For this month’s Impact story, I wanted to share excerpts directly from a nonprofit leader’s share on our latest podcast – linked at the end of this newsletter.
His name is Slade Custer and he’s the Director of Development (think head of fundraising) for Food to Power, a nonprofit in Colorado Springs, CO whose mission is “to cultivate a healthy, equitable food system in the greater Colorado Springs community.”
Slade has been a member of our THRIVER community, a group of nonprofit leaders from small, community-based organizations. Here’s what he had to say about his experience as part of THRIVERS.
“…last year was one of my worst years ever for mental health throughout my entire life… and as much therapy as I was going through to try to get better on all of this, literally the peer-to-peer support groups and the peer-to-peer interactions and hearing like the big box breathing, Tucker, that you always do, just certain things like that, it’s really worth mentioning that a lot of that really, really helped me.
Because it’s one thing when you look at non-profit burnout, for example, you might just look at the stressors involved with work and how maybe a capacity building session, capacity building dollars, something like that, it’ll enhance your ability to become more resilient for work.
But I think it is really, really important to mention that work is only part of our lives, and there are factors that influence us outside of work that affect our ability to do our work in a good and healthy manner.
I think that was one of the biggest things – not only learning from [THRIVE IMPACT], but also learning from the other nonprofit leaders of just how to really break out of self-destructive thoughts. To be able to try to get that paradigm shift and not having to dig yourself further into the trenches.
As much as I’ve gone to a lot of therapy to try to get better at that, oddly enough, it was part of THRIVERS that really helped me…
…because when I was being vulnerable and honest with the different individuals in the cohort and telling them what I was struggling with, and then two weeks later they’re checking in with me…
[they helped me] break out of those self-destructive thoughts so that I could be a whole and more productive person in my personal life, which greatly influences my energy and my ability to show up to work as a whole and complete individual.”
Feel free to listen to the whole story on the podcast starting at the timestamp 28:54.
Thank you to everyone who has donated to support THRIVERS – our community of small, community-based nonprofits. Your donations are having an impact.