The Power of a Strong Parental Leave Policy with Lacey Kempinksi

The Prosperous Nonprofit

If you’re a nonprofit leader looking for strategies to help your organization retain more employees, then give this episode a listen. I sat down with special guest and founder of Balanced Good, Lacey Kempinski, to chat about how her organization is partnering with nonprofits to provide parental leave coverage. She dove into how she supports nonprofits with parental leave, the implications of a weak parental leave policy, and how to plan for parental leave. Lacey also discussed the challenges of working parents in the nonprofit sector. This was such a good episode that all nonprofit leaders will benefit from.

About Lacey

Lacey Kempinski is an in-house fundraiser, turned Mom, turned consultant. After more than a decade of in-house fundraising, Motherhood changed the trajectory of Lacey’s career. In 2018, when she was due back to work after her second parental leave, Lacey took a leap and founded Balanced Good.

She’s on a mission to better support parents and organizations in the non-profit sector. Balanced Good provides parental leave coverage – from the day-to-day hands-on work to big picture transition planning – Balanced Good believes that a supported transition to parenthood will benefit both our sector and the parents working in it.

Lacey has a bold vision that all parental leaves are viewed as a celebrated life milestone and not a feared employment gap.

As a graduate from McMaster University, and Georgian College’s Fundraising and Resource Development Program, she loves continuing to immerse herself in all things fundraising. While also balancing that with LEGO building, endless folding of laundry, and a love for hiking, canoeing, and all things outdoors.

Read the podcast transcript here.

Episode Summary

In this episode, you’ll learn strategies for how your nonprofit can support employees with their parental leave, including:

• Supporting nonprofits with their parental leave journey (4:15)

• How parental leave is typically covered (8:35)

• The process and cost of covering parental leave (11:45)

• The implications of not having a strong parental leave policy (16:40)

• How an organization plans for parental leave (19:20)

• Getting the team up to speed and making a meaningful impact (22:00)

• Upholding strong boundaries (24:30)

• Challenges of working parents in the nonprofit sector (28:05)

• Trends in organizational culture and flexibility (30:15)

Teasers

“It's just repeating this culture of martyrdom that we love to have in our sector of our plates are already full, but we'll take on more because it's for the cause. And that's really not good. And there's long-term organizational cost to that.”

“We put together a couple of recommendations on how that role can be more working parent-friendly. So that person can thrive in their role when they come back. And then we provide some overlap and transition because we know just jumping in is really hard to do.”

“I think a lot of times people think in a short-sighted way, ‘I don't want to have to pay for two salaries for three to six months, so we're just going to deal with it and put more work on other people.’ But I think what they don't understand are the longer term ramifications of that, of continuing to just pile work on your existing team.”

Resources

The Best Tools for an Efficient & Prosperous Nonprofit: https://100degreesconsulting.com/tools/

Parental Leave Planning Workbook: https://icy-base-20781.myflodesk.com/1986644d-75ba-476f-a37f-788cd7e5d48d

Connect with Lacey on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/laceykempinski/

Follow Balanced Good on Instagram: @balancedgood

Keep up to date with the podcast: @100degreesconsulting

Follow Stephanie on Instagram: @stephanie.skry/

Connect with Stephanie on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/stephanieskryzowski/

Visit the podcast page: https://100degreesconsulting.com/parental-leave

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