You Cannot Pour from an Empty Cup:

Mental Health Awareness in Michigan’s Nonprofit Sector
MENTAL HEALTH AWARENESS MONTH | MAY 2026

Author Dr. Crystallee Crain

Every May, Mental Health Awareness Month invites us to pause, reflect, and act — to move beyond awareness and into genuine community support. For those of us working in Michigan’s nonprofit sector, this month carries a particular weight.

We are, after all, the people who show up for others in their hardest moments. We staff the hotlines, run the food pantries, mentor the youth, and advocate for those whose voices often go unheard.

But here is what we rarely say out loud: we are struggling, too.

This May, I want to use this space to speak directly to nonprofit professionals, board members, and organizational leaders across Michigan. I want to offer you the data, the language, and — most importantly — the permission to take your own mental health as seriously as you take the communities you serve.

The State of Mental Health in Michigan

Michigan is doing better than many states when it comes to mental health infrastructure. The 2025 State of Mental Health in America report ranked Michigan 13th in the nation, recognizing the state for lower prevalence of mental illness and comparatively higher access to care. That is meaningful progress worth acknowledging.

And yet, progress does not mean the work is done.

Across the United States, 23.4% of adults, more than 61 million people, experienced a mental illness in 2024, according to the National Alliance on Mental Illness (NAMI). Young adults aged 18–25 bear the heaviest burden, with 32.2% experiencing a mental illness that year. Nationally, more than 1 in 5 adults experience mental illness each year, and more than 1 in 20 experience serious mental illness.

In Michigan, frequent mental distress, defined as mental health being “not good” for 14 or more days in a month, is tracked by the CDC’s Behavioral Risk Factor Surveillance System and remains a meaningful indicator of unmet need in our communities. The 2024 SAMHSA national survey found that 21.7% of U.S. adults reported symptoms of generalized anxiety disorder, with over 7% experiencing moderate to severe symptoms. For adolescents, that figure climbs even higher: more than 4 in 10 reported anxiety symptoms.

On the youth mental health front, there is some encouraging news. The University of Michigan’s Healthy Minds Study — the largest study of college student mental health in the nation, based on responses from more than 84,000 students — found that depression and anxiety have declined for three consecutive years. Students reporting moderate to severe depression dropped from 44% in 2022 to 37% in 2025. Suicidal ideation among students fell from 15% to 11% during the same period.

But for every statistic showing improvement, there are millions of Michiganders still waiting for care. NAMI data shows that only about half of U.S. adults with a mental illness receive treatment in any given year. Stigma, cost, provider shortages, and geography all stand between people and the help they need. In roughly 70% of U.S. counties, there are no child or adolescent psychiatrists at all. We cannot afford to treat mental health as a footnote — not in our communities, and not in our organizations.

The Hidden Crisis Inside the Nonprofit Sector

There is a particular kind of exhaustion that lives in our sector. We call it compassion fatigue. Burnout. Vicarious trauma. Whatever name we give it, the data is clear: nonprofit professionals are in crisis, and the crisis is getting worse.

95% of nonprofit leaders expressed concern about staff burnout in 2024 with more than a third describing it as “very much” a concern.
 — Center for Effective Philanthropy, State of Nonprofits 2024

This is not a personal failing. This is a structural reality.

In a 2024 survey by The Chronicle of Philanthropy, more than half of nonprofit leaders reported struggling to maintain work-life balance, and nearly 60% cited challenges with staff burnout or attrition related to compensation disparities with for-profit organizations. Nearly 50% of nonprofits reported difficulty filling staff vacancies.

The ripple effects are serious. The nonprofit sector now carries a turnover rate of approximately 19% — compared to 12% in other industries. Nearly 7 in 10 nonprofit employees reported in a 2025 survey that they planned to look for a new job that year. One in three nonprofits struggles with retention and turnover, and 59% reported significantly more difficulty filling positions in 2024 than in prior years.

What drives this? Often, it is the collision of deep mission commitment with real-world resource scarcity. Nonprofit workers frequently carry the weight of complex human need — poverty, trauma, homelessness, addiction, violence — with insufficient pay, limited benefits, and organizational cultures that have historically valorized self-sacrifice. A 2024 study by Independent Sector and United for ALICE found that in 2022, 22% of nonprofit employees lived in households unable to afford basic necessities like housing and healthcare.

Mental Health America’s Mind the Workplace report adds another dimension: among Millennial and Gen Z workers, who now make up the majority of the nonprofit workforce, 59% and 71% respectively reported unhealthy workplace mental health scores.

Nearly three-quarters of our youngest nonprofit professionals are working in conditions that are harming their mental health.

What This Means for Our Organizations

Burnout is not just a human cost — it is an organizational and mission cost. When staff leave, programs falter. When leaders burn out, institutional memory walks out the door. When mental health is treated as a private matter rather than a collective responsibility, organizations lose the very people who make the mission possible.

The Nonprofit Finance Fund’s 2025 National Survey found that while more organizations are recognizing the need to center care and culture, 37% of nonprofits operated at a deficit in 2024. The gap between the need and the resources to address it is not shrinking. This means that prioritizing mental health in our sector requires more than good intentions. It requires structural change.

