**1. Introduction**

Amidst the ongoing challenges the coronavirus pandemic, COVID-19, brought to the nonprofit sector, nonprofit organizations remain resilient. Staffed by passionate, dedicated professionals, nonprofit organizations seek to reinvent, reorganize, and or reimagine themselves as they emerge from the disruption COVID-19 created globally. A concentrated focus on addressing the phenomenon of burnout for service provider professionals at the three levels of organizational life better positions an organization to remain resilient. However, to do so requires a systems thinking design approach in operationalizing nonprofit organizations. Systems thinking has been gaining momentum in organizational development and change management models. System thinking considers the interconnectedness and interdependence of each component within an organization. Therefore, as the nonprofit community considers how to rebound and rebuild from the rubble of the COVID-19 pandemic, it must consider the micro, mezzo, and macro systems within its organizations. The micro level operates with the individual, the mezzo level occurs at the group or team level, and the macro level happens at the organizational level. Each level is interconnected, whether top-down with policies and procedures that affect the individual and group levels or bottom-up, whereby the individual's intrinsic and extrinsic motivation influences the outcome of group work or the organization's strategic objectives.

In the fast-paced, ever-changing environment of the continued COVID-19 pandemic, the nonprofit sector must consider the price the nonprofit staff and volunteers have paid to fulfill the missional directive of the organization and provide services to meet the needs of those it serves. During COVID-19 and today, the nonprofit sector assisted in helping more

**Citation:** Clary, P.A.; Rose, P.V. The Impact of COVID-19: The Phenomenological Effect of Burnout on Women in the Nonprofit Sector and Implications for the Post-Pandemic Work World. *Merits* **2022**, *2*, 331–341. https://doi.org/ 10.3390/merits2040023

Academic Editors: Randal Joy Thompson, Chrys Egan and Tina Wu

Received: 16 September 2022 Accepted: 14 October 2022 Published: 20 October 2022

**Publisher's Note:** MDPI stays neutral with regard to jurisdictional claims in published maps and institutional affiliations.

**Copyright:** © 2022 by the authors. Licensee MDPI, Basel, Switzerland. This article is an open access article distributed under the terms and conditions of the Creative Commons Attribution (CC BY) license (https:// creativecommons.org/licenses/by/ 4.0/).

people with fewer resources. Consequently, women in the nonprofit sector were on the frontlines of the pandemic and experienced burnout from stress and a rapidly changing environment. The research for this article led to the phenomenology of burnout experienced by nonprofit service provider professionals. Burnout is defined as a syndrome of emotional exhaustion, depersonalization, and a reduced sense of personal accomplishment in the work of Maslach and Jackson in 1981 [1]. Researchers contributed further to understanding burnout as a response to emotional stress [2], exhaustion, and decreased motivation [3]. The World Health Organization (WHO) defined burnout as "a syndrome resulting from chronic workplace stress that has not been successfully managed" [4]. According to WHO, burnout is an internationally recognized syndrome in which unmanageable workplace stress leads to feelings of exhaustion, cynicism, and negativity about one's job and reduced ability to do that job well [4]. Therefore, this article considers the nonprofit sector, burnout, and women in the nonprofit sector and its implications for organizations at the micro, mezzo, and macro levels.
