The Center for Effective Philanthropy’s annual State of Nonprofits report is out, and its findings were not a major surprise: nonprofit leaders are increasingly burned out at the exact moment philanthropy is asking them to take on more complex systems-level collaboration like shared advocacy campaigns, shared services, or coordinated data collection.

That tension, shown in the 2026 State of Nonprofits report, deserves more attention.

The report highlighted worsening CEO burnout, increased difficulty securing foundation funding, and nonprofits continuing to pivot in order to stay afloat. Leaders reporting that their burnout is “very much” a concern jumped to 46% in 2026, up from just under 30% in 2025. Meanwhile, 60% of nonprofit CEOs say that, since January 2025, it has become harder to secure foundation grants relative to the past.

Nonprofits exist because there are deep community needs that are not adequately supported by public institutions. Of course, organizations are going to do everything they can to keep programs running because, often, lives quite literally depend on it. But at some point, nonprofit leaders work themselves to exhaustion, and that is clearly happening at a much higher rate now, arguably at the exact moment we need their skills, relationships, and passion the most.

At the same time, there is growing interest across philanthropy in systems-level solutions, as reflected in this year's State of Nonprofits report. Funders are increasingly encouraging nonprofits to collaborate more deeply, share infrastructure, coordinate strategy, and build ecosystem-level responses to community challenges. In many ways, that shift makes sense. Some problems are simply too large and interconnected for organizations to solve alone.

The interest in ecosystem-level work is not coming from nowhere in this year's State of Nonprofits report. Many funders are responding to a real problem: fragmented systems, duplicated efforts, and organizations competing for limited resources while trying to address interconnected challenges. A single grant to a single organization often cannot solve issues that are structural in nature. Collaboration, shared advocacy, pooled resources, and coordinated strategy can absolutely create stronger outcomes.

Read the full article about nonprofit leaders' burnout by Laura Hennighausen at The Center for Effective Philanthropy.