Part 2. If you missed Part 1, start with Nonprofits Are Burning Through Their Best People: The Fix Starts in the Boardroom.
Last time, I left you with me sitting here crunchier than KFC chicken. That's still mostly true. Burnout is real, it is no fun and nobody hands you a timeline for bouncing back. You don't wake up one morning un-crisped. It comes back in pieces, and usually from places you weren't looking.
One of those places, for me, has been a boardroom. (Yes, I see the irony.) I recently joined the Board of Trustees at Powhatan School in Boyce, and it has reminded me of something I had nearly stopped believing: boards can get this right. At Powhatan, it shows up in how they bring new people in, how they spend their time together and whether anything happens after everyone goes home.
Why Powhatan
Powhatan is personal. I'm an alum, and some of my best school memories live there. We read Hatchet and then headed out on a survival trip to see how we'd fare (spoiler: better than Brian, but we had adults and snacks). I learned from teachers who are still legends to anyone lucky enough to have had them. That place shaped how I think and how I learn, dyslexia and all.
So when the chance came to serve, I said yes for two reasons. I wanted to take what I learned in the industry that burnt me to a crisp and put it to good use somewhere that wanted it. And I wanted to give back to a place that gave me a lot.
Onboarding That Was Real
The first thing that caught me off guard was that joining the board was a process. There were meetings and interviews. There was an orientation. There was actual onboarding.
Plenty of boards say they do all of that. In reality it's a packet, and that packet has been refreshed maybe once or twice since it was first printed. You get a binder and a handshake, and you figure out the rest by your third meeting (or never).
By the time I sat down at my first Powhatan meeting, I knew who was who, why things worked the way they did and where the school wanted to go. That matters more than most boards realize. A new trustee who has been set up to understand the place can contribute right away. A new trustee handed a packet spends a year catching up.
A Retreat That Didn't End Up on a Shelf
Two weekends ago we had our board retreat. I've been to my share of retreats, and most land in one of two camps. Some are a club meeting with better catering. The rest produce a lot of good conversation that gets typed up, filed away and never opened again.
This one was different. And man, was it refreshing.
The board and school leadership showed up fully engaged. Everyone respected the school's traditions, and everyone was willing to make changes where they were needed to secure the school's future. The conversations were fascinating. People listened. People shared. I left excited, which is not a word I would have used about a board meeting in a long time.
Then came the part that really got me. I've been in committee meetings since, and the ideas from the retreat are not collecting dust. They're being put in place. The conversations kept going after we left the room.
That kind of follow-through is rare. It's also the entire reason to hold a retreat in the first place.
What More Nonprofits Need
In Part 1, I wrote about veterans leaving the sector and taking the mentoring with them. What I saw at Powhatan is the other side of that coin.
The trustees with tenure and experience welcomed new voices. The new voices (me included) listened and learned from that experience. And then the group carried the ideas forward together. Nobody was guarding turf. Nobody was trying to prove the old way wrong just because it was old.
That's the balance so many boards miss. Some lean so hard on tradition that new ideas never make it past the first meeting. Others chase every new idea and forget why the place worked to begin with. Powhatan has found the middle, and you can feel it in the room.
Getting Unburnt
There's a moment in Hatchet where Brian, cold and miserable, throws his hatchet at a porcupine in the dark. He misses. The hatchet hits the rock wall and throws sparks, and that's how he figures out fire. The spark came from the thing he'd been holding onto the whole time, used a different way.
For me, the spark came from a boardroom. The same kind of room that burnt me in the first place.
I'm not going to pretend one retreat fixed me. Recovery takes time, and I'm still in it. But it's hard to overstate what it does for someone burnt out on board dynamics to sit in a room where the board works. Where people listen. Where ideas leave the room and turn into something.
So, board members, a few things to think about. Would your newest trustee describe their onboarding as a process or a packet? Where are the ideas from your last retreat right now? And when a new voice speaks up at your table, does anyone with tenure lean in, or do they wait it out?
Burnout is real. So is getting unburnt.
Sometimes it just takes the right room.
