How NYC Human Service Workers Won #JustPay - with Michelle Jackson, Human Services Council

Fund the People: A Podcast with Rusty Stahl

This episode is end-of-year inspiration – and it offers a bold new model for increasing investments in America’s nonprofit workforce.

In this episode, you’ll learn how a group of nonprofits showed elected leaders the essential value of the nonprofit human services workforce, and broke through malaise and noise to secure historic state and local government investments in nonprofit workers!

Host Rusty Stahl speaks with Michelle Jackson, Executive Director of Human Services Council of New York to get the story, the struggles, and important lessons-learned for funders, nonprofits, and associations.

We’ll hear the story of the #JustPay Campaign, which was initiated by the Human Services Council. Through this ongoing campaign, social workers and others have built solidarity with one another and flexed their collective power! It has gotten results. Successes include Cost of Living Adjustments (COLA) increases in government contracts and other major financial investments in the nonprofit human services workforce.

The HSC has also been part of improving the way New York City government contracts with nonprofits to deliver social services, and how the City pays for “indirect” costs in these contracts. The effort to pay for “indirect” costs was also discussed from the NYC government perspective in Season 2 Episode 12 with Jennifer Geiling.

This final interview of Season 3 explores Talent-Investing Principle #3, “Address the Problem, Not Just the Symptoms.” The historic successes discussed in this episode cut to the heart of how nonprofits can work together to end the starvation cycle and begin a healthy new cycle of talent-investing. And we invite you to learn from all the amazing past guests of Fund the People - A Podcast with Rusty Stahl. All resources & links mentioned in the show can be found on our episode show notes page or at fundthepeople.org/ftp_podcast. Find all the episodes of this podcast plus our blog, toolkit and other resources on our website, fundthepeople.org.