A Call to Action: What We Can Do Together

Mental Health Awareness Month is not just a time to talk about community need. It is a time to look inward — at our teams, our leaders, ourselves. Here is where we can start:

• Normalize the conversation. Create space in team meetings, supervision, and organizational culture for honest conversations about wellbeing. Burnout thrives in silence. When leaders share their own struggles appropriately, they give permission for staff to do the same.
• Invest in real mental health supports. Mental health days, Employee Assistance Programs (EAPs), flexible schedules, and access to professional counseling are not luxuries — they are infrastructure. Organizations that support employee wellbeing see lower turnover, stronger engagement, and better mission outcomes.
• Review workload distribution. One of the most effective burnout interventions is ensuring that no one person is carrying more than they reasonably can. Regular workload audits, clear role boundaries, and team-based problem solving all make a difference.
• Train supervisors. Supervisors are the single greatest lever for employee wellbeing. Training them in active listening, recognizing early signs of burnout, and holding supportive one-on-one conversations is one of the highest-return investments an organization can make.
• Advocate for the sector. Individual organizations cannot solve structural problems alone. We must collectively advocate for funder policies that support organizational health — including unrestricted funding, adequate overhead allowances, and explicit investment in staff wellness.
• Seek help when you need it. If you are a nonprofit professional who is struggling, please reach out. Contact your primary care provider. Call or text 988 — the Suicide and Crisis Lifeline — for confidential support 24 hours a day. You do not have to wait until you are in crisis to deserve care.

Closing: To Those Doing the Work

To every nonprofit professional in Michigan who has shown up when they were running on empty, who has held someone else’s pain while quietly carrying their own — this month is for you, too.

Awareness is only the beginning. What comes next is community. And community means we do not let each other fall.

Mental health is not a sign of weakness. It is not a distraction from the mission. Mental health is the foundation on which everything else we do is built. Without it, we cannot sustain ourselves, our organizations, or the change we are working so hard to create.

So please: take the appointment. Take the walk. Take the day. Ask for help. And know that doing so makes you not less capable of this work, but more.

With care and solidarity,

Dr. Crystallee Crain and the Nonprofit Network Team

Resources

• 988 Suicide & Crisis Lifeline — Call or text 988 | Available 24/7
• NAMI Michigan — nami.org | 1-800-950-NAMI (6264)
• Michigan MDHHS Mental Health Resources — michigan.gov/mdhhs
• SAMHSA National Helpline — 1-800-662-4357 | Free, confidential, 24/7
• Nonprofit Learning Lab — nonprofitlearninglab.org

References

BambooHR. (2025). 5 HR trends for nonprofits in 2025. https://www.bamboohr.com/blog/nonprofit-hr-trends

Center for Effective Philanthropy. (2024). State of nonprofits 2024: What funders need to know. https://cep.org

Chronicle of Philanthropy. (2024). Nonprofit workforce and wellbeing survey. The Chronicle of Philanthropy.

Givebutter. (2025, November). Nonprofit burnout statistics. https://givebutter.com/blog/nonprofit-burnout-statistics

Im, J., et al. (2024). State of nonprofits 2024: What funders need to know. Center for Effective Philanthropy.

Independent Sector & United for ALICE. (2024). Nonprofits and the cost of living: A workforce analysis. Independent Sector.

Johnson Center for Philanthropy. (2025, January). The nonprofit workforce is in crisis. Dorothy A. Johnson Center for Philanthropy. https://johnsoncenter.org/blog/the-nonprofit-workforce-is-in-crisis/

Mental Health America. (2024). Mind the workplace report. Mental Health America. https://mhanational.org

Mission Edge. (2026, March). Talent, burnout, and retention: The defining challenge of the nonprofit workforce. https://www.missionedge.org

National Alliance on Mental Illness (NAMI). (2025). Mental health by the numbers. https://www.nami.org/about-mental-illness/mental-health-by-the-numbers/

National Alliance on Mental Illness (NAMI). (2025). State fact sheets: Michigan. https://www.nami.org/advocacy-at-nami/state-fact-sheets/

National Council of Nonprofits. (2025). 2025 National state of the nonprofit sector survey findings. National Council of Nonprofits.

National Institute of Mental Health (NIMH). (2024). Mental illness statistics. U.S. Department of Health and Human Services. https://www.nimh.nih.gov/health/statistics/mental-illness

Nonprofit Finance Fund. (2025). 2025 National state of the nonprofit sector survey report. https://nff.org

Nonprofit Learning Lab. (2025, December). Employee burnout prevention: Self-care, supervision, and HR strategies for 2025–2026. https://www.nonprofitlearninglab.org

Social Current. (2025, February). Navigating workforce challenges: 2025 trends and solutions for the social sector. https://www.social-current.org

Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration (SAMHSA). (2025). 2024 National Survey on Drug Use and Health (NSDUH): Key findings. U.S. Department of Health and Human Services. https://www.samhsa.gov/data/

Suffredini, K. (2025). 2024 U.S. national survey on the mental health of LGBTQ+ young people by state: Michigan. The Trevor Project.

United Health Foundation / America’s Health Rankings. (2025). State of mental health in America 2025. United Health Foundation. https://www.americashealthrankings.org

University of Michigan School of Public Health / Healthy Minds Network. (2025). 2024–2025 Healthy Minds Study: Annual report. https://sph.umich.edu/news/2025posts/college-student-mental-health-third-consecutive-year-improvement.html

WILX News 10. (2025, October 3). Report ranks Michigan’s mental health compared to rest of America. https://www.wilx.com/2025/10/03/report-ranks-michigans-mental-health-compared-rest-america/

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