State of Sabbaticals in the Jewish Nonprofit Sector
R&R partnered with Seth Linden of Gather Consulting, a leadership coaching and consulting firm, in April 2023 to conduct a field-wide research and strategy assessment to capture the existing picture of sabbaticals within the Jewish and secular nonprofit workplace. As of that engagement, there was no public, comprehensive data set that highlights sabbatical policies (or other critical rest-based practices) within this landscape. This research hopes to illuminate what currently exists, how and why organizations developed certain policies, and uncover strategies that organizations and funders can deploy to increase, sustain and embrace rest-based interventions like sabbatical leaves across the sector.
The essential questions that guided this research included:
What percentage of Jewish nonprofits currently offer sabbaticals, and are they being utilized?
What is the role of the philanthropic sector in supporting rest-based interventions, such as sabbaticals, in the Jewish community?
What can the Jewish sub-sector learn from secular corporations, academia, and others deploying sabbatical policies effectively within their spaces?
The research report shows:
1) Sabbaticals are more common than we thought, and growing in number, with over 100 organizations having a policy;
2) Progressive organizations that prioritize rest and rejuvenation, equity and belonging, etc. have a higher percentage of sabbatical policies; and,
3) More research is needed, with a much larger sample, to confirm these hypotheses, ask more nuanced questions about how policies are created and utilized, for what purpose, and better understand other rest-based policies and trends (e.g., family leave, paid time off, 4-day work weeks, Summer Mondays/Fridays, unionization, etc.).