The hidden burnout of community builders

Article by Georgia Ritter

If you have a passion for something you’ll know it generally creates flow states, feelings of joy and timelessness. Community builders bring people together around passions, so it might make logical sense that they would be the least likely to feel burnout. After all, burnout comes when the joy is gone, your values are misaligned, and you have lost your sense of purpose, right?

I thought so too. Until one day, on a Saturday afternoon, I found myself feeling overwhelmed. I run a very small community - this Out of Hours community that I love - with a podcast, small slack group, newsletter and Instagram. But that afternoon, I felt tired and overwhelmed. As I reflected, the only word that seemed to fit this feeling was ‘burnt out’. 

Curious to see if anyone else felt like this, I looked to Google for answers. I typed in ‘community burnout’ to see if people were talking about it. I found zero articles. So I turned to Twitter. I wanted to ask real community builders:

Was community burnout legitimate?

Was it different from normal burnout?

Why did it happen?

And how could community builders better manage it so more powerful communities could emerge?

Thanks to the generosity of community builders on Twitter, I got all these answers and more.  Some sent me voice notes, some sent me Loom recordings and many featured here proactively messaged on Twitter. Community builders are a special type of person.

A huge thank you to the insights from Sarah Drinkwater, Rosie Sherry, Max Rothery, Gemma Whates, Arfah Farooq, Sonya Barlow, Anne-Laure Le Cunff, Dan Murray-Serter and Bayo Adelaja, who all contributed to this article.

Due to the ambiguity and lack of universal agreement of what a ‘community’ is, we’re in for a long read here. Stick with me. First, I’ll talk about what actually defines a community, then why community builders are primed for burnout and finally what other people have done to mitigate the overwhelm. Let’s get into it.

What is a community?

There are millions of manifestations of “community’ - across cultures, geographies, ages and races. There is no one size fits all. They do, however, have some common features. Dan Murray-Serter, the co-founder of Foundrs, a community of high-growth entrepreneurs, described ‘community’ as a place where “people come together to share ideas”. Communities are “a space for multi-way and mutually beneficial interaction between members” said Anne-Laure Le Cunff - founder of Ness Labs.

Sarah Drinkwater, angel investor in community-first companies (and ex-Global Lead of Community Management at Google) said communities come together because of a shared identity, “because they believe in a particular thing”. People also need to feel accepted in a community. Arfah Farooq - who runs Muslamic Makers - defined community as “a place you can “belong and bring your whole self and you don’t feel excluded”. All in all, communities are places where conversation, coming together and inclusion happens.

Is community burnout just people working too hard?

Back to the burnout question.

A couple of years ago I wrote an article about how burnout might be caused by over-investing in just one profession. I argued that burnout might not be caused by too many hours at work, but because we neglect our passions, and don’t self-direct our own purpose. 

The same month I wrote that article, ‘burnout’ was added to the World Health Organisation (WHO)’s International Classification of Diseases. Burnout isn’t just caused by too much work, argued academic Elizabeth Grace Saunders in HBR, instead it is caused by six variables.

These are: Reward, Fairness, Perceived lack of control, Workload, A mismatch of values and Community.

If burnout were to be caused by workload alone community burnout might make sense - but fairness and values? Surely communities are the very places for reciprocity and fair treatment? If communities set out to transform, find purpose and encourage creativity - as Casper ter Kuile suggested - how on earth could community builders suffer from burnout? Surely communities are the very antidote to burnout?

Well, almost. 

When I spoke to Max Rothery - Head of Community at financial app Finimize - he put it more bluntly: “Community burnout is something that every community manager will experience. As your community scales, if it’s not managed, it’s inevitable”. But why? In this article I’ll explore how reward, fairness, perceived lack of control and workload show up for community builders.

