We Learned These Nonprofit Rules. We Can Unlearn Them.
We do not usually talk about nonprofit burnout as something we learned.
We talk about it as exhaustion. As overwork. As something that happened to us slowly and then all at once. But during our recent LinkedIn Live, Rewriting the Rules We Inherited from the Nonprofit System, a different truth surfaced.
Many of the habits draining nonprofit professionals today were not chosen. They were absorbed. Urgency became normal. Scarcity became a badge of honor. Self‑sacrifice became proof of commitment. These patterns helped many of us survive early in our careers. But survival is not the same as sustainability. What once kept us afloat may now be quietly costing us our wellbeing, our relationships, and the future of the sector.
That tension sat at the heart of this conversation. Not how to work harder, but how to unlearn the rules we never agreed to.
This LinkedIn Live was facilitated by Loretta Turner, Nonprofit Hive Advisory Board Member and Founder and Organizational Wellbeing Strategist at Do Good Leadership Collective. Held with both care and challenge, the conversation brought together nonprofit leaders shaped by lived experience across countries, youth leadership, employee experience, coaching, fundraising, and global partnership work, including Kate Toth, Director of Coaching & Partner Success at YMCA WorkWell; Jacob Smith, Founding Director at Composing Youth Mobility; and Marie-Ēve Monette, Director of Development at Sustainable Harvest International. Together, their reflections surfaced how nonprofit professionals absorb expectations around overwork, identity, responsibility, and care long before they feel like they ever have the power to question them.
The session was made possible with support from 8th & Home by Naomi Hattaway, whose work centers on helping organizations navigate leadership transitions with intention through advisory services, interim executive leadership, and professional development via The Well Lab.
Why This Topic Matters Right Now
Nonprofit professionals are carrying more than ever. Expectations keep rising while resources stay tight. Teams are stretched across roles, timelines, and emotional labor. And too often, the response to strain is to push through instead of pausing to consider what is actually being asked of us.
As Loretta named early in the conversation, this is both a hard time to be in nonprofit work and a potent moment to rewrite the rules. Not just the systems around us, but the internalized beliefs we carry about what good nonprofit work is supposed to look like.
Jacob captured this clearly when reflecting on his early experiences in youth leadership. As he shared, young leaders are often taught that staying up late, answering emails first, and being constantly available is simply “what you do” if you want to belong. Those norms shaped how he showed up long before he ever felt he had the power to question them.
Burnout is not just personal. It is patterned because of the systems we work within.
Core Themes from the Conversation
Survival Habits Are Not Moral Virtues
Across the conversation, panelists named how behaviors like overworking, hyper‑responsibility, and constant availability are often rooted in survival. For some, survival meant proving themselves early in their careers. For others, it was tied to lived experience, trauma, or systemic precarity.
Marie‑Ève spoke candidly about how overwork followed her from academia into the nonprofit sector, where it felt accepted rather than examined. “Overwork is just an accepted norm,” she shared. “Even if you don’t accept it, you feel like you don’t have a choice.”
What stood out was not just the habit itself, but the moment she realized she was about to pass it on. Marie‑Ève described sending an initial message to staff asking them to create coverage plans before requesting paid time off, then stopping herself. “This is what some of my previous supervisors expected from me,” she reflected. “I don’t want to do this.” She followed up with a second email, reframing time off as a right, not something to earn.
Unlearning often begins with noticing what we are about to hand down.
Culture Is What Gets Modeled, Not What Gets Said
Several speakers reflected on the gap between stated values and lived culture. Many organizations talk about wellbeing while leaders remain constantly connected, signaling that rest is allowed in theory but not in practice.
Kate named one of the stickiest inherited beliefs: “If you care, you’ll live and breathe the mission.” That equation quietly turns hours worked into a measure of worth and makes disconnection feel like disloyalty.
Kate also named how hard it can be to interrupt that pattern, even for leaders who deeply value wellbeing. “It’s all well and good to tell people to disconnect,” she said, “but if senior leaders never do, the message doesn’t land.” Culture, the panel agreed, is shaped less by policies and more by what leaders consistently model.
When Survival Mode Becomes the Job Description
A powerful reframe emerged when the group explored how to tell the difference between necessary effort and harmful patterns. Kate offered a distinction that resonated deeply. Survival mode can be temporary and chosen. Or it can be constant and expected.
“When there’s no recovery and no choice,” she shared, “it’s likely causing harm.” Many nonprofit roles quietly assume perpetual urgency, turning crisis response into a baseline expectation rather than the occasional exception.
Jacob reflected on how this showed up when he tried to protect staff by absorbing pressure himself. Even with progressive policies in place, external expectations still shaped internal strain.
Leadership Is Choosing What Not to Carry
One of the quiet leadership moments that stayed with many listeners came from Jacob’s reflection on how he used to lead under pressure. Early on, protecting his team meant absorbing as much strain as possible himself. Staying late. Holding the tension. Being the buffer.
