I’m the founder and current leader of a small non-profit. I would judge myself as much less “effective”/ “productive” than I was when in the commercial world. However, I do have to step back and see that a great deal of good has been done when I feel frustrated.

One thing to keep in mind is that non-profits working with volunteers are built on relationships rather than structural power. Yes, all organisations rely on relationships but in non-profits structural power is very weak, typically. There are many things I could say about this, but I will only touch on one. First, in no way do I defend or condone your current leader, I simply don’t know enough to make any judgements, but let me give you an example from my own experience. I was once at a conference for non-profit leaders and the keynote speaker started with this “before I get started let me just say that every one of you could further the mission of your organisation if your first act upon returning home was to fire someone in your team.” This led to the room erupting into a high level mummers and chair shuffling. The keynote laughed and said “every one of you just had a face pop into your mind - now go fire them” This single statement became the topic of side conversations for the rest of the event. Now jump ahead a few years and I’m talking to a senior leader of a non- profit about a volunteer on my team who just won’t stay on task no matter what job you give them. His recommendation, “You need to get rid of them because they are not showing respect for your leadership and they are demoralising the team”. However, this person was a friend and beloved by many on the team. In the end it was the right thing for them and the team and the overall mission of the group for them to go but it damaged our friendship and it hurt the feelings of many on the team. I got questions from many staff and partners and donors. I needed to protect the privacy and reputation of the individual and try to help all the parties move on. In the end it was worth all the disruption but it was very hard - much harder than a layoff or separation in the for profit world.
Now for the flip side, I had a volunteer who I recruited who was a 1% person - super high achiever - with a passion for our mission. He had an MBA and a ton of leadership experience. He was used to leading a 1% high performance team and “getting shit done”. He made many recommendations to me and I tried to take on board as much as I could. He was frustrated with our volunteers and project tracking and processes. So we got tracking software, we implemented new processes, we restructured one of our big projects on his recommendations. It was taking up huge amounts of my time and it was roughing up the feathers of many volunteers. And one of his first big innovations totally failed. I was ok because I know things fail but it was high profile because so many feathers were ruffled. But we really started to get some traction within a few months and I was becoming hopeful that all this investment was going to get us to a new level. Then he quit - he was frustrated that things were not moving fast enough and wanted to go do something else. I was was deeply impacted. I never felt as discouraged as I did that week. Now I was left with a complex and expensive tracking system that only he fully understood. Our big project was only 50% done and all the ruffled feathers developed beaks as well.
At the end of the day as CEO of this small group all these problems belong to me. Failure to manage a volunteer effectively - whether a friend who won’t stay on task or a super high achiever who walked away in frustration - it all comes down to my lack of effectiveness.
I don’t just live there, I seek to learn and grow but when I see problem in my org I always have to look at what I have done to allow, create or mitigate the issues.

I hope you find the right path forward for your passion for the mission and your frustration in trying to bring that to pass.