Dear Social Sector Leaders,

I have stopped calling you “nonprofit” leaders because what kind of nonsense category is that?

 
I am going to “out” you right now. Not by name. But here’s what you say over the late night calls, or after a glass of wine, or when you are so worn out you can’t censor any longer.

 
You are so darn tired and secretly feeling kind of bitter and angry.

 
Your board is on your last nerve. Dealing with their “brilliant” ideas, their micromanaging and ego servicing means you can barely get your work done.

 
Their job is to fairly evaluate you, follow good governance and secure resources in support of the mission. They spend their time on everything else – meanwhile steadily adding to your workload with an ever-expanding set of expectations. They are less concerned with getting fundraising and governance muscle on the board than they are with getting their friends. They want board service to be fun and good for networking. Some use their board role to bully and grandstand at your expense. Their version of service is self-service.

 
No, not all, you feel obligated to say. But the good ones are letting the bad ones run the show. Volunteers won’t stand up to other volunteers, won’t risk a fissure, over volunteer business.

 
It has become especially hard to get your job done, since the people you once called teammates are “quiet quitting” or worse continuing to “sort of show up” heaving big sighs as if they are the most put upon laborers to ever walk the earth. They say they can’t do the assignments they’re given because no one has trained them or told them how and when they are told how they complain that they don’t like being micromanaged by their supervisors. They thought the job would “be more creative, easier, less stressful, more transformative.” No matter who gets helped or how heroically the team performed, they will complain that you are not doing “systemic change”. Their idea of a boss is someone who is supposed to rearrange the world, so it works better for them. Work is supposed to come to a stop for their feelings. The social sector attracts quite a few dedicated hard-working and mission-driven folks and also, unfortunately, those who want a softer, easier world and complain if you don’t deliver it to them.

 
You find you are pushing the board and pulling the staff, and heaven help you if you can’t make your donors look like heroes every dang day.

 
This is a formula for exhaustion.

 
The clients you serve are in more trouble than ever. Their needs are deeper, and people are more desperate. Incidents of violence and mental health fractures at your locations are up and you and your team – those that continue to show up and serve – are the only reachable target. You’ve become the dumping ground for rampant rage and despair.

 
The worst is now you are told by ‘tapioca pudding’ versions of organizational advisors, to practice “self-care” and that “you are enough.” Those that lob advice from the safe distance of “consultant” or “coach” have new insights about how you can add new practices to your day.

 
This is like drizzling icing over weariness. There aren’t enough executive retreats, or spa days, or affirmations to replenish your energy or reignite your appetite for the mission. You are not enough, and don’t trust anyone who tells you that you are.

 
You all need one another. All you social sector leaders. You need friends. Real friends. People who care about you enough to help you sort the reasonable from the unreasonable. To help you rethink expectations. To help you find yourself amidst a cacophony of expectations and demands.

 
This is not a feeling exercise. This is a thinking exercise. An execution challenge. You will emerge from this current profound exhaustion if you have a strategy, not a band aid, not a fantasy, but a set of doable steps.

 
If you want to reset, calm down, and reclaim your direction and sense of purpose, reflection works. Reassessing works. Not worrying. Not fixing. Not running from problem to problem, from fire to fire.

Reflecting.

 
Here are some questions some of you have contributed:

What went on this past year? When did we soar? How were we able to pull of hard things? Who stepped up? Where did I witness compassion, nurturing behavior?
What unwinnable fights am I in? And what’s the lowest energy consumption method for extricating myself from them?

 What resource parameters have changed and have we incorporated this new parameter?
Who needs to know now that we won’t be doing what they’re asking (demanding)?
What appreciation efforts brought the best rewards?
What’s being demanded and by whom?
What must be addressed? (both reasonable and unreasonable)

 
These and other questions form the basis for systematic “unhooking” and resetting our orientation to our work. Yes, we must draw on a deeper well of meaning to be able to go on in the face of so much need relative to resources, but we are not meant to martyr ourselves. Unjustified expectations creep into our thinking, become a part of the fabric of how we see our performance, the same way unfunded mandates creep into our funding contracts.

 
We can’t allow aspirations to become expectations unless there is agreement and an adequate budget is attached. Methodically unhooking ourselves – peeling away these expectations, we get back in alignment with available resources and set a course direction and a pace that does not require sacrificial effort.

 
We know if we are doing this well because we go to work with enthusiasm, not resentment. With clarity, not weariness.

 
We need one another to help us with these questions because we are swimming against the tide. The tide of need. The tide of shifting responsibility to the sector that can’t complain. The sector that is supposed to keep rising above. The sector where we dump everything that the private sector can’t profit from, and that the public sector can’t solve or take credit for.

 
I wrote this for all of you –
Love,
Angela

“My heart is moved by all I cannot save:
so much has been destroyed
I have to cast my lot with those
who age after age, perversely,
with no extraordinary power,
reconstitute the world.”
Adrienne Rich, “Natural Resources,” 1977