Using Founder Sabbaticals as Organizational Reset

Photo of Inspiration Point taken by the author on her sabbatical. (Photo by Natalie Bridgeman Fields)

A sabbatical can be more than just a time for rest, reflection, and regeneration. As I’ve observed through engagement with hundreds of other founders in social entrepreneurship communities over the past decade, most founders end up doing one of three things: burning out and leaving by around the decade mark, adapting and evolving to set a healthy stage for their departure, or—in the worst case scenario, a symptom of founder’s syndrome—staying on while continuing patterns that don’t keep pace with organizational needs. As I’ve learned from my own experience, sabbaticals can have a catalytic role in serving as an organizational reset and time to allow founders and their teams to see what’s required for them to successfully adapt and evolve to a place where the founder role is sustainably replaceable. The founder sabbatical can spark evaluation of organizational systems, exploration of how power is used, and can show what organizational changes are required to achieve equity now and in the future. Indeed, organizations' health and long-term stability may depend on them. But to work, founders, boards, and teams need to:

1. Set a sabbatical policy early on, plan for it, resource it, and expect it;
2. Use sabbaticals to foster sustainability through indispensable, independent space for founders and teams; and
3. Build systems that don’t require sabbaticals simply to recharge, recognizing that wellness takes daily intention and prioritization.

The word “sabbatical” may provoke the reaction that they are a luxury, open only to well-resourced organizations, alongside race, class, and sector-based privilege to rightfully explore. There are intense and unique barriers to capital for founders of color, and sabbaticals require resources. Zooming out from social enterprise, for the vast majority of work done by the vast majority of the world’s workers, a sabbatical is an impossibility. But rather than accepting a race to the bottom of standards, we need to collectively shift towards a mindset where time off for basic care is possible. Indeed, founders—and the funders who resource them— have a responsibility to use their power to create work cultures with an equity mindset, rejecting the trope of the underpaid, overworked, mission-driven worker, and correcting for the resource divide between white-led organizations with easier access to capital than Black and Indigenous counterparts. Our understanding of a healthy workplace must mirror the advocacy that we and our allies are doing to advance rights and benefits for low-wage workers and workers of color worldwide. Choices are a privilege: We all need to start where we have the choice to start.

1. Set a Sabbatical Policy Early On, Plan for It, Resource It, and Expect It

Since our early days, my organization, Accountability Counsel, has had a sabbatical policy that every team member is entitled to a fully-paid three-month sabbatical after six years of tenure, with no limits on how the sabbatical can be spent (a policy we settled on after researching the benefits). Because the policy is the same for every person at the organization, we incorporate sabbatical planning into all work plans and offer bonuses where sabbatical coverage requires any one person to substantially take on additional job duties. We resource the sabbatical through our general operating support—which is the majority of our budget—and from funders who appreciate that the internal work we do to live our values is related to our track record of outcomes that advance wellness, dignity, and equity.

Sabbaticals are meant to be taken. I missed taking my first sabbatical when it was due six years ago since it coincided with returning from parental leave. This was unfortunate timing because I could have used a true break right about then, but also because this would have been a superb time to evaluate whether Accountability Counsel’s then-six-year-old governance structures were still fit for purpose. Instead, I dove back in. I was in catch-up mode and trying to keep both work and home life above water.  Without the mental space a sabbatical affords, I remained in ‘start up’ scarcity mentality, and couldn’t see that I needed to better devolve decision-making and to grow new senior staff positions, instead of struggling to still handle fundraising and program management roles on top of my executive director role.

After another six years went by, my board chair rightfully nudged me to take the sabbatical. The time was right, having dipped a toe in adapt and evolve mode with a recent director of development hire to help me with fundraising for the first time, and a new director of programs and strategy able to step in as interim executive director. I was ready too. My husband and I were in the midst of triple pandemic parenting, with our young kids still out of school.

Our team voiced their support and sabbatical planning picked up: When I turned off my email for the first time in twelve years, the weight of my work responsibilities and the stress that I hold subconsciously in my body, even during vacation, lifted, knowing that for three full months I had delegated my work duties to capable people and could let my brain just be.

2. Foster Organizational Sustainability by Providing Indispensable, Independent ‘Reset’ Space for Founders and Teams

The startup phase is often a hustle: social entrepreneurs begin with a vision for change, but without the support they’ll need. Founders often find themselves doing multiple, critical full-time jobs. This is not the optimal setting for creating governance structures. However, during this time, founders and their boards make important decisions that can chart the organization’s course and help it live its values, or that can end up impeding them. When others join to review and adapt these systems, the baseline has already been laid.

