Burnout Isn’t Yours to Fix Alone

Notes from My Conversation with Katie Miller, Prevention Institute

Guest Post – Jason Lacsamana, Director, Programs and Partnerships

We all feel the burden of burnout. And reading headlines and articles only serves to perpetuate the feeling with ideas like “Burnout is real,” “Set better boundaries,” and “Take care of yourself.” While those reminders are well-intended, they miss the truth. Burnout is not just personal. It’s structural. The onus shouldn’t be solely on an individual to avoid or fix it.

Recently, I talked with Katie Miller of Prevention Institute, who has spent years in the trenches of community-based public health, about this topic.

Katie and I both care deeply about the nonprofit sector, about the people doing the work, and about the systems that have long relied on passion while refusing to resource it properly.

We also both believe that it’s not that we’re doing it wrong. The system asks too much.

No one goes into nonprofit or community-based work thinking, “I want to be exhausted and underpaid.” We’re here because we believe in change. We care about people.

There’s an unspoken pressure in our field to do more with less, be grateful for any support, and say “yes” to everything.

As Katie mentioned, when burnout shows up, the message is that we’re not doing enough self-care. It becomes a form of self-blame. And the solutions are usually individual, such as buying a wellness product, managing your time better, or going to the gym.

Suggestions like these ignore the reality that so many of us are facing. As Katie calls out, we’re in a sandwich generation of raising kids, caring for elders, navigating broken education and healthcare systems, all while trying to survive in under-resourced, over-expected jobs. Those individual strategies just become one more thing on the to-do list.

Katie and I also discussed burnout as a symptom of a larger issue. The belief that burnout is a failure of personal resilience is wholly misplaced. It’s really a signal that the systems around us aren’t working.

As a funder, I’ve seen the sector inadvertently set organizations up to fail. A nonprofit might request $100,000 to run a program, and the grantor will ask them to accept $75,000 instead. The grantee will because they have no other options.

This doesn’t consider the reality that the actual cost may be significantly higher. It’s unfair and unsustainable to underfund programs from the start and still expect excellence. Beyond that, the funding burden is burning people out.

This is especially true with grassroots organizations led by Black, Indigenous, immigrant, and other community-rooted leaders. Katie points out that when funders don’t offer flexibility, coalitions tend to shape their work around what the money will fund, rather than what the community needs. It becomes performative. And that’s when people start to break.

Katie and I (and so many others) want to work towards something better and focus on what helps. We need more than PTO and wellness stipends. We need structural support that includes core operating dollars, flexible and trust-based funding, non-transactional partnerships, and healthy workplace cultures where individuals are supported, not stretched.

At SJF, we try to co-design with partners like Prevention Institute. We’re not perfect, but we’re committed to naming power dynamics and talking honestly about capacity and expectations.

On the partner side, Katie’s focus is on funders who can sit in the truth with us, who recognize that things are hard. That we’re not okay all the time. When we name it together, we can build together. Sometimes, just being in community with peers, partners, or people who understand makes a huge difference.

I am aware that community plays a significant role in our professional and personal well-being. Community is healing, and burnout thrives in isolation. Burnout thrives in isolation. Building coalitions and fostering authentic relationships, not just professional alliances but human ones, is when we start to breathe again.

Katie agrees. The narrative tells us that the cure for burnout lies in individual action. However, the truth is that it lies in collective care, systems that support us, funders who listen, and partnerships rooted in trust.

Burnout isn’t a personal failure. And it’s not on individuals to fix. We believe burnout is a call for something better. A big thank you to Katie for having this important conversation with me. I know that together we can build toward something that doesn’t just sustain the work, but sustains the people doing it.

 

Learn more about the Intersections Initiative and our multi-year relationship with Prevention Institute here. If you aren’t already, you can connect with Katie and me on LinkedIn.