The ‘burnover’ crisis undermining Australia’s NFPs

Structural change is needed to address idiosyncratic workplace wellness issues in the NFP sector, one specialist has argued.

A 2025 Pro Bono Australia Salary Survey revealed that 29 per cent of employee departures in the not-for-profit (NFP) sector were strongly due to burnout, representing an 8 per cent increase from 2024. A growing body of data is trending towards a sector-wide issue that goes beyond individual resilience.

After experiencing extreme burnout firsthand, former Victorian government executive Nick Orchard coined the term “burnover” to explain the effect and cause of working in not-for-profits without structural support.

While not specific to the NFP sector, Orchard highlighted that emotional investment in positive outcomes, coupled with often limited funding and increasing demand, causes a paradoxical and compounding effect for employees already operating in a uniquely high cause-driven organisation.

Orchard noticed that middle leaders are often at the centre of this cycle, “caught between high-level expectations and the challenges of managing a frontline team day-to-day”.

In addition, international numbers show 77 per cent of NFP middle managers receive no formal leadership training. Orchard said: “Without clear systems, role clarity and decision-making support, the pressure builds until, eventually, something has to give.

“And too often, that ‘something’ is the job they once loved and the cause they believe in.”

According to the Australian Council of Social Service (ACOSS), staff turnover is too high for almost half of CEOs and senior leaders. Over 70 per cent of organisations in the housing and homelessness sector alone report rising staff stress, and burnout is threatening service delivery.

Burnover doesn’t stop at the individual, highlighting a very real threat to the sector. According to the Australian HR Institute, the recruitment, onboarding and lost productivity from replacing an experienced team member can cost up to 200 per cent of an annual salary.

In addition, Orchard explained that “when experienced staff leave because they’re burnt out, they take their skills, expertise and organisational knowledge with them”.

He said: “Even the best candidate cannot walk into a job and start operating at a high level. That knowledge takes time to build, which means existing staff tend to take more on, and morale suffers as a result.

“That pattern is how burnover becomes a cycle.”

Tackling this issue, therefore, starts with correctly defining the issue.

Orchard highlighted that understanding burnout “as a personal resilience issue” is part of the problem. He added: “But when people start walking out the door, it becomes an organisational risk.”

And due to the nature of non-profit work, as with the cause, the effect is also significant. According to Orchard, the sector is seeing real-time destabilisation, and community impact is suffering.

“That’s why I call it burnover. It affects budgets, culture, service delivery and ultimately the communities organisations exist to serve,” he said.

To stem the flow, Orchard highlighted the importance of building “organisations structures that prevent the problem from the ground up”.

For HR professionals, this means questioning the systems around people, what is being asked of them, and where the “bottlenecks” are.

Orchard said: “If burnover is predictable, we can design against it.”