It's 5 a.m., I’m wide awake, and instead of sleeping like someone with a balanced life and healthy boundaries, I’m rewriting a Board report in my head for the fifth time. Not because it’s due tomorrow, but because I’m still trying to find the right way to say,

“Dear Board Member:

No, we can’t develop a secure APP to serve our members by September 15, and with a $9,000 budget, despite the interesting webinar you attended. I know that in the last six months, this is the ninth idea I’ve said wasn’t feasible …”

And it got me thinking: what’s keeping us nonprofit leaders up at night? I mean really?

If you’d asked me last month at the AFP conference, or at the CCAE or AHP sessions before that, the list would’ve sounded like a corporate bingo card:

• Donor-centric fundraising is dead. Long live community-centric everything!
• Embrace DEI or die trying (while tripping over your own privilege).
• AI is coming for your job… but also, it’s going to save you time!
• Tariffs are ruining donation-based supply chains (wait, we had those?).
• Donor patriarchy is the root of all evil (unless they’re still giving six figures).
• We need to deconstruct philanthropy and rebuild it from scratch (preferably using Canva).

And yes, all of these things matter. Some of them matter a lot.

But I have a suspicion—based on responses in social media groups, whispered coffee chats at conferences, and one too many LinkedIn messages that turned into therapy sessions—that these are not the real demons doing the insomnia tap dance in our heads.

Let’s be honest. If you're a Gen Xer like me, what’s really keeping you up might sound more like this:

• Will my 82-year-old mom fire the personal support worker again because she asked her to take a shower?
• We pay consultants a lot of money, maybe I should… hmm
• How do I match my housing developer/patriarchal donor with a new employee without getting a call from HR in a couple of weeks?
• Can I keep pretending my knees are “just sore from gardening” when it’s clearly early-onset “you're-not-50-anymore”?
• Is that senior volunteer, who can no longer lift a coffee urn, going to hurt herself (again) trying to set up for the AGM?
• Will my star employee quit if I say “we just don’t have the budget for that” one more time?
• Will this new government even look towards the charitable sector—let alone provide new funding?

There’s this gap — an unspoken chasm — between what the sector tells us is “urgent” and what we (as actual humans running these operations) quietly lie awake over. The tension between being good leaders and being good children, good parents and good partners—while still being people.

We’re not just nonprofit professionals. We’re the sandwich generation. With no condiments. Just the dry crusts of responsibility.

Let me be clear: I’m committed to DEI practices. I care about dismantling power imbalances in philanthropy. I’ve read the books, taken the trainings and changed our hiring practices. I also care deeply about the volunteers who forget how to unmute between Zoom calls, and about my Program Coordinator who just quietly took on her third role because she didn’t want to let anyone down.

And I know I’m not the only one trying to figure out if I should start planning for retirement or just accept that I’ll drop dead during a stewardship call sometime in my seventies.

I’ve noticed that many of us, especially the Gen Xers, who are still holding middle management or ED roles, are getting quieter in conference spaces. Not because we have nothing to say, but because we’re tired. Tired of performative shifts. Tired of changing the language while the systems stay the same. Tired of pretending we’re not worried about our own capacity while telling our staff to prioritize self-care. Tired of explaining that neither Elon Musk nor Jeff Bezos nor that corporate President who has all the Choice products cares about our little charity. (Sorry, that’s another board meeting, not a conference.)

Summer is here, and with it comes the annual delusion that we'll take time to rest. But let’s be honest: our version of “rest” is replying to emails in a Muskoka chair while trying not to spill wine on our laptops. Or finally making it to a beach, only to get a call that the Board Chair has “just a few quick questions about the audit.”

So maybe this summer, we do something radical.

Maybe we talk honestly—with each other, at least—about what’s actually keeping us up.

We admit the fears that don’t make it into panel discussions or strategic plans. We name the quiet panic about succession plans that aren’t written, volunteers who are aging faster than our CRM can track, and the feeling that if one more staffer gets poached by a job with dental benefits, we’re going to scream into a recycling bin.

And maybe we also permit ourselves to say: it’s okay if what’s bugging you isn’t a hot trend. It’s okay to prioritize your funding model over your policy manual. It’s okay to be both strategic and completely overwhelmed. And it’s okay—truly—if what keeps you up at night is whether your dad is eating properly, or if your summer appeal is going to flatline because everyone’s at the cottage.

We’ll get through it. We always do. With a bit of laughter, a few toasts and a group chat of peers who understand the weight of a role that’s rarely light—and who’ll still send you a meme when you need it most.

Happy summer. May your donors be generous, your audit questions be obvious, and your worries shrink just enough to let you sleep through the night… or at least until the raccoons knock over the compost bin again.

P.S. I took a little creative license and combined more than one charity’s angst to make a point. Hope it made you laugh a little.

Lee Pigeau brings over 30 years of leadership experience in Canada’s not-for-profit sector, with a strong track record in fundraising, governance, and strategic growth. As an adjunct instructor at the college level, he authored Ontario’s college-level e-learning fundraising curriculum and he has consulted for both grassroots and global charities on governance, donor stewardship, capital campaigns, and more. He is active in his community as a mentor, volunteer and competitive martial artist. LPigeau@bnpinspire.com