quote that she says I want parental leaves to be a celebrated life milestone and not a feared employment gap. Are we getting called out on our scarcity mindset? This runs through so many of us, the way that we think about this. But I want to tell you a little bit about Lacey, because we're going to talk about paid leave today. We're going to talk about helping women and parents find balance and we're just going to talk about how can this maybe help us power more good as a result of that?

Speaker 1: 1:55

So Lacey is the founder of Balanced Good Good naming, by the way, from your branding friend across the street over here, definitely. Across the street over here, definitely. She is a mom of three. She gets how challenging it can be to build a career as a leader in the charitable sector, also balancing the demands of parenthood something that Becky and I riff about all the time.

Speaker 1: 2:12

But you know, balance Kit was originally established to help her find some semblance of balance and now, with more than a decade of experience in progressive nonprofit fundraising work, she prides herself in creating strategic, authentic relationships with the organizations she's championing as well as their donors. So she really serves in this space of like, providing this bridge of talent and support to organizations so parents can be freed up to go and be fully present with their newborn. So Lacey's passion in the social profit sector is coupled with her previous in-house experience and her motherhood journey and she's really created a passion and motivation to truly rethink how we tackle parental leaves in this space. Lacey, we are so delighted to have you on the podcast. Welcome, my friend.

Speaker 3: 2:54

Thank you. I'm so thrilled to be here and to be chatting with you, with people who get it right, like instantly when we met. You got what I was doing, you got what Balance Good was doing, and so I'm just thrilled to be here to chat with you and the we Are For Good community.

Speaker 1: 3:10

I love that you're bringing me back, because I remember when I came to realization who you were. I'd heard about you but I didn't know. You know that you were going to even be there that day and I was like you're here. Thank you for what you're doing, like you're helping our friend. Yeah, totally.

Speaker 1: 3:25

So, it really is beautiful, would you? You know? We want to get to know you. Uh, for everyone listening today, take us back to a little bit of your story. Maybe some formative experiences growing up that made you wired to want to do this work.

Speaker 3: 3:47

Ooh, I like that question. For me, my my journey into this career path was deeply personal and rooted in my experience to becoming a mom. I think so many entrepreneurs can relate to this, but my path to motherhood wasn't easy, and my experience in parenthood was also not easy. I struggled a lot with postpartum depression, postpartum anxiety, as well as perinatal OCD. I didn't even know that was a thing until it happened, and so through all of my experiences with that, combined with this like innate desire to want to do good, I realized that I couldn't be the do-gooder that I wanted to be and the mom that I wanted to be in the traditional social impact space, just in the confines of how we work, with the long hours, with this like feeling of martyrdom or expectation of martyrdom, with compassion, fatigue, and just like the high levels of burnout and turnover in our sector.

Speaker 3: 4:41

So I can't I can't keep doing both things. So after my second son, I started Balance Good, and then, funny enough, and I think it's really important to know so, after I started Balance Good, a year into it, I got pregnant with my third child, my daughter, and that was the best postpartum experience I had ever had, because I didn't have to disassociate who I was as a professional and who I was as a mom. It became one right, and so I was healthier, I was happier and I was more productive. It was dreamy, especially after having the first two parental leaves that were challenging, especially in the mental health space.

Speaker 2: 5:20

I'm so glad we're having this conversation, lacey. I love that you're coming into it with this lived experience and thank you for saying this does not work at all for me and I'm guessing it doesn't work for so many others out there, because we've been having this paid leave conversation. I remember when we had it first with Orly Cortell, who was working on yeah, she was working with PLUS. She was the paid leave for the United States. She was a senior advisor really trying to push that legislation forward.

Speaker 2: 5:52

And, for those who are not aware, the United States is one of the few developed countries that does not guarantee federally mandated paid leave and I want to say that the recent stats you can probably give them to us I mean it's like less than 30% of the private workforce has paid leave and it's disproportionately affecting people who earn hourly wages who likely need the rest more than anyone else. So can you kind of just set table stakes for us here, talk about where we are right now, like share some stats, if you have them, about the state of paid leave in the nonprofit and impact sectors? We would love to hear about it.

