🌿 Beyond Burnout: Reclaiming Wellness in Nonprofit and Community Work

May is Mental Health Awareness Month—a time when we’re reminded that wellness is not a luxury or afterthought. For those in nonprofit and community-centered work, it must be a priority. Every day, we show up in the name of justice, love, and dignity, often pouring from empty cups and being applauded for doing so. But this culture of overwork, urgency, and depletion is not sustainable—and it is not aligned with the world we’re trying to build.

At Love Before ALL, we believe wellness is leadership. Wellness is strategy. And wellness is a sacred commitment to ourselves and our people. If we want to sustain movements for freedom, justice, and healing, we must shift from burnout-driven survival to intentional, care-filled leadership rooted in love and humanity.

The Culture of “Too Much”

Too many of us in nonprofit and grassroots work are overworked, overwhelmed, overburdened, and overextended. This cycle is not just personal—it’s systemic. Many of our organizations are underfunded, our teams are understaffed, and our missions are vast. But when exhaustion becomes the norm, it limits our creativity, weakens our collaborations, and makes true transformation harder to reach.

The myth that we must give everything to “make a difference” is rooted in systems that have long extracted labor—especially from women, Black, and Brown people, and caregivers—without proper care, compensation, or rest.

Wellness Is a Leadership Skill

As we reclaim wellness, we must redefine what leadership looks and feels like. Leadership isn't about doing the most—it’s about knowing what’s most important. It’s about pausing before reacting, making space for joy, and modeling rest as a right, not a reward. It’s about cultivating environments where people feel safe to slow down and bring their full selves.

Healing-centered leadership means designing work that does not harm us. It means resisting the glorification of the grind. It means tending to our nervous systems as part of our strategy. It means embracing care as a core competency.

Practical Steps for Reclaiming Wellness at Work

1. Redesign the Pace

• Shift from urgency to intentionality. Not every task is a fire.

• Reassess deadlines with your team. Who created the timeline, and why?

• Create space for reflection during meetings, not just action planning.

2. Normalize Boundaries

• Build a culture where “No” is not seen as a betrayal, but a boundary.

• Encourage workday rituals like 10-minute movement breaks or “no meeting” zones.

• Model logging off and respecting non-work time—for yourself and others.

3. Celebrate Small Joys

• Infuse moments of joy, humor, and gratitude into staff gatherings.

• Invite team members to share what’s bringing them light—not just updates.

• Reconnect with your “why” regularly through storytelling and celebration.

4. Invest in Collective Care

• Establish wellness budgets for mental health resources, rest days, or coaching.

• Explore group care practices—like monthly wellness circles or peer support sessions.

• Train leadership in trauma-responsive/healing-centered supervision and emotional intelligence.

5. Call in the Funders

• Advocate for funders to support general operating funds that allow time for rest and care.

• Be honest in reports and conversations about the toll of the work—not just the outcomes.

• Encourage philanthropy to fund wellness and capacity—not just deliverables.

A World Worth Building Starts with Us

Healing and wellness are not separate from justice—they are its foundation. If our work for freedom replicates the extractive models we seek to dismantle, we risk burning out the very people who are holding the torch.

We must ask ourselves: What if wellness was not an afterthought, but a principle of design? What if we measured success not just in outputs but in how whole we feel?

At Love Before ALL, we know that leadership rooted in care is not soft—it is strategic. It is people-first. It is the future.

Let us lead from a place of abundance, not depletion. Let us craft a new culture—one where wellness is collective, joy is strategic, and rest is revolutionary.

Because we want more than survival as we work.
We want to live well and love well through work.

With Love, Power, and a Permission Slip to Rest,

Your Curious Cultural Architect

#LoveBeforeALL #PeopleFirstLeadership #HealingCentered