Passion Turned Profession · Book IX · The founder
Nonprofit Founder’s Syndrome and Burnout
You thought you were taking on a project. It was a post.
9 chapters · 84 pages
What it is
Nine chapters, none of which offer self-care advice. The book describes the position accurately, on the assumption that an accurate description is more useful than reassurance.
Deciding on incomplete information. Having nobody to ask while surrounded by people. The week that disappears, and why conventional productivity advice assumes an employer you do not have. And what you pay yourself, which is not only a budget decision but a public statement about the value of the work, read by everyone who works for you.
Then burnout, described clinically rather than sympathetically. Founder’s syndrome from the inside, which is almost never recognised at the time. Why letting go remains difficult after you have decided to. And what the organization owes you, a question founders are seldom asked.
The reason no other founder has told you they are struggling is that they are having this exact chapter’s experience, in a room four miles away, about you. Book IX · Nonprofit Founder’s Syndrome and Burnout
What this book assumes
Nothing. It is the only book concerned with the founder rather than the organization.
Every chapter
9 chapters, and what each one does.
Every chapter, with the sentence it opens on.
- 01
What You Actually Signed Up For
You thought you were taking on a project. It was a post.
- 02
Deciding Without Enough
You will make several thousand decisions on partial information, and you will be wrong in public a documented number of times.
- 03
Nobody to Ask
You are surrounded by people, and there is no one in the building you can say the true thing to.
- 04
The Week That Disappears
Every founder says the same sentence, and almost none of them have worked out why it is true.
- 05
What You Pay Yourself, and What It Means
The number is not a budget decision. It is a description of how you understand your own position, and everybody can read it.
- 06
Burnout, Described Accurately
It is not tiredness, it does not resolve with a holiday, and the second symptom is the one that frightens people into silence.
- 07
Founder's Syndrome, From the Inside
Nobody has ever recognised it in themselves at the time. That is not a coincidence, and it is not because founders are stupid.
- 08
Why You Cannot Let Go
Book Six told you to hand it over. Book Seven told you to plan your exit. Neither of them told you why you have not.
- 09
What the Organization Owes You, and What It Does Not
The final question, and founders are so unused to being asked it that most cannot answer.
Two more lines from inside
From the manuscript.
You have not stopped caring. You have run out of the thing caring is made from, and those produce identical readings from the inside.
Book IX · Nonprofit Founder’s Syndrome and Burnout
You are owed the conditions to do the work and an honest account of whether you did it. Everything beyond that is a gift, and gifts cannot be invoiced.
Book IX · Nonprofit Founder’s Syndrome and Burnout
-
What this book assumes
Nothing. It is the only book concerned with the founder rather than the organization.
Each subject is treated once, in the book that owns it. Where an answer belongs elsewhere, you are given the chapter reference.
Get the complete set
All ten books, plus the toolkit.
Passion Turned Profession is available as a complete set for $149: all ten books in PDF and EPUB, plus the forty documents printed in Book X as editable Word files. The books are not sold separately.