Speaker 3: 6:34

Yeah, thanks for bringing this up, and I want to preface this with sharing that I am Canadian. So, being Canadian, I have certain privileges when it comes to paid leave and I'm happy and I want to dive into that because it's kind of this like eye opening. This is what could be. So we have 12 to 18 months of paid leave and we're paid 55 percent of our salary and then oh my gosh.

Speaker 2: 6:57

That is so shocking to us.

Speaker 3: 6:59

It's game changer. Right, it really is.

Speaker 1: 7:01

And who is paying for that Lacey? So the federal government? Right, it really is. Who is paying for that Lacey? So the government, the federal government, yeah, yeah.

Speaker 3: 7:06

So. And then in some cases, nonprofits, especially the larger ones. We see that they're providing salary top up, so say, to up to 80 percent of the salary for the first six months of leave, right, so there's some flexibility there and we are doing some work in that space to advocate for more top up. On top of this, fathers or the secondary parent can also take five to eight additional weeks of coverage, or the birthing parent and the non-birthing parent can share the 18 months. So it can be split up, depending on who wants what and how that works for your family, depending on who wants what and how that works for your family, the flexibility, the kindness of the flexibility is such a benefit.

Speaker 3: 7:51

Yeah, it's incredible, right. And so that does come with its own challenges, right. So now we have 12 to 18 month employment gaps in teams. There's a lot of concern among women and parents around what does my career progression look like if I step away for 12 to 18 months. So there's always nuances, there's always challenges, right. But I mean and you all are probably more of an expert than I am and I don't want to come off that I'm an expert in the US space but it's totally different, right, you have up to 12 weeks of unpaid leave through FMLA, and that's only for the legal or birthing parents. So if you're adopting, fostering, this is a whole different can of worms, right. And then there's nuances between different states. You know, like you look at California, who does now have paid parental leave, but there's a lot of kind of backdoor things you need to know to access the full paid portion of your leave. Like, nothing is easy, nothing is straightforward and nothing is simple. And when I'm talking to my friends in the States, they're like, wow, you're so lucky, right. But I want to take a breath and then I want to dive into how this impacts our social impact sector, because I think that's what's really important, right, we can say, you know paid leave and not paid leave, but how does this impact our sector? So in Canada and bear with me because I'm going to throw down some numbers, but I think they're important In Canada, and bear with me because I'm going to throw down some numbers, but I think they're important.

Speaker 3: 9:26

So in Canada, our sector employs two and a half million people. Seventy seven percent of that are women, and there's persistent racial and gender equity gaps too, and I just want to call that out. And seventy nine percent of mothers in Canada work. So with my math that I think can be trusted, that's about one and a half million women in the Canadian nonprofit sector who are working moms. Right, and then flip that to the States, we have one in 10 jobs are in the nonprofit sector. 75%, or 9.2 million, women work in the sector. 71% of mothers in the US are working mothers. So that's six and a half million women in the American nonprofit sector are working moms.

Speaker 2: 10:13

Wow, sector are working moms, wow, yeah, I'm feeling it Like.

Speaker 2: 10:16

I'm feeling all of the exhaustion, all of the spinning of all the plates and and I want to be clear like we're talking about like maternity leave, but it's I mean, paid leave is beyond just maternity leave. We're talking about caregiver leave. We're talking about you were talking about short-term disability, something I took when I had a nervous breakdown, and I just am so glad we're starting to normalize having these conversations and pushing for that, which is a human right, which I very much think paid leave is. So keep going, lacey, you're doing great Thanks.

Speaker 3: 10:52

Yeah. So I think, like those are the key statistics I really want to highlight in terms of this, right. So, and then we we need to layer on things like the motherhood penalty and where moms and primary parents because it's not just moms if it's a same sex couple, but that primary parent that is, you know, maybe not the breadwinner that's stepping back to play some more roles in parental leave are actually taking steps back in their career, putting their career on hold and are penalized for these things. And when we're in a sector when we have the sector of giving and caring and kindness and compassion, we often have people who are caregivers in these roles. So now they're caregivers at home and their roles at work, and that's just a recipe for burnout. So how do we do better? Right, and that's what drives me every day.

