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Non-profit Executive Directors run full-scale businesses, yet our capitalist biases make our culture treat nonprofits like they’re games, run by kids with toy cash registers. Compounded by boards filled with volunteers, scarcity mindsets, and lower pay, EDs face unique leadership pressures—and have no safe outlet among staff, peers, friends, or board members to discuss these problems. To prevent ED burnout, organizations must shift from a spending to an investing mindset, expect more from their boards, and provide EDs with independent, professional coaching support.

I often say that Executive Director of a nonprofit is the loneliest job in business.

I’ve coached a lot of EDs. I’ve served on several boards and worked in the nonprofit C Suite. I’ve raised over a half billion dollars in charitable giving. I’ve never held an ED title, but I’d argue I understand the job better than many EDs.

I love coaching nonprofit directors because their problems are more complex than most business executives’ problems. And it’s not just because they tend to work in a field of scarcity. The role is structurally and culturally more difficult.

Don’t believe me? Read on.

One Misconception that Plagues Nonprofits

There’s a persistent misconception that a nonprofit business is somehow less than a real business. It’s like we hear nonprofit and think of children playing with toy cash registers.

If there’s no profit, our capitalist bias demands, then there is no business. It’s merely a game. A productive hobby.

But come on. You’re telling me that Zynga is a real business but the American Heart Association (AHA) is not?

Consider:

• Zynga booked $2.8 billion in revenue in 2025. AHA booked $1.09 billion.
• Zynga has about 2,900 employees. AHA has about 3,300 employees.
• Zynga makes Candy Crush and Farmville. American Heart Association saves thousands of lives and supports critical research that will save millions in the future.

Yet Zynga’s CEO makes somewhere north of $32 million annually, while AHA’s CEO is closer to $4 million (and is one of the highest paid nonprofit CEOs in the country).

I’m not here to discuss how out of whack our capitalist values are. According to the comparison above, we as a culture believe that selling games is about eight times as valuable as stopping heart attacks. We could have a good, long chat about the values we expose in the American version of capitalism. But, as I just said, that’s not what I’m writing about.

The comparison above is meant to point out that by pretty much any measure, including the company’s value to society, AHA is every bit as real a business as Zynga, even though it is a nonprofit business.

A Nonprofit is Very Much a Complete Business

Nonprofit EDs face all the same problems that for-profit CEOs face. They are running a business, after all… they just file with the IRS under a different tax code. That means the ED must

• Manage the team
  This includes all the HR concerns, human messiness, hiring, and firing. Making sure they have the right people in the right roles. Keeping their staff engaged. (Did you know that 95% of nonprofit EDs are worried about staff burnout?) And if you think it’s easier managing volunteers than staff, then you’ve never managed volunteers.
• Manage operations
  From office space to office supplies, this may mean desks and computers, vehicles, buildings, security. And someone has to make sure the bathrooms don’t run out of toilet paper. That all takes effort and money, and none of those things cares what your IRS filing status is.
• Set strategy
  Nonprofit work isn’t random. It doesn’t just happen when a volunteer happens to show up and do a thing. The ED has to decide what success looks like, then figure out how to get there. The only difference is that “success” cannot be simplified down to “profit.” (The board of directors sets direction, but the ED determines strategy.)
• Communicate
  You can’t run a business without telling people about it. Marketing and communication drive awareness, donations, and utilization of services. Nonprofits may have better stories to tell than for-profit companies, but it takes the same amount of work to tell them effectively.
• Generate revenue
  Nonprofit does not mean money-independent. It takes money to run the business, and it takes money to deliver services. A food pantry needs revenue to run, even if 100% of the food is donated. So the organization needs to be able to raise funds through grants, donations, events, and even profit-generating activities like retail stores.

In short, a nonprofit is a business, and a nonprofit CEO is a business CEO.

If only it were that simple, however. There’s a reason that one-third of nonprofit leaders are “very much” concerned about their own burnout.

The ED Has Many Interesting Challenges

The primary reason ED is the loneliest job is that they can’t talk to anyone about the problems they face in running the business.

I’ve just explained how a nonprofit CEO faces all the same problems as a for-profit CEO. The opposite is not true, however. Nonprofit CEOs face some problems that for-profit CEOs do not:

• The role is about service, not personal gain
  For-profit CEOs are expected to be personally ambitious and profit-driven. We expect them to negotiate as high a salary as they can, and in fact we get suspicious of CEOs who don’t demand high pay. Nonprofit EDs, however, are expected to be mission-oriented. Taking a larger salary is seen as exploitative and selfish because there is budget tension between overhead and mission delivery. This tension leads to EDs being paid less, which leads to burnout and turnover. How did you feel, for example, when you read that the CEO of American Heart Association took home $4 million in compensation in one year? The fact that she’s running a billion-dollar business and still gets paid one-eighth the Zynga CEO didn’t really change that feeling, did it?
• Nonprofits operate within a framework of scarcity
  For-profit companies differentiate between investment and spending. Nonprofits experience only the feeling of spending. When a for-profit company has a dollar, it will naturally invest some in R & D and some in staff development. When a nonprofit has a dollar, it will ask only “how will we spend this dollar?” The world wants the nonprofit to drive down the spend on overhead, and to a nonprofit most investment looks like overhead. This means the board will almost never invest in their ED’s development and support, even when that spend would return ten times the investment in the ED’s (and thereby the organization’s) effectiveness, engagement, and retention.
• Doing more with less
  I spent a decade in tech startups, so I know what it means to do more with less. But nonprofits face actual scarcity in addition to a scarcity mindset—shortages of talent, spending as little as possible on infrastructure like computers and office space, and relying on their employees to fill multiple roles. This leads to leadership challenges in hiring, turnover, and staff effectiveness. The ED has to keep the culture effective even with all this actual scarcity.
• Their boss is a volunteer
  Nonprofit EDs report to a volunteer board of directors. The board is supposed to provide oversight, governance, and strategic direction, but it’s still the ED’s responsibility to ensure the board members stay engaged and valuable both individually and as a group. For-profit boards are often paid positions, filled with experienced business leaders. Nonprofit boards often contain a mix of experienced professionals, well-meaning incompetents, inexperienced but eager talent, and dead weight.

