These days, the phrase “return to office” is as inescapable as “work from home” was circa 2020. Fortune 500 firms that were once remote workplaces are now publishing white papers and executive letters that argue the necessity of getting employees back into the office.
Yet a March 2025 Gallup poll indicated that 93 percent of remote-capable workers (as in, workers whose jobs can be performed remotely) prefer either completely remote work or (more commonly) a hybrid workplace.
So, how does the nonprofit workforce fit into this?
The Nonprofit Sector’s Response
Five years ago, nonprofits that were supporting communities through services designated “nonessential” by public health agencies were told to either pause operations entirely or pivot to the social distancing–friendly model of work-from-home. The result in most cases was that these nonprofits moved to remote work.
For employees, return-to-office trends are hitting historically marginalized workers the hardest.
One June 2020 survey of nonprofits, conducted by the philanthropic consulting firm La Piana Consulting, found that 82 percent of respondents’ staff were primarily working from home at the time. A year later, a survey by consulting firm Nonprofit HR discovered that 70 percent of staff were still working mostly from home.
Yet, by 2022, the Congressional Budget Office reported that only a quarter of private sector workers were fully remote. In the nonprofit sector, Idealist found that only 19 percent of nonprofit job openings in early 2022 were fully remote, and 90 percent of nonprofit employers surveyed by commercial real estate investment firm CBRE planned to call employees back into the office by mid-2022.
Motivations to return to work in the nonprofit sector have tracked with reasons offered by many for-profit business executives. Nonprofit HR found that nonprofit leaders were concerned about virtual work’s impact on company culture, collaboration and teamwork, and employee engagement and productivity.
Return to Office’s Impact on Workplace Equity and Diversity
Regardless of rationale, for employees, return-to-office trends are hitting historically marginalized workers the hardest—as may be expected in a capitalist political and economic system, which values financial assets more than people. The fact of the matter is that work-from-home policies helped traditionally excluded groups (some of which were almost entirely shut out of the workforce prior to the pandemic) better access job opportunities. Reversing that erases many of those gains. Here are some of the data:
- “Disabled workers are 22 percent more likely to be full-time remote than otherwise similar workers,” notes the Economic Innovation Group. A major driver of the disability employment gap is a lack of accommodations offered by employers, often due to the physical office environment. It’s no wonder 80 percent of disabled workers believe remote options would be “essential or very important” when hunting for a new job, according to a report by the Work Foundation in the United Kingdom.
- Caregivers who support elders, disabled relatives, or children are more able to take on work opportunities that allow for telecommuting. Care.com found that 76 percent of caregivers who work traditional jobs say remote work improves their overall quality of life.
- Working women with young children are 50 percent more likely to desire work from home than working men with young children. Other findings from the Century Foundation suggest that women and mothers have been more likely to take on jobs with telework.
- Asian, Black, and Latine workers are more interested in remote work options than their White counterparts. In 2022, Future Forum found that in the United States, Latine (86 percent) and Black and Asian/Asian American (both at 81 percent) “knowledge workers” prefer a hybrid or fully remote work arrangement, compared with 75 percent of their White peers. Given these communities’ experiences with institutional and interpersonal racism in the workplace—and additional data that suggest few employees trust their CEOs to be honest about issues of race and DEI at work—it makes sense that workers of color are particularly interested in working from the psychological safety of their home.
- LGBTQIA+ workers have similarly found emotional security in remote work. CNBC noted that this is because work-from-home arrangements reduce the likelihood of harmful social interactions, like being misgendered.
Return to Office: A Symptom of the Nonprofit Industrial Complex
To be sure, not all nonprofit professionals can work from home efficiently. Many nonprofits provide direct services that require employees to work on-site. But the reality is that many nonprofits are not direct service organizations (and even within direct service organizations, some roles are remote-capable).
When nonprofit employers demand that remote-capable workers perform their job duties on-site, it becomes apparent that widespread return-to-office mandates can contradict a nonprofit’s mission to make the world a fairer, safer, and more inclusive place for everyone.
Like so many other labor issues, the policy of forcing remote-capable employees back into the office feeds into and feeds off of what is commonly known as the nonprofit industrial complex. In other words, the bureaucratic structure of nonprofits tends to valorize systems of surveillance and control. In this framework, a return-to-office requirement can seem like a natural management strategy to adopt.
“Internal Reflection Is Really Lacking”
Because our political-economic system incentivizes employers to treat workers poorly, employees have every reason to question the objectives of employers.
“I think if you are a quote-unquote progressive organization, like a nonprofit, you have a responsibility to also look inward, instead of just outward,” Gabriella Ortega Ricketts, manager of artist programs at the International Documentary Association, explained to NPQ. “I feel like that internal reflection or self-examination of these sometimes very powerful nonprofits is really lacking when it comes to [labor issues].”
While some employees interested in remote work have been backed into a corner—forced to either quit their jobs or land a job at one of the increasingly rare employers that embrace work-from-home setups—others, such as Ortega Ricketts and her coworkers, have chosen to unlock their collective power in an organized struggle against aggressive return-to-office mandates. Since entering a collective bargaining agreement with Communications Workers of America Local 9003 in 2023, the Documentary Workers Union and its bargaining committee, including Ortega Ricketts, have worked to preserve what is left of their workplaces’ remote work policies.
