It Doesn't Have to be this Hard

I've worked hard jobs in my career. From cleaning fast food grease traps to managing complicated calendars. I've made cold calls, PowerPoints, and hamburgers. I've scrubbed floors, built programs, hired (and fired) employees, and managed union negotiations. But bar none, the most difficult work I've ever embarked on was nonprofit management — especially in the small community nonprofit world.   

We are running businesses on too little revenue and dollars we had to beg for. We are producing goods and services that corporations won't touch because there's no profit margin. We are serving our entire community while politicians argue over which of our neighbors deserves help.   

And we keep showing up.   

The work is difficult. The hours are countless. The job is dirty and tough. And thankless.   

And we keep showing up.   

This industry is tough.   

And we keep showing up.   

But while there are — and always will be — difficult parts of this job (lifting up an entire community on little to no money is not for the faint of heart), what may come as a surprise is that many community nonprofits are making it far harder than it needs to be.   

I got my start in nonprofit work through community theater. Early in my career I began working with a company whose team was on the edge of burnout. That team was made up of five big-hearted, theater-loving community members. That's it. No executive or artistic director, no production team, nothing. Just five dedicated people putting together show after show after show — alone. They rotated the executive board titles, but the job descriptions of president, treasurer, and secretary seemed to mean little, because they were all pulling together to do everything. No one had an assigned task. It was all hands on deck, all day, every day.   

This level of dedication is why I'm so drawn to this industry. These are my favorite types of nonprofits — the small team of passionate, dedicated people trying to create a better world.   

But these were not employees. They were volunteers. And not the kind with wealth and retirement. Every single one of them had jobs, families, and obligations outside this work. They kept showing up. But the cracks were showing — infighting, stress, and across-the-board burnout.   

Their dedication to the work was creating a situation that threatened the survival of the company itself.   

Stop and think about that. Their hard work was damaging the organization. Their passion to keep going was taking them down the road to closure.   

Why? How could hard work and dedication destroy the very thing they were working for?   

Because passion is not enough.    

Even the most dedicated volunteer has a breaking point. Burnout happens to everyone. And it was killing this community nonprofit.   

The problem is that the nature of this work leads us to see sacrifice as a virtue. We pour our blood, sweat, and tears into a mission and tell ourselves: I'm suffering for my community.   

But do we need to suffer? No. In fact, the more we suffer, the more we put our organizations — and our missions — at risk.   

At the start, pulling together to fulfill the mission feels satisfying — even energizing. But that structure has a shelf life. When you're deep in the day-to-day of running a nonprofit, it's easy to lose sight of the horizon. And if no one is looking up, the organization never gets ahead of itself. It just survives — until it doesn't.   

Building something sustainable means separating the work of running the organization from the work of leading it.   

That starts with a clear distinction between your board of directors and your staff. Staff — paid or volunteer — focus on mission fulfillment: the programs, the people, the day-to-day. The board focuses on the future: financial health, strategic direction, organizational sustainability. This separation isn't bureaucracy for its own sake. It's what allows an organization to function today while also planning for tomorrow.   

Even in a small all-volunteer organization, this matters. Designating at least one person to own the operational and business side of the mission — call them Executive Director, Managing Director, Business Manager, or anything else that fits your culture — creates the capacity to get out of the weeds. The title is not the point. The job description is.   

That's exactly the first step we took with my theater company. Two of the five became the operational staff, focused on producing shows. The other three turned their attention to building a foundation for the future. The relief was immediate. That simple structural shift released a pressure valve of built-up stress — and suddenly, they could tend to both the mission and the future without sacrificing one for the other.   

But separating leadership into those two roles was only the beginning. Within both the staff and the board, systems need to exist to support the work each is doing. Staff need clear policies and procedures that outline how mission fulfillment actually happens. The board needs bylaws that define how it functions and makes decisions. These aren't formalities — they're the foundation.   

And they need to be built intentionally. Each governing document should reflect the organization's mission and ethos. It should fit the organization as it actually exists, not as a generic template assumes it does. Most importantly, these documents need to be written to last — clear, concise, and built to guide the organization regardless of who is sitting in the leadership chairs five, ten, or twenty years from now.   

They are the map. And every organization needs one.   

This structure also creates the capacity to do the work that actually moves the needle — and for most small nonprofits, that work is financial. Managing money, building donor relationships, and keeping the lights on. My theater was no exception.   

Like most community theaters, production costs consistently outpaced ticket revenue. They needed contributions, gifts, and grants. They needed fundraisers and appeal letters. They needed donor stewardship. They needed a plan — and up until they restructured, no one had had the bandwidth to build one.   

The new structure changed that. With staff handling the day-to-day of mission fulfillment, the board could finally do what a board is supposed to do: budget, plan ahead, meet with donors, and steward the organization's financial future. Meanwhile, staff focused on increasing ticket sales, securing business sponsorships, pursuing in-kind donations for productions, and building budgets that kept spending in line.   

Clearer structure also makes it dramatically easier to grow the team. Recruiting volunteers has always been an uphill battle when the ask is "come help us do everything." Nobody signs up for that. But when the expectations are clear and the role is defined, people say yes. And as any nonprofit professional knows, your volunteer base is your lifeline. A well-structured organization — one where people know what they're walking into and what's expected of them — can build committees, expand its reach, and create the kind of sustained momentum that grows the mission without burning down the people behind it.   

That's what separating duties and building clear structures can do for a nonprofit. It was certainly true for my theater. It took an organization headed toward closure — worn down by burnout and held together by sheer will — and turned it into a healthy, functioning company that is still proudly serving its community today.   
And this theater is not a unique story. Walk into almost any small community nonprofit and you will find a version of it. The humane society running on the dedication of a handful of animal lovers who haven't taken a day off in years. The community band or orchestra held together by one overextended volunteer who handles everything from scheduling rehearsals to writing grant applications. The food bank where the same three people show up every single week because no one else knows how to. The women's shelter where the staff are so deep in crisis response they haven't looked at their bylaws since they were written. The community center that hasn't updated its policies since the founding executive director left a decade ago. Different missions, different communities, different people — same structural cracks. The problems are not unique. And neither are the solutions.   

The impact of creating structure also extends beyond the organization itself — it reaches the people inside it. When the systems are working, when roles are clear and the weight is distributed, something shifts personally too. You are no longer white-knuckling every day. You have space to breathe, to think, to actually show up for the work you came here to do. Because here's the truth: when you are exhausted, underfed, and running on caffeine and guilt, you are not doing your best work. You are making reactive decisions instead of strategic ones. You are snapping at your volunteers, missing the details, and slowly resenting the mission you once loved. That is not dedication. That is damage. Taking care of yourself — setting boundaries, taking time off, asking for help, saying no — is not a betrayal of your community. It is what makes it possible to keep showing up for them. The mission needs you sustainable, not martyred.   

The hard parts of this work are real. Nobody is going to fix the funding landscape or make the politics easier or add more hours to your day. But the self-inflicted hard? The burnout, the chaos, the reinventing the wheel every crisis? That part is fixable. You don't have to earn your dedication through suffering. Build the structure, protect your people — including yourself — and let the mission do what it was always meant to do.   

Now go do some good.