Volunteer Burnout: How to Guard Against It

Last year was challenging, personally. A situation with another person also made my volunteer work tough. I continued to push through despite feeling like I needed a break because it was the only option. Looking back, I probably should have taken a break because now I’m feeling some sense of burnout. When you give all of yourself to help others, it’s easy to burn out. I’m feeling a lot stronger now after finally taking that break. What is burnout, and how do you guard against it – and recover from it?

What Are the Signs of Volunteer Burnout?

While you start to burn out, you might not initially feel it. Here are some of the signs that you might be experiencing burnout:

Folks may tell you that your personality has changed, or you might not feel like yourself. Both of these can be early signs of burnout due to empathy fatigue.

You may be having trouble with motivation. Things that used to excite you as a volunteer may not currently motivate you to action.

You’re feeling cynical or apathetic about the causes you volunteer with. If you’re starting to feel overly critical or cynical about your ability to help others through your volunteerism, you might be experiencing burnout.

When you try to complete your volunteer tasks, but you feel overwhelmed or burdened by them. If things that should be easy no longer are, or you’re having difficulty completing tasks or making it to meetings, you might be experiencing burnout.

When you’re feeling anxious about your volunteer work. The one doesn’t often make the list, but for me, it was a huge indicator that I was feeling enormous stress about the situations that presented themselves this past year.

What Causes Volunteer Burnout and How Do You Prevent It?

Burnout can be caused by various factors, from feeling unsupported by the organization to putting in a lot of extra hours to feeling underappreciated.

Taking breaks is the biggest way to prevent burnout. I’ll repeat it: Taking breaks is the most significant way to avoid burnout. Protect your breaks. Set boundaries with others you work with and those you help. Boundaries are also vital to enforce if you want to avoid burnout. Last year, I let some of my boundaries get slippery and found myself putting out far more fires than I would have if I hadn’t kept solid boundaries. Finally, communicate with others when you need more help and support. Had I done this early on, I wouldn’t have been crawling at the end of the school year.

How Do You Recover from Volunteer Burnout?

Take a break. That’s what I’ve been doing, and I’m getting excited to get back to things.

Take things off your plate. When I suffered from writing burnout, I put some of my blogs to bed for a while, which helped. If you can delegate to others, delegate. I intend to do more of that this year.

Eliminate stressors. Are there things that are stressing you out that you don’t have to get done? Don’t do them. Leave them to someone else. Step back.

Change organizations. If you still want to volunteer but have taken a break and determined that the organization isn’t a good fit for you, it’s fine to step back from your role there and look for another organization to get involved with.

Work with volunteer supervisors on more training. Sometimes, burnout comes from trying to do things you’re not quite qualified for. If you want to continue in your current role, discuss whether you can get further training or education to help you fulfill your role.

Work with volunteer coordinators to define your role. If ambiguous roles and responsibilities are contributing to your current burnout, defining them can help.

Enforce your boundaries. If others have hurt feelings about your boundary-enforcement, let them. Enforcing boundaries will help prevent burnout from happening again.

While it’s better to prevent burnout before it happens, it’s important to recover from burnout before pushing yourself further. If you don’t, you could need a far longer break or unnecessarily burn bridges.