According to Ortega Ricketts, leadership began pressuring employees back into the office throughout 2022 and 2023; initial proposals were for three days a week in office. In response to the looming demands, the committee tapped their bargaining unit to see how non-executive-level staffers were feeling.
As Ortega Ricketts explained, “We conducted a survey of everyone in the bargaining unit and asked them how they felt about going into office. We found out that some people like the option—but mostly people like to and can work from home.”
The Costs of Returning to Office
Ortega Ricketts and her colleagues have a number of reservations about work-at-office rules. While there is a flexible work policy in their union contract, it only requires that department leads allow team members to work remotely one day a week. That policy is better than what most nonprofit workers get, considering only 7.8 percent of nonprofit employees are in unions.
Still, the negotiated policy reads like scraps—especially when, from the employee perspective, there are so many reasons to prefer more flexible arrangements, which had been the norm just a few years ago. For instance, as a disabled Latina, Ortega Ricketts noted that full remote work policies enable her to do her greatest work as a program manager.
“I have several chronic illnesses that make it really hard for me to work in person,” she said. “Sometimes I just need to be able to lie down in the middle of the day because of chronic fatigue—if I had to go into the office, I couldn’t do anything after that sleep. And so [in-office work] is a bit of a life ruiner in that way.”
Ortega Ricketts emphasized that she only speaks for her own lived experience. But her story inarguably aligns with the existing literature on how and why many disabled people favor remote work options. Right now, Ortega Ricketts has been able to successfully advocate for her role to remain fully remote for the time being, in part thanks to her union support system and a clause in the union’s collective bargaining agreement that explicitly states that the nonprofit is open to reviewing applications for disability accommodations.
But as so many people with disabilities know all too well, the major law addressing accommodations is the flawed Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA). Ortega Ricketts, for instance, is still struggling to get her full remote work accommodations set in stone, even with union support.
“What became the most important thing to me was that if you come into the office, the purpose would be for connection.”
Building Realistic Work Location Policies
So, how can nonprofit executives create remote work policies that challenge, not uphold, systems of oppression? Taking after fellow change leaders who are already operating their organizations with a more equitable, people-oriented mindset is a solid start.
Alicia Lara, president and CEO at intermediary organization Community Partners in Los Angeles, noted that as public health mandates began allowing for the reopening of office spaces, she knew that was her cue to begin exploring the pros and cons of flexible work arrangements. For Lara, a five-day in-office workweek was a no-go, but hybrid arrangements seemed promising.
“I was never interested in [saying], ‘Let’s go back and do what we were doing [before],’” Lara told NPQ. “But what became the most important thing to me was that if you come into the office, the purpose would be for connection: one-on-one meetings, team meetings, staff meetings.…If [a team member] just comes into the office and they do exactly what they’re doing at home, we have failed in what we’re trying to get done.”
Community Partners’ hybrid arrangement is unique in both its intentionality and flexibility. While the name “hybrid” is often applied to policies that can require employees to enter the office as often as four times a week, the California nonprofit’s approach is to only require employees to come into the office once a week.
Lara explained that one day a week allows for teams and individual staff members to come together with purpose rather than out of obligation. Supplementing those weekly connections are twice-yearly in-person retreats for staff to have conceptual conversations at inspiring locations beyond the office.
“The most important part of our sector is the human capital.”
“In our roadmap is a lot of context about having a space where people can grow, where people can thrive,” Lara said. “And because we’re a majority BIPOC women and women-led organization, that was important to us.”
The culture at Community Partners allows employees to feel comfortable enough to say if they’re experiencing burnout—which is commonly considered a risk of remote work—enabling leadership to tackle the issue in an evidence-driven way. As Lara put it: “Let’s untangle this process and see what’s happening here to make their life more manageable….If you give people the resources they need in order to do their jobs, then they’re going to do a good job.”
Impact on Employers
Efrain Escobedo, CEO of the Center for Nonprofit Management, a Los Angeles nonprofit that supports organizational development in the social impact sector, sees a number of ways in which preserving work-at-home options can be beneficial for employers, and not just workers.
One benefit is that remote work policies can help attract and keep talent. As Escobedo told NPQ, “When you’re recruiting for a nonprofit, the candidates always ask you, ‘Is this a remote position or is it in-house?’ So, that is a good competitive strategy…a good retention tool.”
Echoing Escobedo, Lara noted that her organization’s talent recruiter said applicants are impressed with how Community Partners’ flexible work policy is actually flexible. “People are looking for that split—that you can come into office as much as you want, but you only have to come in once a week,” Lara said.
Moreover, amid threats of federal funding freezes (not to mention free speech violations), remote work can be protective for both workers and organizations themselves. Remote work is “a way to extend your life expectancy right now,” Escobedo said. “Before [the pandemic], letting go of your [organization’s] lease would have been a sign of decline….Now, it’s a resilience strategy. It’s like you’re saying, ‘Hey, we’ll let go of the space and figure out how to do the work.’ Those strategies reflect that the most important part of our sector is the human capital.”
