The Care Paradox: How the Nonprofit Sector Neglects Its Greatest Asset

The nonprofit sector exists to care.

We feed the hungry, shelter the unhoused, advocate for equity, educate our children, and tell the stories that others overlook. Our missions are bold, our values clear: dignity, justice, liberation, healing. But for all our commitment to caring for communities, we too often fail to extend that same care inward — toward the people doing this critical work.

The nonprofit workforce is largely composed of women, people of color, immigrants, and others whose lived experiences shape their desire to serve. Many come to this work not just with educational training and professional accomplishments, but with deep emotional labor rooted in love for their communities. In a sector built on this care, we treat care work as expendable — undervaluing it and overworking the people who make it possible.

When exhaustion inevitably sets in, we call it burnout and talk about resilience, then offer wellness stipends and half-day summer Fridays — well-meaning gestures that fall short in a system that too often mirrors the same extractive models we were founded to resist.

The truth is, care is not a soft skill, nor is it the thing we squeeze in between deadlines. It is infrastructure. It is strategy. It is power.

And it is chronically under-resourced.

To truly honor our missions, we need to start funding care with the same seriousness we fund outcomes. That means building it into our budgets and calendars, and inviting funders and donors to support not just what we do, but how we do it.

To start, that means fair pay, humane hours, transparent leadership, and policies that support rest, healing, and growth. It means dismantling the martyrdom mentality that equates overextension with commitment. It means acknowledging that care work is the work, not something that happens after the “real” deliverables are met.

For funders and donors, we need partners who understand that care is not overhead — it’s foundational. The ability to provide mental health support, sabbaticals, and time to rest are essential to sustaining the people who make change possible. When philanthropy invests in the conditions that allow the nonprofit workforce to thrive — evolving beyond a focus on outputs and milestones to embrace the full cost of doing the work well — they’re making deeper, more lasting impact possible.

There are organizations already leading the way. Press Forward recently announced funding for nonprofits providing care infrastructure for journalists. Humanity United includes healing and wellbeing for peace actors in their peacebuilding strategy. These are just some examples that show what it looks like to resource care with intention, and we need many more, especially ones that support core care strategies with flexible capital.

Care will certainly look different whether you’re caring for educators, caring for social workers, or caring for finance or revenue officers. But let’s stop calling it “self-care” like it’s an individual burden, and call it what it is: collective sustainability.

And let’s start resourcing it. Because caring for people is not a “nice to have” for our missions. It is the mission.