In this context, a founder sabbatical can be a dual-pronged reset: not only for the founder but for the team making decisions without the founder, perhaps for the first time.

For founders, a “hard reset” can offer founders perspective into the more challenging aspects of governance: how leaders wield or devolve power, how decisions are made, what internal transparency looks like, and increasingly, how internal structures may perpetuate systems of racism and oppression; a hard reset can provide the perspective needed to integrate equity- and justice-driven approaches to governance. These are difficult questions that require mental space, including for those of us devoted to challenging systems of racism and oppression in our programmatic work. And because building equity- and justice-oriented values, policies, and daily practices into an organization is also a process that reflects societal learning, it’s never done.

However, the starting point is significant. Even for organizations that are starting off with a “new power” approach to work and culture, organization-building can start off with unitary and “old power” systems.  When I was removed from the daily work and our team, my sabbatical afforded me an opening for more expansive, holistic, and arms-length thinking about issues of power and decision-making, as well as reflection on my own role within the organization. This was my first breathing space to truly reflect on my own identity, independent from the organization’s, in a full twelve years. Time away left me better able to explore my blind spots and how to more quickly adapt and evolve as a leader.

The benefit for teams might be even more significant. A founder sabbatical is a unique opportunity to notice what happens in the absence of the founder’s presence and use of power. Founders are often so deeply embedded in an organization's DNA, that deference is inevitable and challenging the status quo can be difficult. A sabbatical creates space for new leadership, ideas, and change. Teams covering for the founder have space to observe elements of leadership that interim leadership staff want to enhance or minimize when the founder returns. 

In our organization, sabbatical planning helped us revisit succession planning and interrogate why duties in the founder’s absence would be distributed in certain ways. We did this with an eye to equity-driven leadership and decision-making, which allowed our team to practice more shared leadership. They learned new skills, areas of expertise, and built on their leadership muscles and instincts, which continue to provide us with growth and learning now months after I’ve returned. Our team was empowered to—and did—make decisions that are leaving a lasting positive mark on our organization, including through key initiatives that our team was empowered to advance in my absence (such as completing our Compensation Equity and Transparency framework).

As I returned to work, we kept and embedded these changes, that range from more participatory budgeting to how we run meetings. My sabbatical accelerated a grounding of equity-driven decisions in the direct experience of team members and has made the efficiencies for scaling up possible.

3. Build Systems That Don’t Require Sabbaticals to Recharge

Sabbaticals should not be viewed as an antidote to burnout. Burnout is clinically defined and widespread: organizations should structure policies and practices to keep team members healthy and engaged on a daily basis, all-year round, with sabbaticals reserved for the non-routine reflection required to “reset.”

That said, in my case, my sabbatical reset helped me find the time to see where I was falling short on those regular wellness practices, not just for myself, but also within structures that support those practices for our team. For the first month, I learned how a sabbatical should not be spent. I occupied my time with parenting (which was treasured), but also a lot of deferred care for myself, my family, and my home (which was not). While being a pandemic parent certainly exacerbated what had stacked up, I was amazed to discover just how many things on the routine care front needed my attention, because I hadn’t been able to fit them into my work life.

I resolved to return better able to support a culture that allows care as it’s needed to stay healthy (not when it’s “possible” in a dehumanizing schedule). But when I returned, our team was already ahead of me. Part of the changes they’d moved forward in my absence included a reduced workweek to address signs of team burnout, with every-other Friday off (known as “Wellness Fridays”). An anticipated bi-monthly time to take care of what you need to take care of has been a wellness tool we’ve all embraced. Some still need to take occasional meetings or meet a deadline on those Wellness Fridays, but when the default is to take time off, people generally take advantage of it. As a result, team morale is up (we measured it), productivity is the same or better (we measured that too), and our organization is healthier.

Today, Wellness Fridays are incorporated into our approach to wellness that also includes mental health coverage, a team wellness fund, generous vacation, and Good Ally time. Our team talks about, values, and plans wellness into team objectives. While there is still work to do to fully embed this culture shift, my sabbatical has accelerated my ability to see how these changes serve our team, our sustainability, and ultimately our mission.

As an opportunity for organizational health, growth, succession, and equity, founder sabbaticals require an ecosystem of support. This includes a commitment from funders who can provide general operating support to accompany mission-driven philanthropy, from founder networks that can incorporate sabbaticals into training, and board members who can ask for and support sabbatical policies to of course organizations themselves that can embed sabbaticals as a valued part of their culture.

Read more stories by Natalie Bridgeman Fields.