Why Leadership Recharge?

Barr’s Leadership Recharge is an initiative designed to strengthen senior leaders and nonprofit organizations. This program provides selected organizations with a $75,000 grant to support resilience investments that benefit staff across their organization, including a sabbatical for the nominated senior leader and 25 hours of coaching to support the senior leader and organization in goal-setting, planning for the sabbatical, and identifying other key organizational resilience goals.

Benefits include: 

• Advancement of organizational culture that prioritizes wellness, builds personal and professional resilience of staff, and advances equity within the organization. 
• Interruption of burnout and enhanced rejuvenation of nonprofit leaders.  
• Enhanced succession planning and increased distribution of leadership. 

Leadership Recharge aims to support organizations’ leadership pipelines by pairing a sabbatical and coaching with support to strengthen resilience practices across the organization. A holistic focus on healthy operating practice is critical for long-term impact.

This initial offering is targeted to support senior-level leaders (specifically individuals operating as deputies or second-in-command roles in the nonprofit sector) to recharge their leadership journey and prepare for the work ahead. For future cycles, Barr may shift to target a wider range of leadership to meet the current needs within the sector.

Eligibility Criteria

Applicant organizations must:

• Be a nonprofit 501(c)3 public charity of any discipline headquartered and significantly serving Massachusetts.
• Have an operating budget between approximately $500K and $5M with adequate staffing and resources in place to continue operations without significant interruption while the nominated individual is on their sabbatical.
• Demonstrate an organizational commitment to:
  • Developing a field that is rooted in justice and belonging, in which all staff can thrive and contribute to organizational missions.
  • Cultivating a healthy operating culture that recognizes and invests in leadership at all levels.

• Provide an Organization Letter of Support from the Executive Director/CEO and team members who will take on additional responsibilities during the sabbatical.
• Organizations that are fiscally sponsored are eligible.
• Government agencies, hospitals, K-12 schools and higher education institutions are not eligible to apply.
• Organizations with a primary function of re-granting to other organizations are not eligible to apply.

• Barr will give additional consideration to organizations that don’t currently have significant resources for this type of investment in their staff. If your organization has a commitment to developing a healthy operating culture but has not been able to significantly invest in this capacity for your staff, we invite you to apply.

The organization’s individual candidate for sabbatical must:

• Commit to fully unplug from work and other professional obligations for the duration of their sabbatical.
• Be a full-time resident of New England with work significantly serving Massachusetts.
• Demonstrate a personal and professional commitment to developing a field that is rooted in justice and belonging and contributing to organizational culture that supports staff to show up as their full selves, unique in their cultures, experiences, and perspectives.
• Serve as the deputy or holds significant senior-level responsibility, reports directly to the chief executive, and operates as second-in-command.
• Have served for at least five years as a senior-level leader reporting to the chief executive of their organization.
• Have worked in the nonprofit social sector for at least 10 years and intend to remain in the sector for the foreseeable future.