For SELC to continue to grow and increase its effectiveness as an organization, SELC’s Core Staff should be supported in their personal growth and professional development. This policy is designed to empower individual staff to take responsibility for their own professional development, and provide an efficient mechanism for staff to remain accountable to the rest of the organization in how they make use of professional development opportunities.

For the purposes of this policy, “professional development” refers to any learning activity intended to improve or deepen a Core Staff member’s skills, knowledge, abilities, and behavior as they relate to their present or future role at SELC.

The following section is temporarily suspended due to bookkeeping and admin concerns: Additionally, an employee’s annual professional development fund may be used to support employee’s mental, emotional, physical wellness by covering the costs for things such as acupuncture, therapy, massage, nutritional support therapy, meditation retreat or instruction etc. SELC considers this wellness work part of professional development. This fund will not cover any costs typically covered by medical insurance like prescription drugs, standard doctor visits, medical equipment, or specialized medical care. 

Personal responsibility for professional development: Each Core Staff member is encouraged to take personal responsibility for their own professional development. This includes a responsibility to determine one’s own professional development needs and how they relate to SELC’s organizational needs, to register for relevant learning opportunities, and to make responsible use of these opportunities to improve one’s ability to effectively and creatively fulfill their role at SELC.

Financial support for professional development: At the beginning of each year and based on each year’s projected organizational budget, SELC will earmark a reasonable amount of funding toward professional development, to be split evenly among SELC’s Core Staff. For 2022, this amount is $500 per core staff member. Each staff member will have access to their professional development budget to be used at their own discretion, within certain limits as described below:

• Core staff can use up to 1/3 of their professional development funds for the purchase of books or other print materials related to their roles at SELC.

• Unused funds will not carry over into the following year, and staff will not be entitled to cash out unused funds.

• If the staff member feels that a training is more for the benefit of SELC as a whole and not a high priority for the staff member’s professional development (Example: If it would benefit SELC to send someone to a day-long grant research training), the person attending may ask that the training not be included in the staff member’s professional development allocation. In this case, the expense will come from another budget category, such as “miscellaneous.”

Accountability: Staff will have an annual budget to use for professional development activities and broad discretion on how to best use those funds. Staff will log professional development activities in the SELC expense document for other staff to review, and request reimbursement by submitting an expense sheet. When entering the expense into the expense document, a staff member shall tag the expense as “Professional Development.” For learning opportunities that require staff to miss a staff meeting or fundraising event, s/he will notify other staff of the training and ask if there are any objections to missing the meeting or event in order to attend the training.

Update Log

12/21/22: Temporarily suspended ability to use professional development fund for medical expenses.