A teal spring scale carries an ochre sling while additional weights remain on the floor. Original editorial painting about seeing a load before deciding to add more.
Compare promises with real capacity and make the decisions that protect the people responsible for delivering them
By Arbab Naseebullah Kasi, Chief Executive Officer - CEO, Feel Worldwide Foundation Inc.
The week can look manageable until somebody writes down everything the organization has promised.
There are appointments already booked, a report due to a funder, two colleagues waiting for supervision, a volunteer who needs an answer and an event that sounded small when it was proposed. A vacancy remains open. A manager has quietly taken over part of that role. None of these commitments disappears because the next worthwhile request arrives.
This is an illustrative situation, not a reported case from Feel Worldwide Foundation. It points to a familiar leadership problem: an organization can approve work one item at a time while never examining the total burden it has created.
Staff then have to reconcile promises that leadership has left unreconciled. They decide which message can wait, which record can be finished tomorrow and which difficult conversation must be squeezed into the end of the day. The official plan remains intact because the compromises happen out of sight.
Making workload visible means bringing those compromises back into management decisions. A nonprofit leader needs a credible view of the work, the capacity available and the consequences of the gap. That view must lead to changes. Asking for a detailed list and then telling everyone to try harder simply adds another assignment.
Begin with the conditions of work
The World Health Organization identifies excessive workload, understaffing, limited control over work and inadequate support among risks to mental health at work. Its guidance directs attention to the environment in which people are expected to perform, alongside support for individuals. WHO guidance on mental health at work.
The joint WHO and International Labour Organization policy brief makes that organizational responsibility practical. It describes approaches including achievable deadlines, appropriate staffing and worker participation in decisions about work. These are useful starting points for a nonprofit reviewing its commitments; they are not a universal staffing formula. WHO and ILO policy brief.
Research also offers a reason to examine demands and resources together. In their 2001 study of 374 workers across human services, industry and transport, Evangelia Demerouti and colleagues used self-reports and observer assessments. Higher job demands were associated principally with exhaustion, while fewer resources were associated principally with disengagement. This was not an experiment proving that a particular workload policy would produce a particular health outcome. It provides a framework for asking better questions about work, not a way to diagnose a colleague. Original job demands–resources study.
A leader does not need to determine whether someone has a health condition before addressing an impossible allocation. If two commitments require the same qualified person at the same time, the conflict already exists. If supervision repeatedly disappears to make delivery possible, that is observable. Start with what can be changed in the work.
Count obligations rather than just projects
A project list usually records the visible promises. It can miss much of the work needed to keep them.
An advice session may require preparation, an interpreter, records and follow-up. A volunteer program requires recruitment, screening where appropriate, induction, scheduling and someone available when plans change. A new grant may add reporting and coordination before it adds usable delivery capacity. A manager supporting several teams carries work that will not appear in any one team’s activity count.
Build a short, shared account of current obligations with the people doing them. Include recurring duties, deadlines, unresolved problems and commitments made outside the formal planning process. Distinguish work that protects people or meets a legal or contractual requirement from work that leadership has chosen and can reconsider.
For each substantial obligation, identify who owns it, who else is needed, what quality must be protected and what happens if it is delayed. Record dependencies. An employee cannot complete a decision that is waiting for executive approval, even if their own task list is otherwise clear.
Keep the exercise proportionate. A small team may need a single shared list and a brief conversation. Detailed minute-by-minute reporting can consume capacity and encourage people to defend their busyness. The question is whether the organization has made a workable set of promises, not whether every person can account for every moment.
Include work that has become invisible through familiarity. Who repeatedly explains a process to new colleagues? Who provides language support beyond their stated role? Who repairs difficult relationships after a rushed handoff? Ask rather than assume. Recognition should lead to a fair allocation, support or a changed expectation, not merely praise for being helpful.
Compare that work with capacity that actually exists
A budgeted position is not an available colleague. A new recruit is not immediately interchangeable with an experienced practitioner. An enthusiastic volunteer still needs an appropriate role, preparation and support.
Look at the skills and availability required for each obligation. Take account of vacancies, leave, induction and duties already assigned. Include supervision, training, essential records and coordination within the working plan. Do not first fill every available space with delivery and then ask where the supporting work might fit.
Capacity also depends on access and authority. Someone waiting for permission, a working system or specialist advice may appear slow when the real obstacle sits elsewhere. Resolve the constraint before treating the person as the problem.
Consider a hypothetical program that normally runs six workshops each month. One facilitator leaves. The remaining qualified staff can run four workshops while maintaining preparation, participant follow-up and supervision. The organization has made six workshop commitments and currently has capacity for four. That gap does not vanish if the two additional workshops are marked urgent.
Management now has a concrete choice: secure suitable additional capacity, renegotiate the timetable or reduce the commitment through a careful process. Different options affect participants differently. A delay may be especially costly for someone approaching an application deadline. A referral may be useful only if the other provider can actually receive the person. The decision needs service knowledge, not arithmetic alone.
The example is deliberately simple. It is not a recommended caseload or productivity standard. Real capacity varies with complexity, risk, accessibility needs and staff experience. Two teams serving the same number of people may be carrying very different responsibilities.
Let sector evidence inform the question without replacing local facts
The National Council of Nonprofits’ 2023 workforce survey illustrates the pressures organizations have reported. Its online questionnaire was distributed through the Council’s networks and newsletters in April 2023 and was open to charitable nonprofits. More than 1,600 responses came from all 50 US states and the District of Columbia. Among responding organizations, 74.6% reported vacancies; 50.2% identified stress and burnout as a factor affecting recruitment and retention. 2023 survey report and respondent profile.