Speaker 1: 11:44

I mean, I think it plays into something that we feel really passionate about is just talking about a conversation about wellness. You know it's beyond any of these categories, but it's the intersection of all of that and I wonder you know how you think about this conversation about wellness, specifically in the nonprofit space? How does your role at balance good play into that and how did it, you know, come about as you kind of figured out? How can I show up and start to write some of these wrongs?

Speaker 3: 12:12

Yeah, totally. I think I love this question and even at Balance Good, like internally as our team, we're always questioning does this inspire wellness? Does this support wellness? Does our culture actually live the values we're saying out loud, right?

Speaker 3: 12:28

I was really touched by your recent podcast with Laura Buckley, who talks a lot about wellness in the workplace. So if listeners haven't listened to that, I would encourage them to listen, because there's so many tangible takeaways, just even simple things like 25 minute meetings instead of 30 to give yourself a five minute break, right. There's so many tangible takeaways in that podcast that I don't want to repeat, but I really want to just talk about how full our plates are and how we need to create space. Right, we are always continually pushed to add more and more and more. But what if we could create sustainable work models that focus on highest return on delivery and highest return on investment related to fundraising or program deliverables, versus just adding and adding and adding? Right what is actually working? And looking at that? So when I think about wellness and when I think about creating a culture of wellness, I think about, first and foremost, creating sustainable and realistic workloads for our teams. Boom.

Speaker 2: 13:34

Yeah, that starts there, we're coming back to capacity always, and I mean there's a point where you just cannot keep piling on top. I think and I say that across the sector how many of us have been in organizations who had a really big stretch goal on a campaign or a project and somebody just keeps moving it up every single year more and more? Or we keep adding, you know, job duties and it's like at some point we have to normalize the pause, we have to normalize the rest and I touched on this just briefly and I'd love for you to go just a little bit deeper that this isn't just parental leave. We're all dealing with a myriad of things that come into our lives, like mental health leave, caregiver leave, short-term leave, Like all of this. Taking this leave is going to reduce burnout, overwhelm and turnover in the sector. So can you talk more about these different kinds of leaves and how you all are kind of coming in to wrap around and provide some support in them?

Speaker 3: 14:56

people holistically. So we're looking at people as parents or as caregivers or as pet parents. Just that, whatever you have in life beyond work is equally as valuable or more valuable than what you're contributing to your work and your sector. So to me that is so important. So, when we take this holistic approach, we're ensuring people are supported both in work and outside of work, which means they're going to show up to work more productive, happier. They're going to drive things forward. Right, if they're seen as a whole person, and so if somebody has to step away from work, one of the most valuable things you can do is fill that gap, so then they're not coming back to work. That's been ignored, or you're not setting this tone that we actually can do this work without you. Right? You're saying to your team, your team member, you're valued, we need you, you're helping us drive our mission forward. So, while you focus on yourself, we'll support your role, and I think that that's so, so powerful will support your role, and I think that that's so, so powerful, it's so good.

Speaker 1: 15:57

I mean, it makes me think you know, no-transcript. One of those was retention is an inside job. We feel like a lot of people are leaving the sector and we're not paying attention to how are we keeping our own staff? And I think that mindset that you just shared there of like allowing people the freedom and the stepping into the agency that they already have but maybe don't realize you've got of like your priority is yourself first, and how has that become normalized? So I want to talk about how do we actually advocate for this, Because people listening today you may have already had it in your head of like man, that'd be nice, or I would love to have that reality. What does it look like to advocate for paid leave and what are some strategies that have been successful you've seen for folks that are kind of curious about this?

Speaker 3: 16:45

So I think there's a couple pieces and I'm going to start high level and then go down high level. First and foremost, vote right, like 100%. You need to vote, you need to put your, your stake in the game here. Then I would say there's a lot of organizations doing really great work around parental leave. So I'm just pulling up my list here around advocating for paid leave in the States. So Chamber of Mothers, Mums First, US, the Mum Project, and then there's a Park Consulting and that's California based but helps navigate.

