Inspiration and Renewal for Santa Barbara’s Essential Nonprofit Workforce

What happens when the people driving a nonprofit organization providing community support get burned out and need support themselves? 

Leading From Within is what happens. 

Leading From Within is an organization that doesn’t work for one specific cause; rather, it’s a nonprofit supporting the people who are doing that work, helping the community. 

In a region that boasts an incredibly high density of nonprofit organizations and philanthropic support, supporting nonprofit leaders and staff is critical and necessary work. Leading From Within’s results speak to the very practical efficacy of their work. 

“Nonprofits generally don’t prepare their staff for the strain involved in prolonged work,” says Executive Director Ed France. 

France cites the extremely high burnout rate in nonprofits as the genesis of the organization. When Leading From Within’s founder, Ken Saxon, began serving on nonprofit boards, he noticed how rarely those organizations invested in staff development, and it especially affected leaders of these organizations.  

“Too often, critical nonprofit leaders were isolated, operated from a sense of scarcity, and were prone to burnout,” Saxon says. He discovered that many of these organizations didn’t even have money for professional development set aside in their budgets. Eyeing that need, Saxon developed a program to uplift these organizations’ leaders and staff to do the leadership development they need to make their highest and best contribution to their cause, and Leading From Within was born. 

Leading From Within’s programs started with a methodology called “Courage and Renewal,” which helps nonprofit staffers rediscover and refuel their inspiration and passion for their work, thereby extending their commitment and longevity and inspiring civic leadership. Their “Emerging Leaders” program fosters leadership qualities and grooms staff for future leadership positions. 

In the nonprofit world, where turnover is rampant, Leading From Within’s results are impressive.  

“Of our 568 alumni, approximately 85% have stayed in the nonprofit world locally,” France says. 

He should know. He’s one of them. Having founded the Bicycle Coalition of Santa Barbara County, France was working long days and weekends for years. After a while, France could no longer access his inspiration for the work.  

“The lens that we see our work through gets distorted, gets clouded. As a leader of an organization, your lens is your vision, and your vision that you hold for your organization is the most important way that you can support your team,” France says.  Eventually, he hit a wall. “I just tried to take on all things, until I felt very jaded. It nearly broke me.” 

Then, he discovered Leading From Within and enrolled in their Courage to Lead Program. It not only reinvigorated his passion for nonprofit work, but it inspired him so much, he ultimately became the organization’s executive director – firmly planting him in a nonprofit world that needs him and Leading From Within.