You Cannot Build a Healthy Charity by Sacrificing Yourself at the Centre of it

I recently started coaching a charity leader who has been carrying everything alone for a very long time.

Founder.
Leader.
Practitioner.
Manager.
Fundraiser.
Crisis-lead.
Parent.
Speaker.
Advocate.

Doing this work all matters deeply.
However, she’s been paying for it quietly with her mental and physical health.

In our first session, we didn’t add new tools or frameworks.

We didn’t redesign the strategy.
We didn’t introduce productivity hacks.

Instead, we focused on:

• Creating breathing room between meetings

• Reducing how much lives only in her head

• Designing a proper end to the working day

• Removing tasks rather than adding them

• Naming what is no longer sustainable

• Building boundaries that actually protect her energy

She said something that has stayed with me:

“I can support everyone else brilliantly. I just don’t do that for myself.”

I hear versions of that every week from people leading charities and purpose-driven organisations.

Especially founders.
Especially neurodivergent leaders.
Especially women who have normalised overwork in the name of impact.

What Actually Changes When a Charity Leader Creates Breathing Room?

Here’s what shifted almost immediately once we removed pressure rather than adding performance:

• She stopped making decisions from adrenaline

• “Urgency” got redefined instead of absorbed

• Meetings shortened

• Some meetings disappeared all together

• The team began solving more without her

• She was present for her family

• She slept

Because here’s what people don’t talk about:

When a leader is permanently braced, the whole organisation feels it.

When a leader’s nervous system is in control of the room, everyone unconsciously leans on that. And when that leader is depleted, the whole organisation becomes fragile.

Here’s the uncomfortable truth: "If everything collapses the moment you go on a 4-day city break for the first time in 7 years, that isn’t leadership strength. It’s organisational fragility."

It’s organisational over-dependence.

Breathing room is not indulgent.

It is structural.

It changes the conditions you are working under.

Leadership That Lasts

There is a myth in the charity sector that good leaders cope better.

They absorb more.
They work longer.
They carry the emotional weight quietly.
They hold the crisis.

But leadership that lasts is not about coping.

It’s about changing the conditions so coping isn’t required at that level.

You cannot build a healthy, neuro-inclusive, values-led organisation by sacrificing yourself at the centre of it.

Eventually something gives.
And it’ll either the organisation or it'll you.

And too often, in this sector, it is the leader.

The work to fix this is not flashy.
It won’t show up neatly in a quarterly report.

It is slow.
Practical.
Sometimes uncomfortable.

But it is often the difference between burning out and staying in the work for the long haul.

If you are leading a charity and feel permanently “on”, stretched thin, or unsure how to step back without everything falling apart:

You are not failing.
You are just doing work that was never meant to be held alone.
You are working against rules that you didn’t agree to.
And you are allowed to change the conditions.

And when the conditions change, leadership changes.
If you’re leading right now and quietly thinking, “I can’t afford to slow down”

I’d like to gently challenge that.

Can you afford not to?

Bethany 💛