Summary
Nonprofit burnout is widespread, fueled by admin overload, scattered tools, and constant content demands.
Relief comes from removing friction; automating routine tasks; using generative AI for drafting and summaries; making recognition visible; consolidating systems; and enabling hybrid work.
We go into detail on how to achieve these fixes, and how Claromentis enables your teams to spend less time coordinating and more time delivering valuable outcomes.
Nearly 90% of nonprofit leaders say burnout is impacting their staff - and they’re worried about their own resilience too.
That’s the headline from CEP’s 2025 State of Nonprofits report, which also reveals continuing hiring and retention challenges across the sector. After all, when burnout rises, morale drops and turnover climbs. All of which slows down your programs and increases costs.
There’s no silver bullet, especially with restricted funds and capacity. But there are ways to relieve burnout pressure by tackling the work that most fuels employee exhaustion: low-value admin, repetitive and ad hoc tasks, and platform hopping.
5 ways to reduce employee burnout in nonprofit organizations
1. Automate repetitive tasks so people can do real work
Knowledge workers spend too much time coordinating and not enough time creating. In fact, according to recent research by Microsoft, people spend about 60% of their time in email, chat and meetings,
This has led to 68% of workers saying they struggle with the pace and volume of work, with 46% feeling burned out.
Manual forms, approvals, and status-chasing create digital debt, drain energy, and slow services. Automation removes low-value admin so your teams can focus on delivery.
The quickest gains come from standardizing and automating your most common processes, such as grant approvals, volunteer onboarding, incident reporting, and purchase requests.
Using Claromentis’ no-code e-forms and workflows lets you route tasks, apply SLAs, send notifications to colleagues, and record evidence for audits. So staff spend less time on admin and more time progressing your work and mission.
2. Lean on generative AI for everyday content
Writing news updates, blog posts, and board summaries is another burden your employees have to bear. Taking into account their other duties, these content generation tasks often require working overtime, which further contributes to burnout.
With generative AI, they can create engaging, informative content for your nonprofit and stakeholders without overworking. Encourage employees to use gen-AI to draft first versions, outlines, and summaries, then they can edit the work for tone and accuracy.
This can save you hours of working time every day. In fact, UK government research shows that generative AI saves 26 minutes per person, per day on drafting and summarizing. Scale that across a team, and you’re freeing up a lot of capacity without adding to your headcount.
Here’s a tip - pair your AI capabilities with set prompt templates. Set up prompts for “event recaps”, “donor updates”, or “board meeting summaries and notes” so your outputs are quick, consistent, and high-quality.
If you’d like to find out more about how to create AI prompts, check out our blog here.
The latest version of Claromentis (Claro 10) brings generative AI to your digital workplace, helping you communicate faster without losing control. You can:
- Draft and publish news or blog updates from a prompt (with admin-enforced approvals),
- Generate on-brand images across core apps like News, Blogs, Knowledge Base, Policy Manager, Events, Pages, and LMS,
- And surface an AI Policy Manager chatbot that suggests relevant questions and returns in-scope answers to boost policy comprehension.
Our AI features are switched off by default, but if this capability is something you want you can rest assured that security is our top priority.
All AI features run through Google Vertex AI with enterprise data governance (customer data isn’t used to train models without permission).
3. Show your appreciation visibly and often
Recognizing and rewarding hard work can make an unseen, burnout employee feel valued. That can go a long way to boosting morale.
In fact, recent Gallup research shows that when you recognize good work and show appreciation, your employees are 45% less likely to leave and about half as likely to report frequent burnout.
So, give praise freely and often. And when you do:
- Be specific. Tell the story of what they did, and why it was valuable to your organization.
- Be timely. Don’t let too much time pass, recognize good work within a week if possible.
- Be visible. Showcase your employees' achievements in front of their peers and the organization at large so that they can support and celebrate good work.
Claromentis provides multiple applications for employee recognition. Including thank you posts and badges and certificates. These appear on employee profiles so that there is always a record of ongoing high performance.
This recognition can lift morale fast, at minimal cost. Plus, it’s nice to be nice isn’t it?
4. Consolidate your tech stack to cut digital friction
Tool sprawl is rising across the charities and nonprofit sector.
In fact, did you know that 90% of nonprofits use three or more third-party systems beyond their CRM? And 79% use five or more? This is a sharp increase on previous years, so we know the problem is not getting better.
Fragmented systems create silos, duplicate data, and constant context-switching - a common stressor that leads to longer workdays and increased burnout.
For such a widespread and complex problem, the fix is fairly simple. Consolidate your communications, content, learning, and workflows into a single digital workplace. And where you can’t consolidate, integrate.
