Hiring for Impact at a Small Nonprofit

From our founding in late 2020, we have always been an all-volunteer community group.

For this, we are eternally grateful. Weaving the fabric of our organization from a base of supporters who were giving their time soley because they want to make an impact kept us focused. We had to be efficient with the time and resources we could bring to bare to educate on plant medicines and build community through nature events. This required a lot of sacrifice from a small number of individuals, as thousands plugged into our community, signed petitions, and promoted our work through conversation.

This taught us a valuable lesson: identifying leaders and partners who care about impact with the scarce time we all have to dedicate to others. We are grateful this brought people into our orbit who authentically believe in our mission of accelerating public education and culture for creative well-being.

Many community groups immediately jump into the chaos of filing paperwork, seeking funding, and building out a team. This, in our view, leaves organizations vulnerable to losing sight of their mission. A donor's needs and preferences are often variable or tied to specific programming. Because we were volunteer base, we could identify a niche needs that were not being fulfilled to their full capacity in Massachusetts: psychedelic education independent of corporate interest, mushrooms walks that were open to beginners and amateurs, and events where people could make new friends who care about creative modalities of healing.

Now, we now at long last have the funding to hire 14 part-time team members across three states. This was made possible by a major gift of a donor who passed and authentically believed in our mission and impact.

To honor their gift and scale our impact, here is how we are approaching the hiring process, including insights that may help other nonprofits and community groups who are scaling up. We consider this an iterative experiment where we can learn and gather feedback about the best way to hire.

• Encouraging Passion: As part of our new cohort, CREATE 2026, we promoted a application that empowered applicants to apply with their own ideas for projects that fit within our mission. This tapped in their creative faculties and passion and also gave us valuable insights into how people looking for compensated work understand our vision as outsiders to it. While not all ideas aligned with our vision, the vast majority did in some and spoke to applicants' ability to think independently about how to lead a project or event.

• Education for All: For interviewing, we encouraged all applicants to join a collaborative class in their specific focus area, whether it be the food system, canvassing, public art, healing, or nature education. Prior to the class, we left individualized feedback and questions for each applicant in a shared google doc so that all applicants could learn a bit more about our thinking in how to make programming successful. The class ultimately helped us share valuable lessons on organizing psychology, the process of social change, team communication, and carrying out successful events even for applicants who were not ultimately accepted. The class also served as a group interview of sorts, whereby applicants were able to showcase their ability to engage with the material and bring thoughtful questions and ideas to bare. Of the three quarters of applicants we were not able to welcome to our team at this time, we received positive feedback about the class. Rather than a nerve-provoking individual interview, we were able to learn more about our applicants in a real-world and team setting, saving valuable time and creating impact even for applicants we could not accept.

• Collaboration on Proposals: For the applicants we invited to continue in the process, we took the iniative to fit their ideas for projects within a workable framework for our vision, values, and resources in a collaborative google doc. This meant laying out a potential budget for supplies, venues, advertising, and a bank of hours that they could use to make their project possible. We made it transparent that we intended to hire all of our part-time team members at the same hourly wage, tied to the budget we were able to dedicate to CREATE 2026. Once it became clear we had more resources within that allotment, we raised the hourly pay.

• Creative Freedom: As we are bringing the teammates on, we emphasized that we trust them to do an amazing job and use their hours and resources however they see fit. Our leadership will serve as mentors to help share insights on what has been successful in the past, rather than requiring a rigid formula. From these conversation, many of our new team members ended up brainstorming ideas that stray creatively from their initial proposal because we had amazing, candid conversations about how their time with our org can help them grow. We want our new team members to build skills they carry the rest of their careers, bring attention to other projects that are consistent with our work, and ultimately help us identify underserved education opportunities where we can have an impact.

• Flexibility: Built into our framework is the expectation that our staff can pursue their projects with Bay Staters on a timeline best for them. As parents of young children, working artists juggling many projects, and career professionals building their own independent businesses, we want them to have complete flexibility so that they can really enjoy working for us. Above all, our goal is to practice trust, model a healthy workplace, and ensure that this experience is not just beneficial for our org but also immensely beneficial for the team.

Only time will tell what we learn from this model. Some people prefer more daily, hands-on direction and instruction from their employers. There is an element of that, inherent to working together with our communications and leadership teams. Yet we are excited and confident that by creating a process that attracts leaders who love our mission, paying generously and flexibly, and designing the experience for their personal growth (even applicants we could not accept) that we are setting an example to be proud of.

We live in an economy where our time and attention are sold to make ends-meet. We are proud to launch this program to reclaim our time for what matters. Systematically helping others live their best lives