Charities, NGOs, and advocacy groups are facing a growing challenge: they are losing their most
dedicated people to burnout. From climate action and human rights to animal protection, countless
volunteers and advocates invest enormous emotional energy into creating social change. Yet many
experience exhaustion, disillusionment, and withdrawal from the very work that gives them purpose.
Despite its scale and consequences, activism burnout remains poorly understood and no dedicated tool exists to measure it.
This project offers the first comprehensive psychological investigation of activism burnout across
multiple social movements. It develops a new, validated measure of activism burnout tailored to the
realities of advocacy work, and uses it to map how widespread burnout is, what predicts it, and how it
unfolds over time. By combining large-scale surveys, longitudinal follow-ups, and a real-time
experience-sampling study during a live advocacy campaign, the research provides a uniquely rich,
multi-method picture of the pressures faced by people in civic and social-change roles.
The project is highly innovative in bringing together motivational factors (such as feeling effective),
social dynamics (such as belonging and interpersonal support), and organisational practices (such as
fairness) into a single framework. It will identify which factors truly protect wellbeing, which increase
vulnerability, and how activism burnout influences continued engagement.
By generating clear, actionable evidence, the project will equip charities, NGOs, and community
organisations with practical guidance to better support and retain their volunteers and staff. In doing
so, it strengthens the sustainability of civic participation and helps build healthier, more resilient
communities.