What community care looks like when you’re short on time, money, and capacity
Community care is often described in aspirational visions: mutual aid networks, collective healing spaces, long dinners with chosen family, beautifully resourced programs that meet every need. And while those visions matter, they can feel painfully out of reach when you’re exhausted, underfunded, stretched thin, and trying to survive systems that were never designed to support you or the communities you care for.
For many people working in justice-centered spaces and community based organizations, the reality is that there is often not enough time, money, or capacity to do everything we’d like to do. This often leads to burnout – which is not a personal failing, but rather a predictable outcome of structural neglect. So the question becomes not whether community care is important, but what it actually looks like when resources are scarce and the work is relentless.
Community care, in these moments, must be redefined. It must be more sustainable. It must meet people where they are, not where we wish we could be.
Moving Beyond the Myth of “Perfect” Care
One of the biggest barriers to community care is the myth that it has to be expansive, time-consuming, or perfectly executed to count. That belief quietly tells us: If you can’t do everything, don’t do anything.
But community care is much more about presence than it is about perfection.
It’s the check-in message sent between meetings. It’s the shared Google Doc of resources passed along without fanfare. It’s the permission to say, “I don’t have capacity today, but I still care about you.” When time and money are limited, care becomes less about grand gestures and more about consistency and mutual respect.
True community care allows for imperfection. It allows for uneven energy, rotating leadership, and seasons of rest. It acknowledges that we are human first, not machines built for productivity.
Community Care Is Collective, Not Performative
When resources are scarce, community care cannot rely on a single person — the executive director, the organizer, the frontline worker — holding everything together. That model leads directly to burnout and resentment.
Instead, care must be shared.
Collective care means normalizing the redistribution of emotional labor. It means asking, Who hasn’t spoken yet? Who’s been carrying too much? Who needs support right now? It also means creating cultures where people are encouraged to receive care, not just give it.
This is especially critical in workplace settings. SJPLA programs like Community Care in the Workplace recognize that care cannot be an afterthought or an individual responsibility. When organizations intentionally build shared practices of care — clear boundaries, realistic workloads, trauma-informed leadership, and space for reflection — they reduce harm not only to individuals, but to the mission itself.
Community care at work doesn’t require massive budgets. It requires intention, accountability, and a willingness to challenge harmful norms that equate worth with output.
Care Can Be Small and Still Be Transformative
When capacity is low, small acts of care can be powerful precisely because they are sustainable.
Community care might look like:
Starting meetings with a brief grounding or check-in, without forcing vulnerability
Normalizing flexible deadlines when possible, freeing ourselves from a sense of urgency rooted in capitalism
Sharing meals or playlists
Saying “thank you” with specificity and sincerity
Making space for silence, rest, and opt-out culture
These moments don’t fix systemic injustice but they do create pockets of safety within it. They remind people that they are seen, valued, and not alone.
Boundaries Are a Form of Community Care
There is a misconception that care requires endless availability. In reality, sustainable community care depends on boundaries.
Boundaries protect energy. They clarify expectations and prevent resentment from quietly building. When individuals model boundaries – such as logging off on time, declining extra responsibilities, and naming limits – they give others permission to do the same.
In collective spaces, boundaries also prevent the concentration of care labor on those most marginalized. Without clear structures, the same people often end up holding emotional weight for everyone else. Community care means noticing those patterns and intervening early.
Programs like Community Care in the Workplace emphasize that care must be embedded into systems, not extracted from individuals. Policies, leadership practices, and organizational culture all play a role in making care possible even when resources are limited.
Care During Crisis Looks Different
In moments of political instability, economic stress, and collective grief, community care will not look calm or tidy. It may look fragmented and improvised.
During a crisis, care might simply mean staying connected. It might be naming reality out loud instead of pretending everything is fine. Or it could look like choosing compassion over urgency, even when the pressure to move faster sets in.
Community care in these moments is about survival together, reminding one another that exhaustion is not weakness and rest is not betrayal of the cause.
Redefining Success in Community Care
If we measure community care by scale or visibility, we will always feel like we’re falling short. But if we measure it by sustainability, trust, and shared responsibility, a different picture emerges.
Success could look like fewer people burning out. It might also look like longer tenures, healthier transitions, and teams that can weather hard seasons. It might look like people staying connected even when capacity ebbs and flows.
Community care is not a destination, it’s an ongoing practice. One that adapts to changing realities and honors the limits of our bodies, minds, and communities.
Choosing Care, Even When It’s Hard
When time, money, and capacity are scarce, choosing community care can feel counterintuitive. But it is in these moments that care becomes most essential as a means for survival and collective resilience.
SJPLA’s initiatives exist because care is not optional. All of our programs were developed with the understanding that how we treat one another while doing the work is inseparable from the work itself.
Community care doesn’t ask us to give what we don’t have. It asks us to be honest about what is possible and to share that responsibility together.
And sometimes, that’s enough to keep going.
