8 months ago, I had a call from the CEO of a mid-sized community organisation. People tend to call me when something has gone awry; so, I was a little worried seeing her number pop up on my phone.
Sure enough, this CEO was in a pickle.
In the space of three months, she’d lost an experienced manager and two excellent frontline workers.
All of them cited workload and exhaustion on the way out.
“Our culture survey results weren’t bad… not really, anyway. But I should have seen it coming.”
This sparked my curiosity.
“What do you mean? What were the signs?”
She paused for a moment.
“Honestly? Just a bunch of little things I noticed… but wasn’t seeing them all fitting together.”
Her manager had started referring to the organisation as “this place.” Not by name anymore, just… “this place.” Her staff had picked up the habit, too.
While the CEO was handing down more work than usual – it was a peak advocacy period – no-one raised it as an issue. It felt like a sign everyone was coping, and knew they’d get some down time soon.
The quality of work she was receiving had started to dip. Nothing dramatic, just enough to notice. The CEO’s response? To try to take the weight off the team by leaning in to do the clean up herself, rather than consider what the drop-off was telling her.
And there was a cultural shift she couldn’t quite put her finger on. People weren’t speaking up in meetings the way they used to, and there was a general vibe of ambivalence.
“All the signs concerned me, for sure,” she finished slowly. “But I wasn’t seeing them as a pattern.”
This phrase stuck with me since. Because what this CEO is describing isn’t actually unique to her organisation at all; it’s playing out in our non-profit sector right across the country.
Burnout driving turnover driving more burnout.
Or “burnover” as I’ve been calling it.
It tends to go like this:
A good (but completely exhausted) leader hits a wall and leaves. The pressure shifts to whoever’s left: those who step up to act during a protracted recruitment phase, and those left scrambling to carry the leftover deliverables.
This weight then becomes too much for these team members, too.
Soon the resignations are coming in thick and fast.
And it’s our middle leaders who tend to be at the centre of this cycle. Sandwiched between executive expectations and frontline delivery, they’re so often the ones absorbing the most pressure from both directions.
It’s always been a tricky gig. But with the tightening of funding, new regulation, pace of change and rise in demand for services, the middle leader leap is more challenging than ever.
The 2025 Pro Bono Australia Salary Survey found that 29% of people who left NFP roles cited burnout as the main reason. That’s up from 21% the year before. Meanwhile, 88% of leaders across our sector report being in or near burnout right now.
The personal cost of this is real, and it matters deeply. These are people who came into our sector because they believe in something, and want to make a difference. When they leave, they take skills, institutional knowledge, and community relationships that took years to build.
But we don’t often stop to consider the financial costs that come with each departure. Bentleys Australia puts the cost of replacing an experienced employee at up to 1.5 times their annual salary.
For a mid-sized organisation losing two or three middle leaders in a year, that’s hundreds of thousands of dollars. Factor in the team instability and risk to funding deliverables, and the true cost of burnover could be running into the millions in a single organisation.
I know intimately how awful burnout is. In 2020, I experienced a near-fatal burnout episode while in a government executive role. I wouldn’t wish this upon anyone – least of all the mission-focused people in our sector dedicated to the communities they serve.
The good news is that burnover is predictable.
The warning signs, like the ones this CEO described to me, are visible months before a resignation lands. The cycle is totally preventable if we act before the pattern takes hold.
Our sector runs on the commitment of good people, and right now our middle leaders are shouldering more than ever. The best investment we can make is in keeping them.
Nick Orchard
Nick Orchard is an IECL-certified performance coach with nearly 1,500 hours of coaching practice and a background spanning government, non-profit leadership, teaching, and even a stint as a hip-hop artist.
After experiencing a near-fatal burnout during his time as a senior executive, Nick rebuilt his life using evidence-based, gamified practices that helped him reframe limiting self-beliefs and create sustainable wins. That recovery became the foundation of The Big Refresh, his flagship eight-week coaching program designed to help professional teams, high performers, executives, and creatives beat burnout, reclaim clarity, and build lasting momentum.
Nick has worked with hundreds of clients, including leaders and teams from the Victorian Government, Australian Federal Government, Arup, Carers Australia, Uniting, and the Australia and New Zealand College of Anaesthetists. He helps clients across sectors, from CEOs and government directors to award-winning creatives, navigate burnout, imposter syndrome, and self-sabotage while achieving ambitious goals without sacrificing wellbeing.
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