This is why I love working with Executive Directors. Their challenges are real and complex. They tend to be mission-oriented people with great compassion, creativity, talent, and ability. And a lot of that talent is raw and underdeveloped, unless they’ve migrated from for-profit leadership into nonprofit leadership, as I did.

So, After All That, Why is it a Lonely Job?

Nonprofit EDs run real businesses, with real business challenges. They even face some problems for-profit CEOs don’t have to deal with. But what makes it lonely?

It’s simple. They can’t talk with anyone about those problems.

They can’t open up to their staff, who are underpaid and overworked. They need to keep their staff engaged and productive, and focused on delivering the mission.

Their friends won’t be able to help. Friends are great at sympathy and echoing whatever rage or frustration you have, as if your rage and frustration are legitimate and deserve to be supported. But they don’t understand your work. And they may even drop well-intended but worthless platitudes on you like, “But the work is so meaningful!” Not helpful. Perhaps even more isolating.

Shared misery has never cured loneliness.

The ED can’t talk with their peers about their troubles because the ED is the public face of the organization. What they say to others may spread and color how the organization is perceived. The ED has to present an outward image of strength, reliability, and positivity in order to attract more donors and talent. And, what if the ED decides to leave at some point? Those peers may be the network that leads to their next job.

They can’t talk with their board because their board is their boss, and their boss is a volunteer. If the ED opens up too much, board members may disengage or flee, or they may think the ED isn’t up to the job. If the ED doesn’t open up at all, then they’re not allowing the board to do their job of oversight and governance. So it’s a delicate balance, and delicate balancing acts always take more time, attention, and energy than people think.

The reality is, of course, that the ED can talk with any of those people, if they have a relationship deeply rooted in trust. Given the way we tend to treat nonprofits as less than real businesses, though, such relationships are often less rooted in trust and more often rooted in shared misery.

Shared misery has never cured loneliness. It may temporarily ease the surface feelings loneliness creates, but in the end it just deepens the feelings of isolation.

Who Needs to Fix This?

It’s unlikely that any movement started by this blog post will result in a complete retooling of our collective cultural bias toward profit. So I’m not hopeful of a complete societal overhaul that will suddenly remove the structural and cultural problems that make the ED role extra hard.

It is, however, possible for every organization to make some simple shifts that might fix things for their organization and their Executive Director. This is on both the board and the ED.

• Expect more from the board
  A lot of board members treat board service like a recreational activity, but the board can be a tremendous source of referral, fundraising, talent, knowledge, and even grunt work. Don’t just fill the board with people who care and are nice. Fill it with people who want to be an active and valuable part of an exceptional team, and who will help you accomplish exceptional things.
• Treat succession planning as part of the ED’s job
  Stop perpetuating the fiction that the ED will stay in this role forever. It just creates an unhealthy codependence. Insecure organizations avoid the idea of ED succession planning like it’s a disease to be shunned. It’s not. Succession planning should begin the day the ED signs their offer letter. By keeping this discussion open and honest, it will make all other discussions easier and will lead to much more truth and honesty throughout the organization.
• Shift from spending to investing
  Instead of trying to wring every penny of overhead out of your budget, identify the real cost of running an effective business and allocate the necessary funds to that. When your organization is healthy, aligned, and capable, it will be unstoppable. You’ll go farther than you ever imagined in your previous mindset of scarcity spending.
• Be unapologetic about being exceptional
  Do you want to run an exceptional business? Then tell that to your donors and stakeholders. Let them know that “exceptional” requires paying people what they’re worth, providing them healthcare, and giving them the tools and resources they need to be successful. Donors will appreciate it and want to be part of your exceptional, winning team.
• Invest in support for the ED
  Give the ED an ongoing professional sounding board, someone they can talk through difficult problems with. Someone unaffiliated with the organization. Someone with a deep understanding of business, corporate culture, leadership, and peak personal performance. This cannot be a board member—especially not the board chair. It must be someone the ED can be open with, without feeling any need for self-editing or self-protection. A world class executive coach, perhaps.

Start Becoming Exceptional Today

If you’re on a nonprofit board, connect with me to figure out how you and the board can better support your ED.

If you’re an Executive Director, have someone you know share this article with your board chair. Then give me a call to overcome the biggest challenge you’re currently facing.

If ED is the next title you want on your business card, let me help get you there.

Email me at peter@graybearcoaching.com to start the conversation, or book some time with me now.

Other Things to Do

Download a free chapter from one of my books. Or, learn about workshops and trainings that Antoinette and I provide for your staff, board, or club.