The five unique causes of community builder burnout

1. COMMUNITIES HAVE FLUCTUATING REWARDS (“REWARD”)

Remember how Elizabeth Saunders talked in HBR about lack of ‘fairness’ as a cause of burnout? Well, fairness isn’t just a reflection of how fairly you’re being paid. It’s also a question of whether you are being recognised. Are you being appreciated? Do people care? And this varies. Sarah Drinkwater put it concisely: “Community work is people work. People work is brilliant and rewarding but it’s also messy - it’s emotional labour in lots of ways”. Whilst community leaders take on this emotional labour knowingly, and they’re usually not looking for gold stars or millions in bonuses, they are still responsive to reward systems.

‘Rewards’ are everything from people acknowledging how much work has been put in, to saying thank you, to simply replying to messages. Dan Murray-Serter reflected on this: “There are moments where you feel let down almost. It’s very easy to get stuck in stories in your head around appreciation: whether people are really getting value from it, whether you’re wasting your time or not”. Arfah - founder of Muslamic Makers - said a similar thing: “There is so much being done for the community, but sometimes people don’t step up, and it can be frustrating.” Dan and Arfah are both passionate about serving their community’s needs, so the fact that even they feel frustrated shows the scale of the problem. Frustration is a natural response when the effort made and the impact felt don’t align for a sustained period of time. This is when the absence of rewards can impact motivation. As Dan Murray-Serter said: “The worst feeling is that you’re doing it all for no particular reason - that's when apathy can set in.”

2. COMMUNITY BUILDERS ARE MORE VISIBLE (“PERCEIVED LACK OF CONTROL”). 

“Perceived lack of control” is a cause of burnout: and for community builders this can stem through their public visibility. This visibility is in many ways a privilege, as you become a node in the middle of an incredible community, but it is also tricky. When running London’s Google Campus community, Sarah said “‘It was a brilliant role, but I was very visible in the building. I couldn’t leave the building for a coffee without people asking me questions and I couldn’t have the days I have now, for example just sitting and writing a document’”. Sonya Barlow, who runs Like Minded Females, agreed. “Community management is difficult because it means opening yourself up for public scrutiny, as well as gratitude” - you are visible and people have opinions.

This public visibility also builds into your sense of self, and how much control you feel over your self concept. “Your whole identity is intertwined with the community”, said Rosie Sherry, “If you want to leave, it becomes hard to create that separation. It’s almost like rebuilding who you are”. Ultimately, community builders tend to be more publicly available and visible and so the always-on nature of the role can be intensified due to easier access.

3. COMMUNITY BUILDERS ARE ALWAYS ON (“WORKLOAD”)

When running a community you can feel like you need to be available or otherwise you’re letting people down. Arfah said there’s a feeling of “always feeling like you have to be on, always feeling like you have to answer to people”. She said: “I’ve always been someone who replies ASAP, but in the pandemic I've become bad with WhatsApp or email and leave people to the next day or day after”. Anne-Laure Le Cunff echoed these sentiments: “It’s fine when things are not too busy but can get harder to manage if there's a lot going on”.

Rosie Sherry, who ran the Indie Hackers community after building her own community Ministry of Testing echoes this, saying: “It’s super hard for me to switch off. I never stop thinking about how to improve things and community often overlaps into personal lives too.” As Sarah Drinkwater said: “it’s so tempting to reply to a text on the weekend”: there’s a lack of boundaries in community work because it is, ultimately, ’people work’.

But if everyone is feeling ‘always-on’ in the pandemic due to a surge in working from home, why do community builders have it especially tough? Partly because they’re so visible, partly because they care so much and partly because of the multiple channels of communication. 

4. THE SERVICE-DRIVEN PERSONALITY OF COMMUNITY BUILDERS (“WORKLOAD”)

In speaking to community builders, one theme that came up again and again was the gap between what could be done to help the community and the time available to help. Gemma Whates, who runs ALL by MAMA - a community of business owners who are also mothers - said: “Overwhelm comes from when there’s a list of things you could be doing but you haven’t got through it. You see all these opportunities of things you want to do and how you want to connect people in the community. There is a temptation to do everything for everyone - an idea overwhelm”. 

