Giving Compass' Take:

• Social Venture Partners discusses the RVC Fellowship program, which provides nonprofit management training to people in marginalized communities, making sure that the cycle of low pay and exclusionary hiring practices is broken.

• How many nonprofits are following this model and hiring people in the places that are being served? What are we doing to push back against wage setting?

• Read more about the role philanthropy can play when it comes to the future of work.

The RVC Fellowship program began in 2015. We recruit people of color who want to advance as nonprofit leaders into management roles and place them at area community organizations while providing training and support in nonprofit administration, advocacy and leadership.

Beyond making it hard to bring in capable employees, low pay decreases representation. People who can’t afford to work our jobs choose work that pays better — and that includes the candidates from the communities we serve. For many, this connects back to historical exclusions from generational wealth creation, inequitable distribution of opportunities, weakly resourced networks, and the other systemic factors we’re in business to combat.

Wage-setting is one way we can harm the communities we are trying to support. Here’s how: Nonprofits comprise a bigger part of the economic footprint of the poorer places where our work happens. We aim to employ staff from the places we serve. If you believe (in the same way you believe water is wet and rocks fall downward) nonprofit wages tend to be lower than in other sectors, then that means we are collectively imposing downward wage pressure on those communities.

Read the full article about helping others achieve a living wage by Jon Kauffman on Social Venture Partners.