Many nonprofit professionals experience a crisis of faith known as “social justice fatigue”. This happens when social change agents are so overwhelmed that they find themselves asking, “Do I even care about this issue anymore?” When this occurs, you can take several steps to either reconnect to the social justice cause or transition to another issue or career. 

Be honest with yourself about the cause of your social justice fatigue 

There are so many contributing factors to social justice fatigue. Overcoming the feeling that you are fighting for a lost cause, though, is difficult to rise above. This feeling of ideological defeat is often attributable to other factors that are unrelated to the social injustice you want to remedy. Thus, it is important to ask yourself the following questions: 

Whether you continue in the “struggle” after answering these questions comes down to whether you think you can do something about the obstacles you identify.

1. Has there been a change in your values?

When you lose interest in a social justice cause, it is time to take an inventory of your values, how they have changed, and what you believe is important now versus when you first became involved. You may have once thought that providing direct social services to the most vulnerable was the best way that you could serve. However, after years of working with that population, you have begun to feel like the issues you are addressing are never going to go away. Instead, you are working on a lost cause. If you are experiencing social justice fatigue, it is important to determine if perhaps it is time for you to shift towards advocacy or management instead of direct services.

Conversely, if you have been in advocacy, and feel like your efforts are not making a difference, perhaps it is time to shift your focus towards more systemic and institutionally focused initiatives. They may not be as exciting as participating in protests, but they can be more impactful long term.

It is also may be time to assess whether the lessons you have learned from your existing body of work compels you to shift your focus toward other issues that are more likely to make an impact on the population you are working with. In this case, you would benefit from creating a professional development plan to effectively transition into working in a new capacity or on a supplementary issue you care about. There are many ways in which you can continue to serve and maximize your impact. 

2. Have your personal priorities changed? 

When you began working in the field, you may have been interested in devoting all of your time to advancing a particular cause. Contributing to the cause may have made factors like family, financial need, or professional advancement seem unimportant to you. However, as you have gotten older, or as your personal needs and responsibilities have increased, your ability to continue your work at the same rate has become incompatible with the realities and responsibilities of your life. Thus, your social justice fatigue may not be attributable to the cause itself. It may be time to get creative so that you don’t find yourself choosing between your family or identity and your life’s passion. Instead, ask for a raise or look for other higher-paid opportunities in this field that still allow you to devote yourself to this issue. 

If you do not have the qualifications to change jobs, consider pursuing professional development opportunities, certifications, or educational opportunities. These, of course, have a cost associated with them so consider asking for scholarships or explore the possibility of your organization sponsoring professional development opportunities that can help you transition into the work you would be more fulfilled undertaking. You should not, however, ask an organization to build up your skill sets if you have no intention of staying with them. 

Professional Development Pillars

3. Are you experiencing burnout? 

A widespread epidemic that plagues nonprofits is employees that are overworked and overextended. Nonprofit workers feel like they are under a lot of pressure because if they do not perform, the people the organization serves can really suffer very negative outcomes. Nonprofit funding also makes it difficult to hire new people to take on additional functions and responsibilities. Executive Directors are also reticent to hire staff members for positions that are not sustainable. As a result, the existing staff takes on additional responsibilities beyond their job description to make sure that they can continue receiving a salary and that the mission is advanced. This has a negative impact on the employee and the organization, which begins to experience a rise in turnover. 

Employees begin to feel overwhelmed under these circumstances and separated from the mission of the organization. The fewer employees feel that they are working on the mission, the more likely to perceive that they are working for a corrupt organization, and they begin exhibiting signs of social justice fatigue. This can be addressed by working with the HR director and/or the ED to create more balanced workloads and/or comparable compensation, adding more self-care routines practices, and ensuring employees receive more support than usual during periods with high work intensity. Irrespective of what the financial realities are of the nonprofit, though, organizational budgets should not be balanced on the backs of employees. 

Nonprofit Sustainability: Employee Burnout

4. Have you actually lost faith in your co-workers instead of the cause?

In the nonprofit field, it is often jarring to encounter people who articulate a set of values that are consistent with yours, but their actions suggest little care for others in their daily actions. These individuals create toxic environments and engage in unethical behavior. They cause unnecessary conflict, start rumors, dismiss the contributions of others to elevate themselves, sabotage other employees, accuse you of not being true to the cause, misrepresent or misinterpret situations, take credit for the work of their peers, intimidate peers, turn employees against one another, insult or demean others, or they hoard information to make themselves feel important or to isolate other employees. 

Sadly, irrespective of the industry you work in, you can always become the target of people who engage in unprovoked unethical actions. Under these circumstances, you should fight the tendency to generalize the actions of a few bad apples to the broader industry. You should also not internalize their behavior as a reflection of you. When you encounter toxic co-workers like this, this is an HR matter that should be addressed by that department and/ or the ED (in the event there is no HR board committee or department). If the problem is with the ED or the board member, it is important to assess if there is any recourse available to calmly discuss a remedy without experiencing retaliation. If not, be proactive in addressing your social justice fatigue. It is time to plan a shift to another organization. Your gifts can be better used somewhere else if the environment is too toxic.

