We are living through a moment that is testing people in ways we can no longer ignore. Across the country, anxiety and depression remain persistently high, with roughly one in five adults reporting symptoms today. Over the past decade, rates of depression alone have increased by nearly 60%, a signal not of a momentary crisis, but of a deeper, structural strain on people and communities.
And yet, across the nonprofit and philanthropic ecosystem, we keep pushing forward as if this is sustainable. The truth is: it isn’t.
As policy and funding environments continue to shift, the pressure on nonprofits and communities continues to intensify. What many organizations are navigating right now feels heavy and is marked by uncertainty, urgency, and difficult (but necessary) tradeoffs. For leaders and staff working closest to communities most impacted by systemic inequities, this moment is not just complex but can feel overwhelmingly personal and profoundly taxing.
Why? For many leaders, the work of advancing equity is both professional and lived. They are holding the weight of their organizations while also navigating the realities their communities face every day. They are managing teams through instability, making hard decisions with limited resources, and doing so while carrying a deep sense of responsibility to get it right. That kind of leadership, without intentional support, comes at a cost.
And we are seeing that cost more clearly than ever.
The conditions shaping today’s challenges have been decades in the making; structural racism, inequitable access to care and opportunities, persistent underinvestment, and political volatility. What is different now is the speed and accumulation of these pressures, converging all at once on leaders and teams already stretched thin. Our grantee partners have confirmed this. We’ve heard from them the realities of fatigue and staff turnover and the need for stronger internal infrastructure and support beyond program dollars.
Wellness is not separate from our work
In the philanthropic and nonprofit sectors, the boundary between work and life is often blurred. And while that proximity is a source of purpose, it also amplifies the emotional and psychological toll. That is why we have to be clear: wellness is not separate from the work. It is the work.
At Archstone Foundation, we see wellness as central to advancing equity and justice. It shapes how we make decisions, how we show up for one another, how we treat people, how we listen, and how we share power. Our newly sharpened strategic plan reflects a commitment not only to collective action and social justice, but to building an internal culture that sustains the people and partners doing this work over time.
This moment is asking something of us. It is asking leaders and organizations to look inward as much as outward to examine policies, practices, and expectations that may unintentionally contribute to burnout, and to redesign them with people at the center. It requires clarity about values and the discipline to align systems, incentives, and culture with those values. It’s important to recognize and embrace the fact that investing in culture, leadership, and wellness is not a distraction from impact, but what makes impact possible.
Here at the Foundation, we’re examining our own culture and seeing where we can make practical changes to facilitate organizational and staff wellness. Initial steps include working with a wellness coach (you’ll hear more from him in an upcoming blog about our wellness cohort of grantees), varying the kind of communication modes we use to reduce virtual fatigue, and building reflection time and team learning sessions into our workflow so that pausing, learning, and adapting are central to how we work.
A values-aligned culture is not defined by what is written on paper. It is defined by what people experience. It’s about whether leaders and teams feel supported in moments of strain. It’s about whether care is modeled, not just encouraged. When that happens, trust deepens, collaboration strengthens, accountability becomes something people choose rather than something imposed on them, and resilience becomes something real not something we simply expect people to carry on their own.
Even in the most uncertain times, care is what anchors us. When care becomes a core practice and not an afterthought, we do more than endure. We create conditions for leaders and teams to navigate complexity with clarity, purpose, and integrity. And when we extend that commitment to our partners, we strengthen a broader ecosystem that recognizes people, not just programs, as our greatest asset.
Keeping the conversation going
Archstone Foundation is not alone in navigating this moment, and we cannot afford to be silent about what this moment is requiring of us.
This is the beginning of a broader conversation and an invitation. In this blog series, we will share how we are doing the internal work – what we are learning, where we are being challenged, and how we are investing in our people because advancing impact requires us, as a sector, to be just as intentional about how we sustain people and organizations as we are about the outcomes we seek to achieve. If we are serious about advancing equity and justice, then we have to be just as serious about the conditions that make that work possible. And that starts with how we care for the people carrying it forward.
We invite you to join the conversation.
The question is no longer whether we can afford to invest in wellness and culture. It’s whether we can afford not to. What would change if we treated the well-being of our people as essential to the impact we seek? Share your thoughts in the comments below.
