Nonprofit burnout follows a script: a mission that justifies everything, programs that accumulate but never end, unpaid hours reframed as commitment, and then the 'sudden' resignation of the person holding it all together — who had been signaling for a year. Leadership responds with a wellness webinar, and the script runs again on the next person.
This worksheet interrupts the script with arithmetic: a capacity table comparing paid hours to actual hours per person, a mission-creep inventory of everything nobody ever decided to do, an unpaid-labor check (including the nonexempt time-recording violations hiding inside 'devotion'), a burnout signal scan, a forced priority ranking — and the deliverable that makes it real: a stop-doing list the executive director signs and communicates.
Who should use this triage worksheet
- Executive directors watching their best people dim
- Boards hearing workload themes in every exit interview
- Program directors asked to add without ever subtracting
- Funders and consultants assessing organizational sustainability
What it helps prevent
- Resignations that arrive 'suddenly' after a year of visible signals
- Mission creep absorbing capacity no one allocated
- Unpaid overtime normalized as commitment (and illegal for nonexempt staff)
- New programs stacked on teams already past capacity
- Leadership discovering the math only in exit interviews
What’s inside
- Part 1 — Capacity Reality (per person or team)
- Part 2 — Mission Creep Inventory
- Part 3 — Unpaid Labor Expectations
- Part 4 — Burnout Signal Scan
- Part 5 — Priority Reset
- Part 6 — The Stop-Doing List (leadership signs this)
Mission does not replace infrastructure. If the same people problem keeps coming back, the system needs to be rebuilt.
Faulkner HR Solutions helps Texas employers, nonprofits, municipalities, and growing businesses fix the people systems behind recurring workplace problems. If this resource raised a risk flag, do not guess your way through the next step.