Mental energy is required too. Bayo Adelaja, who runs Do it Now Now, said “there’s a level of pressure in knowing that people are expecting something from you… It takes a lot to not take that on as a mantle or a mandate for your life.” It is also the responsibility to show up emotionally to be a great community leader, as Sonya Barlow said: “you always have to be on, to be compassionate and listen”. 

The service of others’ needs can also sometimes overtake your own. “I’ve been on sick leave for 5 weeks”, Sonya Barlow told me, “and unfortunately had to show up to two community events. As a solo founder, the pressure to not let people down is real.” Community builders often feel like they’re not doing as much as they could for the community, even when they’re working at full capacity. After all, “a lot of community leaders are impact driven”, Gemma Whates said, “so it’s really hard to step back”. 

5. COMMUNITY DEPARTMENTS ARE UNDER-VALUED (“fairness”)

Not all community builders build their own standalone communities. Some community experts are hired to start or run communities for existing companies - building communities to better serve their customers, empower users or even build a loyal customer base as a commercial moat. 

In tech businesses, says Rosie Sherry, “everyone is shouting ‘community first’, ‘community now’. But really they should be spending time listening, conversing and then maybe creating a community. People are jumping into building communities without real meaning or value. We are under pressure to create stuff that doesn’t really bring value, and the desire to reach ‘targets’ is never ending”. 

Indeed, ‘community’ is a department that requires strategy, and if it’s carelessly formed it can create additional pressure for those responsible for it. Community teams are often understaffed for the workload required. Sarah Drinkwater put the problem clearly: “community in tech is misunderstood, underpaid and undervalued”. Community is not often funded to the level that it needs to be funded despite the high worload, as Bayo Adelaja said: “you’re often underfunded and understaffed, but the needs of people are so great and continue to rise”.

When something is hard to measure, it is often undervalued, and community managers often end up doing more work to try to prove their worth. This is, you guessed it, another predictor for burnout.

Solutions to community builder burnout

I’ve painted a bleak picture for community leaders, but luckily burnout can be easily predicted and avoided with the help of some clear processes. Below are some tips for community leaders, as well as some tips for people who manage community leads or are part of communities. As is the nature of communities, everyone can play a part.

1. SET BOUNDARIES AND COMMUNICATE THEM

One of the best ways to manage overwhelm is to set and communicate clear boundaries. “I now set really strict boundaries” said Gemma Whates who runs ALL by MAMA “I won’t look on weekends - for example if I’m not working on Saturdays”. Anne-Laure has also redistributed workload, saying:  “I don't work on community stuff on the weekends”.

Max Rothery who runs the Finimize community advises you to share these boundaries with the community too. “Be open with your community and set boundaries with your time. Manage expectations, perhaps that you won't be available on weekends, or if they need you to answer they may have to wait. Or just separate work and personal devices”.You also might want to create guardrails of the problems you will help solve, allowing you to say no or delegate tasks that don’t fall within that category. Communities are usually very supportive and may just don’t know you are struggling. 

2. ASK FOR HELP

Some community leaders leave it too long before asking for help, but the community are usually willing to step up. Dan Murray-Serter said: “you’ll get volunteers in droves. If you’re solving a need for them, and they’re enjoying connecting with people, they’ll want more of it in their lives. Very often with good communities I’ve learnt that people underestimate how much people in their community are engaged”.

Max Rothery suggests a similar approach: “It’s all about being open with your members and empowering them to take over key responsibilities. Promote leaders in your absence and use it as an opportunity to reward your top members”. Ironically, doing this can actually fortify your community not weaken it as it helps more people get involved and have a voice.

