It’s Not a Sprint: How Not-For-Profit Leaders Can Build Resilient, High-Performing Teams
Working with hundreds of teams across all types of causes, size-of-organisation, and budgets we see one common trait in high-performing leaders and teams: resilience.
There’s no sugar-coating it. Working in the not-for-profit sector can be tough. For all the rewards—connection to cause, impactful work, passionate teams, and the opportunity to make a difference—there are equally steep challenges. Tight budgets, complex causes, economic uncertainty, and diverse stakeholder needs are just a few of the hurdles to manage.
Resilience is no longer just a survival trait (as it was especially seen during COVID-19); it’s a defining strength closely linked to innovation.
It’s the secret behind teams that have not only adapted to change during this past season, but excelled and innovated through it, solving problems under pressure, transforming failures into learning opportunities, and working with collaboration and creativity.
We’ve seen this in action through leaders and teams who have pivoted to launch new fundraising products to meet an emerging opportunity –– and in doing so, developed new revenue streams. Others have invested early in digital acquisition channels, like TikTok. Some have made tough calls, such as cutting low-ROI fundraising events that board members favoured, to redirect budgets to higher-impact activities.
Here are three ways we’ve seen not-for-profit leaders grow resilience and innovation in their teams:
1. Creating a safe space for innovation a.k.a ‘Flearning’
Leadership isn’t just about setting the vision for an organisation; it's about nurturing a team that's equipped to sustain that vision and grow with it. That often happens through a culture of innovation.
We often think of innovation as another task on the to-do list. And when your team is already stretched thin, the last thing they need is more on their plate, right? But here’s the thing — making room for innovation isn’t about adding pressure; it’s about creating space for teams to experiment, fail fast, and try again.
When failure is seen as part of the process rather than something to avoid, teams can build a healthy culture that’s rooted in learning, not perfection.
We love the word that Doug Taylor, CEO of the Smith Family uses with his own team to describe this: “Flearning” – a cross between a failure / learning, recognising every failure is a chance for new insight and lessons.
2. Fostering cross-department collaboration
One of the biggest obstacles to innovation is poor collaboration. When departments operate in silos, misaligned goals can slow progress and stifle creativity. The opposite is also true – when organisations cultivate a culture of collaboration and align their efforts, the results can bring exponential growth.
We’ve seen this in action through our clients Vision Australia. Between 2020 - 2023, Vision Australia have undergone their own digital transformation that is driving a significant uptick in results across fundraising, brand, services, marketing efforts on digital. For fundraising alone they’ve seen a 24% increase in digital revenue and a 16% increase in digital donations that will go towards providing services that support over 25,500 people who suffer form blindness and low vision. But this didn’t just happen overnight. It required leaders to be intentional about cross-team collaboration and developing new ways of working.
Together with ntegrity, Vision Australia's Fundraising, Marketing, Client Services and Marketing teams standardised the briefing process of all new digital campaigns, developed shared annual planning on digital with a comprehensive timeline, developed a unified billing dashboard, and created a new quarterly digital trends and innovation session to name a few.
When organisations make collaboration an integral part of their operations, it paves the way for high-performing teams to thrive, and leverage one another's strengths.
3. Embracing AI, automation, and digital tools for long-term success
Whether you want them to or not – AI, automation, the sophisticated use of data, and the thousands of other digital tools are here to stay and are going to dramatically transform the workforce.
The question is whether you’ll start embracing them now, or be forced to later.
Rather than imposing strict AI policies, leaders can provide clear guidelines for experimentation and encourage innovation. By embracing tools that streamline processes, you empower your team to stay agile and focused on strategic goals. AI tools like ChatGPT, Claude, Gemini, or Microsoft’s CoPilot all help teams work more efficiently.
You don’t even need to go as far as AI. At ntegrity, we’ve found that implementing new product management tools like Kantata have been a game changer for providing the structure and clarity that allow people to work efficiently. Leveraging the right digital tools can transform a team from feeling overwhelmed to one that’s confident and capable of driving long-term success.
Conclusion
Resilience isn’t just about weathering difficult times – it’s about thriving through them by embracing change and pushing forward into new areas, together. The teams that have not only adapted to change during this past season, but excelled and innovated through it are those that are resilient and create space for learning and innovation, increased their collaboration across departments and embraced digital technology.