Those are responses to an open survey, not a random sample establishing prevalence across every nonprofit. They are historical findings, not a measurement of the sector today. The stress-and-burnout figure describes organizations’ reported recruitment and retention concerns, not the percentage of employees with a diagnosis. Nor does the survey establish which factor caused an individual vacancy.
The practical lesson is to investigate your own situation. How much essential work is being absorbed by people covering vacancies? Which duties have slipped? What has the organization stopped doing, even if nobody formally approved stopping it? Sector evidence can help a board take the discussion seriously. Local facts must guide the decision.
Stop work deliberately before it fails by accident
The hardest part of a workload review is often removing something that once seemed worthwhile.
Start with activities that consume attention without supporting an important decision or outcome. A duplicate internal report may exist because two managers prefer different formats. A recurring meeting may survive after its original purpose has ended. A modest public event may demand weeks of coordination while producing little value for the people the organization intends to serve.
Ask what each activity accomplishes and who uses its result. Check the answer with the people affected. Work that looks dispensable from a distance may provide an essential route for someone who cannot use the main service. Low attendance alone is not proof of low value.
For genuinely low-value work, name what will stop, who can authorize the change and when it takes effect. If an external commitment is involved, check the terms and agree any necessary amendment. Do not simply cease safeguarding, required reporting or essential records because they are inconvenient to count.
A pause needs equal clarity. Explain its duration, its effect on participants and the conditions for restarting. Without a decision date, paused work can remain on everyone’s list indefinitely, generating reminders and uncertainty even while no useful progress is possible.
There may be no easy activity to remove. Then the leader should say so and bring the real alternatives to the board or funder. A choice between reducing reach and increasing qualified capacity is difficult. Concealing that choice inside unpaid extra work does not resolve it.
Protect supervision when pressure rises
Supervision is vulnerable because its absence can be less visible than a canceled appointment. The meeting is postponed, everyone returns to urgent tasks and the calendar briefly looks better.
But supervision is where staff can examine uncertain decisions, discuss complex work, identify a risk and ask for help before a problem becomes harder to manage. Its purpose should be clear, and its quality should be reviewed. A hurried status update is not an adequate substitute for the support a demanding role requires.
Reserve supervision within the plan and provide cover where needed. When an exceptional event forces a cancellation, reschedule it and check whether repeated disruption signals a wider capacity problem. Managers also need a reasonable workload. Assigning one manager more people to support without changing their other duties can weaken the arrangement from the start.
Keep the boundary clear. A supervisor should listen, address work-related concerns and know how to direct someone to appropriate support. They should not diagnose or treat mental disorders. The WHO and ILO brief explicitly distinguishes manager training from training a mental health care provider. Staff should not have to disclose private medical details to demonstrate that the work allocation needs review. WHO and ILO guidance on manager training.
Communicate a limit with a decision attached
“We are stretched” gives a board or funder little basis for action. Describe the conflict and the choice that would resolve it.
For the hypothetical workshop program, a useful explanation would be: the current qualified team can deliver four workshops with the required preparation and follow-up; six remain committed; additional suitable facilitation or a revised timetable is needed. Set out who will be affected by each option and what approval is required.
This is an illustrative communication, not a statement about the Foundation’s staffing or programs. Its strength is that it makes the decision visible without blaming individual employees.
Boards should ask what assumptions sit behind delivery promises and what would change if recruitment takes longer. Funders can be approached with a specific request to adjust scope, timing or allowable support, subject to the agreement. Staff need to hear the decision directly so that an activity removed from the official plan does not continue through informal expectations.
Communicate changes to participants early and accessibly. Explain what is available, what has changed and where they can ask questions. Avoid promising that another organization will help until the route is verified. An honest limit is more useful when it comes with a workable next step.
Visibility also has privacy limits. A board may need aggregate information about uncovered duties and delivery risk. It usually does not need an employee’s personal health history. Share enough to support the decision, with appropriate protection for staff and service users.
Keep the review connected to what changes
A workload review earns trust when people can see its consequences.
After changing the plan, check whether the work was actually removed, deadlines were adjusted or support became available. Look for commitments that return under a different name. Ask whether a transfer relieved one team while overloading another. Invite staff to describe new pressures without making the conversation a competition over who is busiest.
Use a small set of useful signals: unassigned essential duties, aging unresolved work, canceled supervision, repeated extra hours and service commitments that cannot be met with the available skills. Interpret them together. A shorter waiting list could reflect better capacity, but it could also reflect a closed intake route. A quieter inbox may mean a problem has moved elsewhere.
Agree when the next review will happen and what would trigger an earlier one, such as a departure or a substantial new commitment. Keep the review short enough to maintain and serious enough to change decisions. The standard is not a perfectly tidy list. It is a plan that staff can carry out without repeatedly inventing ways around its contradictions.
A nonprofit’s purpose may be expansive. Its current capacity is still finite. Leadership gives that purpose a better chance by deciding openly what the organization will deliver, what it must change and what it cannot responsibly promise yet.
Feel Worldwide Foundation Inc. welcomes thoughtful proposals for collaboration. If your organization would like to discuss a contribution related to responsible nonprofit leadership or practical organizational learning, describe the idea, intended audience and proposed role through our partnership inquiry. An inquiry begins a conversation; it does not promise staffing assistance, clinical support or a consulting program. To support the Foundation’s broader mission, you can make a donation.