3. TAKE A BREAK

If you can’t get support, sometimes you simply need to take time out. “Taking a break”, said Anne-Laure, “has been the only viable solution I have found so far. I’d rather take a break, recharge my batteries and come back refreshed to better serve the community”. Max Rothery said the same: “Inevitably the wheels come off if you don’t take a break. Sometimes you’ll be down, tired or not in the right frame of mind - you can’t be 110% 24/7”. When everything feels overwhelming, you can take the weekend off or take a day to work on other things. 

“Having experienced burnout”, said Bayo Adelaja, “I know that when I get even the slightest bit of overwhelm it’s time to take a step back, do something that’s completely unrelated to work. I do something with myself, my parents, and my friends that have nothing to do with my job. I take a step back and forget the world exists for a couple of days”.

4. DECENTRALISE THE COMMUNITY

When you start a community, you tend to have one goal: bring people together. “Most communities start with a personality of someone who runs it… but any good community does not rely on one person”, said Sarah Drinkwater. You can’t get away from being the founder or leader of the community, but you can create systems that allow people to get to know each other better and reduce your role in the conversation.

“We have a documentation section with guidelines and help guides” said Anne-Laure Le Cunff, “I’m fortunate that people in the community love supporting each other so I don't need to address every single question that’s asked”. Arfah from Muslamic Makers has also started to operationalise: “I’ve been writing up the Notion, sorting out the database, sorting out the admin. Those are the practical things that have to be done to decenter yourself from the community”. This may be difficult, recognised Gemma Whates, as at the beginning you’re the one who knows the opportunities and who should speak to who, but ultimately “it’s not a scalable option” to maintain your role as the lynchpin.

Conclusions

Community building is hard work. It should be well paid, well supported and highly valued. Whilst communities are generally values-aligned, burnout can happen when the rewards aren’t there and you don’t feel valued either by the company hiring you or the community you’re building, when your lack of boundaries create an unsustainable workload and sense of control over your time, and when you allow your own visibility to dictate your schedule. 

“Recognise yourself as an individual not a superhero”, recommends Bayo, “thinking that you have all the answers will contribute to burnout too”. Ultimately you have to do what you can do, and do that well - and lean on the incredible people in the community to lead the conversation, or as Charlie Dark says “make sure that you empower each and every member of the community so they feel as important and valued as you are”.

After all, there’s a lot at stake.

The communities featured in this piece are helping Muslim makers create change, helping mothers build economic empowerment through entrepreneurship and helping bring social empowerment to black communities across the globe. It’s important work. Community builders should take their work (and rest) seriously, and those who are employing community builders should pay them and value them fairly. 

If these communities are built solidly, with enough time, support and appreciation, they can help to solve some of the world’s most pressing problems: from economic empowerment, access to resources, and social mobility, and they can do it in a way that gets more voices heard. I’ll finish with some words that Bayo said to me: “People banding together and supporting each other is the only way that we’re going to see the world change for the better. If people support each other and create a sharing economy within them, whether that’s knowledge or resources, then we’re going to see the world change for the better, sooner.”

Let’s get building.

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Featured in this article:

Bayo Adelaja - Founder of Do it Now Now

Sarah Drinkwater - Director and Lead, Tech and Society Solutions Lab, Omidyar + Angel Investor

Anne-Laure Le Cunff - Founder of Ness Labs

Arfah Farooq - Co-founder of Muslamic Makers, Angel investor with Ada Ventures

Max Rothery - VP of Community, Finimize.

Gemma Whates - Founder of ALL by MAMA

Rosie Sherry - Community at Orbitmodel & @RosielandHQ

Dan Murray-Serter - Founder of Foundrs & Heights

Sonya Barlow - Founder of Like Minded Females

Community builders in Europe, as tagged in this tweet.

I tried to contact as many as possible, but many community builders were tagged who I didn’t get a chance to speak to. See below for a list of the best community builders in Europe as nominated by Twitter (I’ve included all, but only those tagged by other people). If I’m missing anyone who should be there feel free to message me on Twitter, and feel free to use this resource for your own community projects, hiring or general musings.