Speaker 3: 17:19

Here's how you can get the most out of your paid leave. So just really want to shout those organizations out because they're doing advocacy work in this space and they're incredible From you know, and advocating on your own like I've had a lot of conversations with US-based nonprofits and how do we get Balance Good or anyone to support your leave. So you can, you know and this is on like a micro scale if we can help one person at a time, we're going to impact some change, right? So you know, I often talk about the cost of turnover, the cost of retention, the value of retention. Right, it's going to cost you way more to recruit a new person if this person doesn't come back Because, anecdotally, most people use their leave to look for a new job because they don't want to go back to a role that hasn't picked up the slack of the work that they should have been doing.

Speaker 3: 18:13

So now they're coming back to more work, Right? So you know, when we've been able to work with clients, we see 100 percent return to work rate, like so far, and that's incredible, right? It's because people feel valued. We not only do we provide this wrap up report to them about how the things we've done for your job and your role, but we actually send recommendations to the employer on how can we make this role more supportive for working parents. And so that's doing the things like focusing on high ROI activities, getting rid of the fluff, getting rid of all of these internal meetings that actually aren't needed and letting the person do their work.

Speaker 2: 18:55

Can we please normalize that as well?

Speaker 1: 18:57

I was like we got a lot of claps happening around that.

Speaker 2: 19:00

Yes, except for I think we tend to put a lot of meetings on our calendar too, or we start at Google Docs. So yes, I want to recognize that those things happen. But I do think that there are much better ways and you actually have this really interesting exercise where you help leaders build their parental lead plans in a day, and I'm wondering if you could like give us a high level overview of this exercise and kind of walk our listeners through it.

Speaker 3: 19:27

Thank you, yeah, I love chatting about this because I think it's something that I hope can really tangibly help my friends in the States, because when it's a shorter leave, maybe they're not going to backfill that role. But how can we be a bit more intentional about the planning process to support the work, so nobody's feeling like they're going back to work with weight all on their shoulders immediately? Support the work so nobody's feeling like they're going back to work with weight all on their shoulders immediately. So what we do is we sit down and we really try to map out this plan, this roadmap. So what are the tasks that need to happen, what are the deadlines, what are the relationships that need to be maintained, what are the relationships that are special to you in your role that you want us to make sure we, you know, make sure we're doing touch points with.

Speaker 3: 20:10

What are some internal pieces that we need to be aware of? You know, what are projects that are really near and dear to your heart that you would hate to see dropped right. So we talk through all of those things and then we create really this week by week, month by month work plan of all the things that need to happen. And then if the organization isn't backfilling the parental leave gap so the six weeks, the I hope it's more than that the 12 weeks, the, whatever it is then we can say, okay, internally who needs to do this and what can come off their plate. So it's almost like we're putting together this new puzzle to support the team around the working parent, because the last thing you want is team members to be resentful that now they have all this work on their plate because somebody went on parental leave.

Speaker 2: 20:57

Yeah, and if there's a co-build, it feels like everyone has ownership, everyone has accountability. And then the next time I want to go out, I mean the reciprocity of people standing in the gap for me just feel like a natural culture build.

Speaker 2: 21:12

And this, this just feels so much better to me.

Speaker 2: 21:15

I'm going to share just a quick story that I got, I want to say, four weeks leave with my first, with my first child, and I remember that I knew that ahead of time, and so I was banking and saving my PTO and my vacation the year before, and when you think about it, it's like this is, I remember, thinking this is so bass-ackwards, like the fact that I'm not going to rest at all or take any break before this child comes.

Speaker 2: 21:47

I'm going to bank it all for when she arrives and then I'm going to have nothing for the year after that, and so it's like there's two years gone of rest for me. This is not right. I remember in my 30-year-old brain going this is backwards, and so I just really appreciate having this conversation and making sure that, friends, that this is not just a conversation, that we are truly starting to activate around the change that we want to see. So I mean, lacey, I just want to like pitch it to you and say if there's one thing that this community could activate around to get the needle to start to move a little bit on this topic, what would be the thing that they could activate around?

Speaker 3: 22:31

That's hard because there's a lot of things that I think it's just starting to have transparent conversations and unfortunately or fortunately, however you view it how our sector is set up, we need to have those conversations at the board level. We need to be talking to our board members about the need for parental leave and the damage it's doing to not just our staff but our mission, and if we can tie it to mission, I think board members are going to start listening.

