This is our first Bi-Weekly Wellbeing Brief of 2026. This edition features four weeks (instead of the usual 2 weeks) of information on nonprofit burnout trends and innovations in workplace wellbeing. As we step into a new year, many nonprofit and social-impact professionals are returning to work with both hope and fatigue. The reality of burnout has stayed the same, and fortunately, the conversation about wellbeing has not slowed. What’s emerging is a clearer and more mature understanding that burnout is shaped by culture, crisis, systems, and curiosities about how the work will be carried ahead.

This is our last Bi-Weekly Wellbeing Brief for 2025! Although we only started this initiative a few months ago, we're thrilled to see the response from our online community. Despite Thanksgiving last week, our inbox was flooded with news on #NonprofitBurnout and #NonprofitWellbeing. Thematically, we read several articles tackling burnout as it relates to specific populations (immigration lawyers, those of Jewish faith, etc.). We’re seeing a wave of creative, structural, and even experimental solutions. The field is moving beyond “more resilience” and toward multi-layered strategies that address the roots of exhaustion.

As the holiday season emerges, burnout continues to percolate as a systemic challenge in the nonprofit sector. However, funders, local governments, and other networks are increasingly responding with strategic investments in people and structural support to curb burnout. These developments are shifting the narrative towards wellbeing being foundational to sustaining impact.

Burnout remains an epidemic in the nonprofit and social-impact sector, although innovations are steadily gaining more attention and momentum across the country. Funders, organizations and leadership teams are shifting from simply acknowledging the problem to testing structural responses.

Burnout in the nonprofit sector continues to disrupt organizations and workers across the country: nonprofit staff are stretched beyond capacity with workloads, community commitments are piling high, and the risk of people depletion is mounting. At the same time, innovation is emerging: organizations are beginning to rethink roles and job quality, funders are speaking out about their own burnout stories and need for wellbeing, and conversations about long-term investment in people might be signaling a possible shift toward sustainable wellbeing.