About the report.

The 2026 Thrive Profile™ Nonprofit Worker Wellbeing Report

The 2026 Thrive Profile™ Nonprofit Worker Wellbeing Report examines worker experience across three interconnected levels of wellbeing: individual, team, and organizational. Rather than measuring burnout as an isolated personal experience, the report explores how workload, coping, supervision, psychological safety, leadership priority, workplace culture, and policies shape whether nonprofit workers are surviving, coping, or thriving.

The report draws on the Thrive Profile™, a 56-item worker wellbeing assessment designed for nonprofit organizations. The tool was created to help organizations and sector partners better understand the conditions that contribute to burnout risk and the practices that may protect worker wellbeing.

Learn More About The Tool

Dataset Snapshot

850 nonprofit workers invited to participate
635 completed worker responses
21 participating nonprofit organizations
78% average response rate across the dataset
95% of participating organizations achieved a response rate of 50% or higher
Three levels measured: Individual, Team, and Organizational Wellbeing

Key Takeaways from National Findings

Takeaway #1

Burnout is not a resilience problem.

It is a workplace design problem.

Across the dataset, organizational conditions were stronger predictors of burnout than any single personal coping measure. Workplace Policies & Practices, Leadership Team Priority, and Workplace Culture were more strongly associated with individual wellbeing than coping alone.

This does not mean individual wellbeing practices do not matter. It means they are not enough when workers are navigating unclear policies, unsustainable workload expectations, uneven leadership follow-through, or systems that make recovery difficult.

Organizational conditions consistently emerged as the strongest predictors of burnout across the dataset.

The report also found that Leadership Team Priority was one of the clearest organizational levers. Leadership priority showed the strongest relationships with Employee Net Promoter Score, Workplace Culture, and Workplace Policies & Practices — suggesting that worker wellbeing becomes more real when leaders visibly own it in decision-making, communication, and practice.

Takeaway #2

Strong teams help but systems decide whether

thriving lasts.

Team wellbeing was the strongest domain in the Thrive Profile™ dataset. Many workers reported meaningful levels of psychological safety, team support, and supervisor reliability.

Those strengths matter. Supportive teams can help workers stay connected, speak honestly, ask for help, and continue doing meaningful work during stressful seasons. But the report also suggests that team culture is most protective when it is reinforced by leadership action, clear policies, and organizational infrastructure.

The strongest-performing organizations in the dataset appeared to pair strong team culture with stronger policy environments and clearer leadership priority. In best-in-class organizations, 33.3% of workers were in the High Energy phase, compared with 10.3% in other organizations. Best-in-class organizations also had lower burnout patterns, with 3.8% in Burnout and 0% in Habitual Burnout, compared with 11.7% in Burnout and 1% in Habitual Burnout in other organizations.

Psychological safety and team support are the foundation. Thriving organizations build the systems to sustain them.

71% of workers reported
high levels of Psychological Safety

54% of workers reported
high levels of Team Support

Takeaway #3

The strain is showing up unevenly..

Burnout risk is not evenly distributed across the workforce. The report found important differences by age, tenure, and role.

Workers ages 25–34 emerged as the highest-risk age group for individual wellbeing.
Workers in the 2–4 year tenure range showed a dip in wellbeing.
Leaders reported distinct strain around workload, boundaries, and support.

Together, these findings suggest that organizations may need more targeted approaches to worker wellbeing. A one-size-fits-all wellness strategy may miss the people carrying the most strain.
The workers carrying the most strain may not always be the most visible.