Claromentis enables charities and nonprofits to streamline their tech stack by combining intranet, automation (InfoCapture), LMS, AI policy Q&A, and extranet into a single solution. Plus, with powerful API connectors it provides a centralized access point for specialist software and applications you can’t afford to get rid of.
This gives you a single source of truth where workers can get everything they need. All of which reduces logins, scattered processes and confusion caused by platform hopping.
5. Enable remote working without losing cohesion
Many nonprofits run multi-site operations where commuting to the head office can add unnecessary time, cost, and stress, leading to retention issues.
40% of nonprofit managers say they’ll allow staff to work remotely some or all of the time to improve retention, and 39% plan to offer hybrid roles to attract talent.
But, if you want to operate as a hybrid organization, you need the tools to enable it. Otherwise you could fragment teams, risk frequent miscommunications, and end up exacerbating employee burnout.
An integrated nonprofit management solution like Claromentis lets employees communicate, submit forms, find documents, read policies and collaborate effectively anytime, anywhere, and from any device.
You can also create extranet areas to securely include partners, board members, and frontline volunteers without exposing your internal data. In fact, Claromentis supports multiple extranets with strict separation, so you can communicate and collaborate with stakeholders risk-free.
Claromentis: your solution for reducing burnout and keeping teams aligned
Trying to tackle burnout with a patchwork of tools only adds to the strain.
Your teams end up following different processes, rebuilding content from scratch, and chasing approvals across channels. Visibility drops, policies get lost in the noise, and overtime becomes the norm.
Centralize the work that drives your nonprofit - communications, learning, and everyday processes - in a one digital workplace.
Claromentis helps your organization find the clarity needed to enable your people to focus on delivery, not admin:
- Standardize and automate high-volume requests with no-code e-forms, SLAs, notifications, and audit trails.
- Accelerate communications with built-in generative AI for drafting and summarizing, routed through your existing approvals process.
- Improve policy comprehension with an AI Policy Manager that answers in-scope questions from the latest policy text.
- Recognize contributions with thank-you posts, badges, and profile-level visibility.
- Deliver mandatory learning via a SCORM compliant LMS, where you can build learning pathways, and give employees certificates on completion.
- Work securely with partners using segregated extranets, SSO/2FA, and granular permissions.
- Reduce tool sprawl with one place to announce, learn, request, approve, and evidence work.
Fewer logins and cleaner workflows mean less context switching, less tool fatigue and more time to focus on your mission.
Eager to find out more? Book a 10-minute discussion call with our team. We’ll discuss your priorities, our nonprofit discounts, and show you how our nonprofit management solution can help your teams work smarter, not harder.
Burnout in nonprofit organizations FAQs
What causes nonprofit burnout the most?
Chronic admin overload, staffing gaps, tool sprawl, and unclear expectations. Claromentis reduces this by automating repetitive workflows, centralizing comms and policies, and standardizing onboarding/training in the LMS so teams spend less time coordinating and more time delivering.
Which employee burnout signs should managers track?
Track the World Health Organization's ICD-11 triad - exhaustion, detachment/cynicism, and reduced efficacy. Claromentis addresses each:
- Exhaustion: cut busywork with InfoCapture e-forms/workflows (SLAs, notifications), consolidate comms/search, and use gen-AI to draft/summarize updates.
- Detachment/cynicism: build connection with Thank You posts, Badges, targeted News/Pages, comments, and quick check-ins via Surveys.
- Reduced efficacy: upskill with the LMS (learning pathways, certificates), clarify rules via AI Policy Manager Q&A, surface how-to content in the Knowledge Base, and trigger follow-ups from dashboards and workflow alerts.
Does recognition really reduce burnout?
Yes. Recognition correlates with lower turnover (~45%) and less frequent burnout. Claromentis makes it easy with Thank You posts, badges/certificates on profiles, and communication tools so consistent, specific praise becomes part of your culture.
Will AI actually save my team time?
Yes. UK government research shows that you can save at least 26 minutes per person per day. Claromentis embeds generative AI to draft/summarize News and Blogs (with approvals) and provides Policy Manager Q&A, so teams reclaim focused time without adding headcount.
How many tools are too many?
You have too many tools when core tasks span multiple systems and errors and context switching rise. In 2025, 79% of nonprofits used five or more beyond their CRM. Claromentis consolidates nonprofit tech stacks with their integrated intranet, automation workflows (InfoCapture), LMS, Policy Manager, and extranets - with SSO/2FA and APIs to integrate any must-keep tools - cutting logins and friction.
