Bi-Weekly Wellbeing Brief: 1/12/2026
January 12 Overview:
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.
🪫 The B-word: What’s happening with Burnout?
A growing concern for the sector is the fracturing talent pipeline. This article from The Chronicle of Philanthropy (written by Wendy Kopp) warns that young people are increasingly turning away from nonprofit and social-impact careers because they’re observing a system that sends a clear message: this work costs too much. A major risk of not redesigning nonprofit work is losing the next generation of leaders.
That risk is echoed in a recent Forbes Nonprofit Council piece, which argues that burnout isn’t inevitable. Melanie Schild frames burnout as a collective outcome of how we reward urgency, normalize sacrifice, and equate worth with overwork. Nonprofits, they argue, now face a choice: reinforce a culture of depletion or intentionally build something more humane and sustainable.
We’re once again seeing data that shows us that burnout is context-specific. Reporting from Western North Carolina shows how nonprofit staff responding to Hurricane Helene are experiencing layered trauma: personal loss, community devastation, and relentless service demand. For organizations like Safelight embedded in environmental and climate crises, burnout becomes compounded by grief, fear, and long recovery timelines.
💭 Innovations & New Thinking
Encouragingly, solutions are becoming more structural and cross-sectoral. This is our second edition where we’ve featured wellbeing investments from local governments (see this first edition). CITY OF LONG BEACH DEPARTMENT OF HEALTH SERVICES AND HUMAN SERVICES and is offering $2,500–$5,000 mini-grants to support nonprofit staff wellness, professional development, and organizational capacity—explicitly naming staff support as essential to community wellbeing.
On the other side of the country, there is a statewide workforce initiative rolling out in Maine. A new Employee Assistance Program (EAP) for nonprofit workers reflects growing public recognition that workforce stress affects entire communities. As local Executive Director Jennifer Hutchins shared: “When nonprofit employees are burnt out, our entire communities feel the result.”
Corporations are crafting their responses to nonprofit burnout as well. Salesforce has publicly acknowledged the burnout it observes among nonprofit partners and is responding with AI tools designed to reduce administrative burden and free up staff capacity. Corporate philanthropy in Canada (RBC) sees a $7M investment in nonprofit capacity-building underscores a growing belief that burnout mitigation is a strategic investment, not a perk.
An Inc. Magazine article urges a shift in mindset—from treating nonprofits as “charities” to seeing them as complex organizations that require intentional design, infrastructure, and investment. This reframing is critical for burnout prevention.
📍 Local to San Diego
As San Diego nonprofits face rising service demand, workforce strain, and climate-related pressures, these national and international examples offer clear signals. Micro-grants from local government, EAP-style supports, tech partnerships, and capacity funding are all adaptable strategies that could strengthen the region’s nonprofit ecosystem in 2026.
✅ Quick Takeaways
Young people are rejecting burnout risk by opting out of high stress and low-paying environments--many of which exist in the nonprofit and social sectors
Structural investments for nonprofits (grants, EAPs, tech, capacity funding) are gaining attention across all sectors
The reframing of nonprofits as organizations—not charities—is an essential step in supporting the wellbeing of nonprofit leaders
Do Good Leadership Collective is a San Diego-based consultancy that helps social impact professionals Do Good and Be Well.
