Retention of paid staff is a prevalent and escalating challenge across the nonprofit sector. According to the Ontario Nonprofit Network’s 2025 State of the Sector Survey, above 50% of Ontario nonprofits reported significant difficulties with staff recruitment and retention. Data highlights worker burnout as the primary driver for these ongoing struggles. In fact, the same survey identified burnout as the second largest cause of retention issues, next to salary. This crisis is further underscored by the 2025 Changemaker Wellbeing Index, which reveals that roughly 34% of nonprofit workers feel exhausted and burnt out, with one in three prepared to leave their positions. As the sector faces intensifying service demands and reduced funding, these figures are projected to rise, signaling an urgent need for systemic intervention.
Typically, worker burnout is addressed through individualistic therapeutic techniques, such as mindfulness exercises, gratitude journaling, and self-care practices. Although such methods have strong efficacy, they frequently fail to tackle the root causes of burnout, which are connected to poor working conditions like growing job demands. These individual solutions tend to fail when systemic challenges are persistent. For example, having workers take time off for rest does not prevent the work from growing exponentially by the time they return to work.
What is more, having burnout addressed on the individual level can shift the responsibility onto the workers to adapt to an unhealthy system. It may require more time and resources, such as paying for therapy or wellness programs, unpaid recovery time, or substantial lifestyle changes, which can transfer the ‘costs’ from the employer to the employee.
To depart from these practices, we propose addressing burnout through practices of collective care. Collective care (or what Dr. Suarez-Balcazar calls collective action) refers to a “communal responsibility for people’s emotional health and wellbeing within groups or organizations.” As an alternative to individual self-care, collective care focuses on reciprocal support that is relationship-focused and builds on existing community strengths and assets. Collective care also focuses on inclusive organizational structures that allow for active participation, co-leadership, and meaningful engagement of employees when making decisions that affect their well-being and work.
Nonprofits can practice collective care in numerous ways. While increasing wages and improving working conditions remain fundamental to addressing burnout, the current funding landscape can make these structural changes difficult to implement. As an alternative, the following four care-based practices offer a pathway to reducing burnout without requiring additional financial resources.
Peer support circles.
The work of nonprofit organizations can be exhausting and overwhelming at times; doing the work isolated makes it even harder.
Peer support circles act as open and non-judgmental spaces where workers can share the challenges of their daily work and receive support from their colleagues and peers in their sector. Well-managed peer support circles are typically led by a trained facilitator, who can provide support to workers struggling with their workloads or challenging client cases. These facilitators can also provide early intervention if they notice that a peer is struggling with burnout or other mental health challenges. The goal of peer support circles is to create community and reduce the isolation that can come with conducting nonprofit work.
Beyond hero models of leadership.
Many nonprofits perform their work in vertical hierarchies, where executive team members act as key decision-makers for the organization. This model tends to center “heroes” at the top, who often themselves experience large responsibilities and growing job demands.
Giving staff a say through authentic engagement can offer a strategy for mitigating staff apathy and cynicism, which are prominent symptoms of burnout. This approach involves meaningful consultation with staff, ensuring that the organization’s collective goals and work align with staff values and lived expertise. By fostering collective leadership, organizations can cultivate a shared and attainable vision that resonates deeply with every team member.
Mutual aid.
Rooted in social justice movements, mutual aid is a framework that encourages groups and individuals to commit to ongoing resource sharing and support. Its core objective is fostering “solidarity over charity,” shifting the focus toward reciprocal exchange rather than a unidirectional flow of services from one group to another.
Nonprofits can engage in mutual aid by regularly meeting with other nonprofits to exchange ideas and share approaches. Nonprofits can also work together to pool their resources to tackle large systemic challenges. For example, they can provide additional staff time and resources when a local organization needs support. They might also consider collaborating on grant proposals and other funding opportunities, or help a smaller organization receive funding for an important initiative in their community.
By collaborating with other local organizations, nonprofits can leverage mutual aid to distribute workloads and share ideas. This collaborative approach to resource management allows organizations to meet community needs without overburdening frontline staff, while simultaneously refining their internal strategies.
Community asset mapping.
Similar to mutual aid, asset mapping examines the ways nonprofits and organizational teams can collectively work together to tackle large systemic challenges. Unlike mutual aid, this practice focuses on mapping out the current resources within organizations and communities to ensure efforts are not duplicated and strengths are leveraged.
By implementing asset mapping within internal teams, nonprofits can effectively mobilize the diverse talents of staff and have them focus on tasks they enjoy and perform well. Asset mapping can also help identify community partners and service providers that are well-positioned to meet specific client needs, enabling more appropriate referrals and reducing the pressure on staff to work beyond their scope or capacity. Ultimately, mapping these collective assets ensures that organizations meet increasing service demands while avoiding duplication and the subsequent exhaustion of individual workers.
Burnout in the nonprofit sector is a very real and large problem; however, tackling it alone is not the solution. More than ever, nonprofits need a shift in supporting staff and collaborating together. While these tips won’t solve everything, they are a start in building a stronger and healthier sector.
Katelyn Mitri is a Senior Research Consultant at Taylor Newberry Consulting. She holds a PhD in sociology from Western University and has expertise in research on work, occupations, school-to-work transitions, and social inequality. In her previous work, Katelyn served as a president for a local union and participated in union organizing. She is passionate about workers’ rights and wants to create more equitable and inclusive workplaces across the nonprofit sector.
Laine Bourassa is a Principal Consultant and co-owner at Taylor Newberry Consulting. She specializes in community-based research and evaluation, working alongside non-profits, foundations, governments, and community organizations to strengthen programs, understand impact, and support systems change. Her work focuses on participatory approaches, organizational learning, and the well-being of the people who deliver and rely on community services.
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