Nonprofit leadership might be one of the hardest forms of leadership on the planet.
Think about what you’re actually doing. You’re working to make seismic changes in communities, often with razor-thin margins for error. You’re doing some of the riskiest, most important work that exists. And you’re doing it while navigating a structure most other leaders never have to think about: you’re not funded by the people you serve, and you share authority with a board that makes many of the decisions you’re ultimately held responsible for.
All the responsibility. Not all the authority.
If you’ve ever felt uniquely challenged working in a nonprofit, that’s why. It’s not just you.
One of the things that makes it even harder is that nonprofit work actually runs at two very different speeds. And most leaders, teams, and supervisors only talk about one of them.
Speed One: Fast
There’s a lot in nonprofit work that genuinely can (and should) move quickly. Thank you letters going out the door within 48 hours. CRM entries getting logged in real time. Contact forms on your website responding immediately. Direct mail being outsourced efficiently. AI helping you draft donor communications faster, in your organization’s voice, without starting from scratch every time.
This is real. Tools are better than ever. Automation has removed a lot of the friction from administrative tasks, and that’s worth celebrating.
Your supervisors, board members, and funders are watching this side of the work. They see how fast technology can move, and they (reasonably) expect some of that speed to show up in your results.
Speed Two: Friction
The second speed, friction, is the part people don’t talk about enough.
We can automate tasks. We cannot automate people.
Donors take their own time deciding whether, and when and how much, to give. Direct reports need guidance. The people your organization serves take their own time doing the things that are good for them. Boards move at the pace of consensus. Relationships, by definition, cannot be rushed.
In my experience coaching nonprofit leaders, it is often taking up to twelve attempts just to reach a donor, let alone get a meeting on the calendar. That’s not inefficiency. That’s just working with human beings.
The danger is when supervisors, or even you yourself, start measuring all of your work strictly against the “fast” standard. When everything looks like it should be instant, and something takes months, it’s easy to assume someone is failing. Often, they’re not. They’re just doing the slow work that no software can replace.
Try this: The Two-Speed Audit
Does your work load feel impossible? This simple Two-Speed Audit exercise can help.
Get out a piece of paper. Draw a line down the middle. Label one column “Fast” and the other “Friction.”
Then look at your work through three lenses:
- Your job description: What does it say you do?
- Your calendar: Where do you actually spend your time?
- Your last performance review: What really got measured?
For each activity you can identify, ask yourself: is this a fast thing, or a friction thing? Which tasks can be automated or accelerated? Which ones just take time because they involve people making decisions at their own pace?
Getting it on paper helps give you perspective. And, you’ll start to see that you’re not failing at the friction tasks. You’re simply doing them.
What to Do With This
Once you can see both speeds clearly, a few things get easier.
You can give yourself permission to let some things take time. Not because you’re being slow, but because that’s the actual nature of the work.
You can have better conversations with your supervisor about realistic expectations. Instead of feeling like you have to defend yourself, you can walk them through the two-speed reality with a concrete framework.
And maybe most importantly, you’ll be able to resist the temptation to treat people like tasks. When you start thinking everything should be fast, that’s when relationships get transactional. That’s when you rush donors, push people you serve, or lose patience with a board that’s still working through something important.
The fastest path to burnout in nonprofit work is trying to move people at the speed of automation.
Your awareness of both speeds, fast and friction, won’t just help you. If you can help your team and your organization understand this distinction, it has the potential to change how everyone talks about performance, workload, and success.
Both speeds are real. Both are necessary. A healthy nonprofit needs them both to do good work in the community.