Speaker 1: 23:00

Yeah, I think there's a lot of hooks that it can tie back to. I mean, we've already talked about retention, but it's such a relational built you know, organization and business. It's like that continuity is like so important to your ability to succeed. So keeping people well is smart business as alongside of the right thing to do you know, so I think that's a beautiful way to start.

Speaker 1: 23:22

So I mean your perch puts you, you know, working with organizations really close. I mean your career you were in a nonprofit as well. So I'm curious about you know, we always ask about story on this podcast and how philanthropy creates these moments that we go back to. I mean it could be a moment of kindness or generosity and I just want to kind of volley it to you to say what's a moment of philanthropy that has really stuck with you on this journey that you go back to.

Speaker 3: 23:49

Yeah, I think it's not only a moment of philanthropy when I think about this, but it's a moment that totally changed my perspective on philanthropy, coming from an in-house fundraiser to this experience.

Speaker 3: 23:58

So I had recently started Balanced Good and I was working for an incredible social enterprise called the Raw Carrot, and so what they do is they provide meaningful employment for individuals who live with mental, physical or developmental disabilities, and so these individuals incredible, amazing people make amazing gourmet soup, and so I was always bringing the soup home.

Speaker 3: 24:24

I was always talking about the work and I was always very intentional about bringing my son to see the mission in action when I could. So the one day I was making dinner and I look back and my oldest son, pete he was three at the time he comes into the kitchen and he's bringing all of the his plastic food, toys and all of that, and then I hear him huffing and puffing and grunting and groaning and he's hauling out my big soup pot and then he starts tossing in all of his ingredients and stirring and stirring and I'm like, hey, bud, what are you doing? He's like I'm making soup to help the people and like, in that moment I was like this is why I'm doing it and it's just a small like philanthropy doesn't have to be on this grand scale, it's you can do something to make an impact. And I think it was just like he gets it you can do an action and it makes an impact. And just in that moment I obviously had goosebumps. I still have goosebumps whenever I tell the story.

Speaker 2: 25:19

Well, and you just think about children and it's like all they want to do is help, and I mean that is what philanthropy is. Where can we all pour in? Where can we help? I mean I always think of Dr or Mr Rogers, like we need to look for the helpers, but we also need to be the helpers, and so Pete thanks for bringing it all back to us today.

Speaker 2: 25:40

It's just so sweet. You know, lacey, how would you kind of wrap up this conversation with a? One good thing Could be a piece of advice or a life hack. What would you leave with our audience, I think?

Speaker 3: 25:52

it's to give yourself grace and to give others grace.

Speaker 1: 25:55

I mean more of this. You know I love how profound that is and I feel like this is totally your work too. In just that kind of community at work, whenever we are giving each other grace, it leads into saying how do we cover for this person that's going into this season of life Like we want them to have the best possible chance to rest and come around this, and so more of that, can we just have more grace? I love that.

Speaker 2: 26:20

And also to just be present Like if you're leaving work, we want you to be present with whomever or whatever you're doing. We don't want to be checking our phone and our email and our text and seeing what is going on in Slack. We need to feel like we can step away. I don't know that a lot of us in the sector feel like we could step away, but we need to normalize it because, again to your point, put it on your oxygen mask first. It's allowed. It's not only allowed, it's encouraged and preferred at this point. So, lacey, I mean, tell people how they can connect with you. How can they connect with Balance? Good, if they want to explore maybe getting together and working through a parental plan. Where do you hang out online?

Speaker 3: 27:04

Yeah, so I love LinkedIn, so you can find meacey Kupinski at LinkedIn. We also have a Balance Good page. We're on Instagram at Balance Good, as well as our website, balancegoodcom. We do have workbooks there to help plan parental leaves. We have tips. We're trying to give you all the resources to help and also you can just email me. I want to connect with as many people as I can in this journey.

Speaker 2: 27:33

I hope this has stirred something in you community. I hope you understand that this is very much a right and this is something worthy of us fighting for, stepping up for our friends and advocating for so. Lacey, thank you for being one of those trailblazers in the industry who is normalizing this for us. We are so humbled to know you, so glad to call you ally and friend in this work.

Speaker 3: 27:58

Thank you, and right back at you, for all of the great work both of you do, rooting for you.

Speaker 1: 28:02

Appreciate you being here.