Burnout is Real—And Funders Can Help

At Mighty Arrow, we recognize we are incredibly lucky to be in the position we are, giving away capital and meeting remarkable individuals and organizations working to solve our planet’s evolving challenges.  To honor our community we spent a year intentionally listening to our Mighty Partners, looking for better ways to support the people on the frontlines of the work ahead.   As former entrepreneurs we know business as usual doesn’t cut it, and we’ve learned so much from this year of research. We created the Mighty Partner Report summarizing our learnings, and in an effort to bolster support and galvanize collective power, we’ll be diving deeper into one aspect of what we learned from our partners each month.

What we learned

Mental health, wellness and work-life balance aren't just buzzwords for our Mighty Partners—they are urgent and persistent challenges shaping the daily realities of nonprofit teams across the country. In our Mighty Partner Project Report, more than 83% of partners surveyed reported personal or team burnout, pointing to a number of contributing factors. One participant broke it down this way: “Our work is hard, both in terms of its level (capacity), as well as its complexity (difficulty), and its weight (it can be heavy).” 

Pei-Yee Woo, Co-Executive Director of Kitchen Table Advisors speaks to this point in more detail, “Our work is very personalized and relationship-driven, requiring a lot of energy and mental space. The topics we grapple with are heavy. Supporting our team's mental health and wellbeing as they in turn support farmers and ranchers who they're in deep relationship with is an ongoing challenge.”

And we need these partners to keep working on their missions. Many organizations are doing their best to respond to the human needs beneath the program purpose. From unlimited PTO policies and sabbaticals, to trauma-informed wellness trainings, flexible schedules and dedicated retreat days—leaders are prioritizing care for their teams. As Kat Calvin, Founder and Executive Director of Spread the Vote wisely put it: “The thing that I always tell my team is you can either kill yourself for two years and then you have to stop or you can work at a reasonable pace and take breaks and do this work for 20 years. But you have to make that choice… it's really, really critical that we take those breaks.”

Even with thoughtful policies in place, the capacity to implement and sustain these efforts is often underfunded. Teams may have generous leave policies, but not the staff coverage or budget to use them. Others recognize the need for healing spaces but lack the unrestricted dollars to prioritize them. The result? Dedicated, passionate people doing transformative work while hovering dangerously close to burnout.

That’s where funders can—and must—step in.

Partners told us that dedicated wellness support from funders has been game-changing, and that unrestricted, multi-year funding allows their teams to build structures to support programmatic work. Survey respondents shared how funders have stepped up in unique ways—for example, a $10,000 COVID relief grant in April 2020 helped one team transition to remote work and manage childcare, while another received $20,000 for wellness support following a community mass shooting, allowing them to access therapy and PTSD care. Or simply chipping in to help a team gather in person or cover lunch sends a powerful message: Your well-being matters.

We heard clear calls for funders to:

• Support retreats, sabbaticals and team-building gatherings

• Offer capacity-building that includes change management and burnout prevention

• Normalize investment in staff well-being as a core part of organizational health

"The most important thing is that we have a culture where folks feel like priority is to pause and make sure folks are safe and supported,” says Kristian Aguilar, Director of Development and Special Projects for Mi Familia Vota and Mi Familia Vota Education Fund.

Well-being is not a luxury—it's a strategy for sustaining movements, cultivating leadership and building resilient organizations. And in an unprecedented and shifting landscape, taking care of one another is seen as a radical act… but it is absolutely vital. It’s why we launched the Mighty Partner Project. We listened and learned and we’re committed to allowing this symphony of stories to guide us in our grantmaking, and how we show up for our community of partners.  

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A grounding question for us at Mighty Arrow is to ask “how can we do a better job of taking care of the people?” Mental Health and burnout are just one set of lessons we heard by asking that question in our Mighty Partner Report. We’ll continue to dig deeper in the blog posts ahead.