Burnout is top of mind for nonprofit leaders in 2024, despite relative consistency in nonprofit organizations’ finances and relationships with funders. This is one of the key insights in a new CEP report, State of Nonprofits 2024: What Funders Need to Know, released today.

This report revisits the core questions from a similar survey of a nationally representative panel of nonprofit leaders a year ago, shedding light on nonprofit organizations’ staffing, finances, and relationships with funders in 2024.

In the report, nonprofit leaders overwhelmingly express concern about burnout — both for themselves and their staff — a concern that was present in last year’s report, too. Virtually all of our respondents indicate at least some level of concern about staff burnout, with a third reporting that staff burnout is “very much” a concern. On top of this continued worry about staff burnout, nearly 90 percent of leaders note some level of concern about their own burnout.

While burnout is a perennial issue in nonprofit organizations, our data indicate tat nonprofit leaders’ alarm over the issue is not abating but rising. Half of those we surveyed are more concerned about their own burnout now than they were at this time last year. One leader told us, “I have been a nonprofit leader for 20 years and I’ve not experienced a reality like the one I am in currently. […] There are no trailblazers that have faced this path before us, to guide and advise, [for] wisdom. It is a wild world right now.”

Read the full article about nonprofit staff burnout by Christina Im and Seara Grundhoefer at The Center for Effective Philanthropy.