Small Nonprofit: Fundraising Tips, Leadership Strategies, and Community-Centric Solutions
Sep 15, 2026 · 24 min · 10 segments
Send us Fan Mail Nearly half of nonprofit Executive Directors are reporting burnout as a serious concern, and that number is climbing fast. In this…
Caitlin McBrideGuestSo when Caitlin and I were talking about recording this episode, we were talking about what happens if executive directors stay on this path as a sector, and something that Caitlin said that really resonated with me personally is, if the position is a 50/50 chance of you being extremely burnt out, who's gonna want that job? Like, how are we gonna fill that leadership gap? How are we gonna encourage people to become an executive director? Becoming an executive director could have been something that I did, but actually what stopped me from applying and taking that job was how the executive director who had just left looked.
I just saw how she was put through the ringer, and I was like, "I don't want that for myself." She's a great leader, a great person.
She definitely didn't deserve that kind of dragging through the mud, and if it could happen to her, why wouldn't it happen to me? That's something that is happening to most executive directors, right? They are going through this.
So if we continue down this path, we're gonna continue to lose executive directors as they start their own businesses or maybe, you know, step out of those executive director positions into a director of programs or director of fundraising roles.
But then we have less experienced people at the very top of organization who have so much power, but not the skill set or the institutional memory to go along with it.
And I think we've all experienced that as well, if you've been in the nonprofit sector for a while, what it's like to work under an executive director who maybe shouldn't be there.
Because the people who do have that experience and knowledge and deep roots within the sector are looking at this path and saying, "Oh God, this is not for me." We're not making an executive director of a nonprofit organization a desirable role and a desirable career path.
We're making it a really, really bad outcome to a maybe long and fulfilling nonprofit career.
You know, I had a similar experience to you in looking at the burnout rate and thinking that's not actually the path that I want for myself and for my family.
I think [laughs] we definitely could have, but I think that we both really got turned off of that path because of what we saw and what we witnessed.
And that's something that I want to say to people who are either thinking about becoming an executive director or are currently an executive director.
So if you're worried about, oh, what happens if my organization sinks this year? Just know that nobody's gonna look at you and say it was your fault.
These are huge sector-wide issues, so if you need to step away and do what's right for you, that's great.
That might also be what's right for the organization to now sunset their programs or to merge with a different one.
But we really need to start thinking about how to get past this moment as painlessly as possible, although it is a very painful moment.
I know it wasn't the most optimistic and hopeful conversation, but I think that it is very realistic of what a lot of executive directors are facing.
So when Caitlin and I were talking about recording this episode, we were talking about what happens if executive directors stay on this path as a sector, and something that Caitlin said that really resonated with me personally is, if the position is a 50/50 chance of you being extremely burnt out, who's gonna want that job? Like, how are we gonna fill that leadership gap? How are we gonna encourage people to become an executive director? Becoming an executive director could have been something that I did, but actually what stopped me from applying and taking that job was how the executive director who had just left looked.
I just saw how she was put through the ringer, and I was like, "I don't want that for myself." She's a great leader, a great person.
She definitely didn't deserve that kind of dragging through the mud, and if it could happen to her, why wouldn't it happen to me? That's something that is happening to most executive directors, right? They are going through this.
So if we continue down this path, we're gonna continue to lose executive directors as they start their own businesses or maybe, you know, step out of those executive director positions into a director of programs or director of fundraising roles.
But then we have less experienced people at the very top of organization who have so much power, but not the skill set or the institutional memory to go along with it.
And I think we've all experienced that as well, if you've been in the nonprofit sector for a while, what it's like to work under an executive director who maybe shouldn't be there.
Because the people who do have that experience and knowledge and deep roots within the sector are looking at this path and saying, "Oh God, this is not for me." We're not making an executive director of a nonprofit organization a desirable role and a desirable career path.
We're making it a really, really bad outcome to a maybe long and fulfilling nonprofit career.
You know, I had a similar experience to you in looking at the burnout rate and thinking that's not actually the path that I want for myself and for my family.
I think [laughs] we definitely could have, but I think that we both really got turned off of that path because of what we saw and what we witnessed.
And that's something that I want to say to people who are either thinking about becoming an executive director or are currently an executive director.
So if you're worried about, oh, what happens if my organization sinks this year? Just know that nobody's gonna look at you and say it was your fault.
These are huge sector-wide issues, so if you need to step away and do what's right for you, that's great.
That might also be what's right for the organization to now sunset their programs or to merge with a different one.
But we really need to start thinking about how to get past this moment as painlessly as possible, although it is a very painful moment.
I know it wasn't the most optimistic and hopeful conversation, but I think that it is very realistic of what a lot of executive directors are facing.
The rest of this transcript — segmented and speaker-labeled, so you land on the exact moment something was said
Search every transcript — by keyword, by phrase, or by meaning, across every show Radar indexes
Trends — what is surging across podcasts, measured against its own baseline
Alerts — when a name you follow appears in a newly indexed episode
No account is needed to search Radar.