When Employees Sabotage Good Nonprofit Managers

Nonprofit Employee Satisfaction

5. Are the organizational systems in the organization misaligned with your work style or work preferences?

Finding an organization where the systems are aligned with your work style is essential in making sure that you can feel fulfilled and satisfied in your work. It may be that the organization’s systems are not suited for your personality or work style because of where the organization is in its organizational Life Cycle. For example, if the organization is in its birth stage, it will be more entrepreneurial, informal, and focused on innovation. This type of work is better suited for individuals that are self-directed, spontaneous and need greater autonomy to carry out their work. 

The closer an organization is to the maturity or the elaboration stage, the more bureaucratic it will be. Also, if the organization specializes in a highly regulated industry (i.e., childcare, 24-hour facilities, health care, mental health, etc.), there will be a higher degree of managerialism. This is because the health and safety of patients require robust structures and state regulators mandate highly structured and accountable environments. This structure is more appropriate for individuals that work best in segmented, predictable, and routinized environments. 

Irrespective of your working style, it is important to note that every organizational system is going to have pros and cons associated with it. However, you must be clear beforehand on what type of organization will bring out the best in you. Otherwise, you could begin to experience social justice fatigue.

Nonprofit Capacity Building Tools: Organizational Charts

High-Performing Nonprofits are Strategic

Nonprofit Management: Building EPIC Organization

6. Are your expectations realistic for the type of work you are engaging in? 

Inevitably there are many individuals who begin working with very romanticized notions about nonprofits. The reality of it all is that operationalizing values is very difficult. Nonprofit work requires that organizations navigate counterintuitive funding requirements and technical regulatory environments that are administratively and personally taxing. Furthermore, nonprofits are stymied by systemic limitations that limit the organization’s scope of work and slow down the progress that can be made in generating change. Thus, many employees become disillusioned when that organization cannot fully resolve very complex social issues such as poverty, hunger, homelessness, and mental health. It is more likely instead that these organizations make their impact locally or regionally. At times, they can also impact the policy realm that can spur government action, but nonprofits themselves have limited reach. 

Generating long-term national change in these areas requires a consistent and steady flow of massive resources, mobilization around actual needs, accountability systems that focus on outcomes, and systems for controlling quality. Thus, the government is the only institution that has access to the resources needed to permanently resolve broad-scale issues such as poverty. The revenue government collects through taxes allows the government to orchestrate cohesive collective action. In addition, government, due to its federal, state, and local infrastructure, can mobilize the needed resources and coordinate the corresponding logistics across the nation to effectuate change on a grand scale that nonprofits simply cannot match.

When faced with this reality, it is easy for individuals experiencing social justice fatigue to want to dismantle entire systems or to scapegoat nonprofits for trying to make lemonade out of lemons. However, disbanding systems of support without viable alternatives leaves the most vulnerable out in the lurch.

Stepping away from the industry is also counterproductive. Your departure will contribute to a deficit of valuable human capital and skills that are needed to continue strengthening our fractured social safety net. It is more effective to address systemic issues and change systems at the macro and micro levels. It is critical to align values, laws, and social correction tools with the needs of the target populations. It is also essential to come up with entrepreneurial approaches to creating more equitable systems. 

Overcoming Social Justice Fatigue Requires Self-Care

Solving complex social maladies is very hard work and requires constant self-evaluation. Avoiding social justice fatigue is an essential component of creating sustainable movements. It requires that you listen to your needs in order to ensure your work is sustainable. If you are working in the trenches, there will always be obstacles, imperfect circumstances, unfair outcomes, unpleasant people, systemic roadblocks, and perpetual needs that seem almost impossible to eliminate. In order to combat these, you must take care of yourself.

Your gifts and contributions are needed more than ever. Without a sustainable “you” fighting for social justice and equity issues, it is very easy to begin to feel hopeless and, subsequently complacent or accept the status quo. Your full and healthy presence will make it easier for you to demand accountability in the face of injustice. Taking care of yourself will allow you to continue to advocate long-term to ensure laws and institutions are calibrated appropriately in order to solve problems based on facts. A focused “you” will allow you to offer solutions to problems, instead of just criticism. You must monitor your well-being every day for the benefit of all. Just remember, if you don’t show up to do this difficult work, then who will? 

Please Subscribe

Please subscribe to Third Sector News, which will also provide resources and toolkits for managing real-life situations that those working in the nonprofit field experience. For example, this week, we have included a “Nonprofit Website Toolkit”. However, these resources are only available to those that subscribe.

If you would like to schedule a pro-bono nonprofit session with me to facilitate the transition for remote workers, please email [email protected] with the heading “COVID-19 #Pro-bono.” I will be happy to help you during this very difficult time.