Over time, he realized the cost of that approach. “I thought I was protecting people by carrying everything,” he shared. “What I was really teaching was that this is how leadership looks.”
That shift marked a turning point. Leadership, Jacob reflected, is not about how much you can endure. It’s about what you make visible, what you interrupt, and what you refuse to normalize. Choosing not to carry everything alone became an act of care, not stepping back or giving up.
Trauma, Care, and the Weight We Carry
Marie‑Ève and Jacob both named how lived experience shapes how people show up at work. Trauma‑informed leadership emerged as more than a framework. It became a reminder that people bring whole lives into nonprofit spaces.
Marie‑Ève spoke openly about how hyper‑responsibility and overwork can be coping mechanisms. “They’re ways of feeling like you’re in control,” she shared. “They might have helped at one time, but we have to keep asking if they’re still helping us now.”
Jacob offered a different layer to this reflection, noting how easy it is to internalize systemic pressure as a personal shortcoming. He shared that much of his growth came from recognizing that not every unmet need was his to solve, and that leadership sometimes means naming structural limits rather than absorbing them. Community care, the panel agreed, requires vulnerability and trust, not martyrdom.
Unlearning Has to Be Collective
While personal reflection matters, the panel was clear that individual insight is not enough. These norms are reinforced by boards, funders, timelines, and reporting structures.
Kate shared how growth expectations that outpace capacity often show up in funder relationships. “We can’t fix what we don’t think to question,” she reminded the group. Naming these tensions can feel risky in a scarcity‑driven sector, but silence carries its own cost.
Marie‑Ève added that small, visible actions can begin to shift culture. Using scheduled send for late‑night emails. Normalizing real working hours. Naming that staff wellbeing is not adjacent to mission. “Wellbeing is the mission,” she said, “because our staff are part of the community we serve.”
Jacob added that collective unlearning also requires leaders to stop translating systemic pressure into personal obligation. He reflected on how often nonprofit professionals internalize impossible expectations instead of naming where they come from. “When we treat structural problems like personal failures,” he shared, “we end up trying to fix ourselves instead of the system.” Making the source of pressure visible, he noted, is often the first step toward changing it.
What This Looks Like in Practice
This conversation was not about perfect policies or sweeping reform. It was about small, tangible shifts that nonprofit professionals can begin making right where they are.
1. Pause before passing down inherited expectations.
Before asking someone to stay late, cover more ground, or stretch one more time, stop and ask whether the request is truly necessary or simply familiar. This pause creates space to interrupt habits that were modeled to us but may no longer serve our teams.
2. Get precise about urgency.
Not everything is a crisis. Practice naming when something is genuinely time-sensitive and when it is habitually rushed. Clarity around urgency helps teams work with intention instead of constant adrenaline.
3. Model repair in real time.
When you notice yourself defaulting to old patterns, name it. Apologize when needed. Course-correct out loud. Repair shows teams that change is allowed, learning is ongoing, and perfection is not the expectation.
4. Widen the definition of impact.
Bring staff wellbeing into conversations with funders, boards, and partners as something that directly affects mission outcomes. When wellbeing is framed as essential infrastructure, not a side benefit, it becomes easier to protect.
5. Remember that nonprofit professionals are part of the community.
The health of our teams, boundaries, and relationships is part of the work itself. Caring for the people doing the work is not something that happens after hours. It is how sustainable impact is built.
Moving the Needle on Rewriting the Rules
Rewriting nonprofit rules does not mean rejecting care, commitment, or ambition. It means disentangling them from exhaustion and self‑erasure.
The panel closed with a simple but powerful invitation to imagine a different future.
“Collective care.” “Interdependence.” “Enough over endless.”
These are not soft ideas. They are structural ones.
What became clear in this conversation is that the rules shaping nonprofit work today are not fixed. They are learned. And what is learned can be unlearned.
Our Speakers
Loretta Turner, Nonprofit Hive Advisory Board Member and Founder & Organizational Wellbeing Strategist at Do Good Leadership Collective facilitated this conversation with clarity and care, drawing on her work supporting nonprofit leaders in building wellbeing‑centered leadership practices.
Jacob Smith, Founding Director at Composing Youth Mobility shared lived experience as a founder and youth leader, offering insight into how early norms shape long‑term leadership habits and how intentional pauses can open space for healthier culture.
Kate Toth, Director of Coaching & Partner Success at YMCA WorkWell brought an employee experience and coaching lens grounded in years of supporting nonprofit leaders across Canada, challenging the scripts we inherit and the assumptions we rarely question.
Marie‑Ève Monette, Director of Development at Sustainable Harvest International offered a deeply human perspective rooted in fundraising, global partnership work, and trauma‑informed leadership, reminding us that staff wellbeing is not adjacent to mission. It is central to it.
About The Nonprofit Hive
The Nonprofit Hive exists to make nonprofit work feel less isolating and more human. Through shared leadership, honest conversations, and relational connection, we support nonprofit professionals as they rethink what sustainable impact can look like.
If this conversation resonated, you are not alone. The Hive is here to keep asking these questions together.