Who we are: Introducing The kinship coalition
If you work at a nonprofit, you know something the rest of the world is slow to admit: doing good work and being treated well at work are not the same thing.
Maybe you've watched a coworker leave a job they loved because they couldn't afford to stay. Maybe you've sat in a staff meeting where equity is always a topic, but leadership's actions tell a different story. Maybe you've raised a concern and watched it disappear into silence, or watched the person who raised it be the one disappear instead.
If that sounds familiar or if you care about the workers who do the work, this coalition is for you.
Why We Exist
Minnesota's nonprofit sector is enormous. It employs 396,172 people and touches nearly every community in the state. Non-profits make up nearly 13.5% of Minnesota’s total workforce. This workforce runs on people who show up because they believe in the work: feeding people, housing people, defending people's rights, healing people, teaching people. That belief matters.
But belief in a mission has too often been used as a substitute for fair treatment of the people carrying it out. Low wages get justified as the cost of doing good. Long hours and task saturation get framed as passion. Accommodations are brushed aside. Retaliation against workers who raise concerns get absorbed into "organizational culture." And leadership, sometimes well-intentioned and sometimes not, usually answers to a bottom line before it answers to the staff.
We don't think that's an inevitable fate of all non-profits. We think it's a set of choices that organizations makes and circumstances workers have the power to change together.
That is why The Kinship Coalition is building a community of nonprofit workers across Minnesota, organized around a simple premise: the people doing the work deserve a real voice in how .
What We Stand For
Our platform is built on five commitments:
Nonprofit worker protections. Grievance procedures that are followed professionally. Real protection from retaliation. Reasonable workloads that do not put health on the back burner. Accommodations that are met and maintained with dignity. Basic job security that shouldn't be radical to ask for.
Fair salaries. Living wages for every role that aren’t stagnant. Transparent pay scales with pathways for promotions. An end to the idea that passion for a mission should mean working for less than you're worth.
Accountability from leadership. Boards and leadership who answer to the people doing the work. Union bargaining. Whistleblower protections. Real oversight beyond a statement of values.
True equity. Measurable, structural change: equitable hiring, equitable advancement, equitable pay models, and decision-making power shared with the workers closest to the mission.
Anti-racism in our own spaces. Advocacy and nonprofit organizations can do real good in the world while still causing real harm internally; tokenization, colorism, unequal burdens on BIPOC staff, leadership that resists being questioned, the “oppression olympics”. We're committed to holding our own spaces, and this coalition itself, to the highest standard.
None of these are separate issues. They're the same issue: who has power in the nonprofit sector and who doesn't.
What Organizing Actually Looks Like
Organizing can seem abstract or intimidating. It starts small: an honest conversation with a coworker about what's working and what isn't. From there, it grows into shared information, shared demands, and eventually, real leverage.
The work of this coalition is not just documenting what's wrong, but building the collective power to change it. We work through restorative circles, unionizing efforts, direct advocacy, worker-to-worker support, and public accountability for organizations that fall short of the values they claim to hold.
We're starting with concrete commitments:
a monthly organizing meeting for members building power in their workplaces
a quarterly gathering for the broader community to connect and share what's happening across the sector
a workshop series to help people understand their rights and options
(details in our In Action page)
Where You Come In
You don't need to have a plan. You don't need to be ready to organize your entire workplace tomorrow. You just need to be willing to say: this could be better, and I'm not the only one who thinks so.
Join the coalition. Come to a meeting. Ask and offer. You don't have to do this alone and you shouldn't have to.