Most people don't notice burnout until Stage 3 or 4. By then, a lot of damage has already been done.

Burnout doesn't begin with exhaustion — it begins with passion. And in the nonprofit sector, the earliest warning signs look a lot like your best employee: high energy, saying yes to everything, working late because they believe in the work.

Dr. Gail North and the late Dr. Herbert Freudenberger mapped burnout as a slow, predictable five-stage erosion — not a sudden collapse. Understanding those stages could change how you lead, how you support your team, and how you take care of yourself.

Because the question every leader needs to sit with isn't whether burnout is happening in their organization. It's which stage they — and the people counting on them — are already in.

Read the full article to learn all five stages, recognize the signs before it's too late, and find out why Stage 1 is the most dangerous one of all.

Let me ask you something before we get into any definitions or frameworks.

Think about the last time you dreaded opening your laptop. Or the moment you caught yourself going through the motions on work that used to energize you. Or that Sunday night feeling — that low-level dread before the week even starts.

Sound familiar?

The past few years have been nothing short of a whirlwind for nonprofits, bringing challenges we never anticipated and testing our resilience like never before. As a nonprofit Executive Director, I’ve seen firsthand the waves of upheaval nonprofits have had to navigate. In early 2020, we were moving full steam ahead with ambitious goals when, almost overnight, everything shifted. When COVID-19 hit, many of us left our offices thinking we’d return in a couple of weeks. Instead, we adapted to an entirely new way of working, only to face even more daunting obstacles upon our return to the office regime.

Recently, The New York Times published an article by Emily Steel about GLAAD CEO Sarah Kate Ellis, and it got me thinking about a trend that drives me crazy: the unfair scrutiny of non-profit leaders. These articles often paint CEOs or Executive Directors (EDs) as villains, accusing them of misspending donations and grant funds. Many times, these alarm bells are sounded by disgruntled ex-employees or misguided former board members. It seems that journalists rarely take the time to truly understand the non-profit sector beyond getting a response quote to specific questions from the organization.

Don't get me wrong, genuine wrongdoing should be exposed and punished. However, these exposés often do a hatchet job on the individual and the non-profit, leaving lasting scars on both that can take years to heal. In the case of GLAAD, the criticisms aimed at Sarah Kate Ellis seem unfounded.