Community: support or another obligation? Łukasz Bujło on burnout in the Salesforce community

Is the Polish Salesforce community shrinking?

The Polish Salesforce community is not shrinking, it is polarising, and that matters more than a simple decline. According to the Salesforce Ecosystem Report Poland 2026 (585 fully completed surveys), active participation in the community rose from 41.38% to 45.39%, while at the same time the share of people declaring no interest rose from 13.76% to 17.15%.

Two groups grow at once, and the middle, the occasional participants, melts away. Łukasz Bujło, Salesforce MVP and president of the coffee&force foundation (coffee&force), named the cause of that second trend as the thing spoken of most quietly in the Polish ecosystem: some people move away from the community not out of indifference, but out of tiredness.

Who bears the cost of the community's existence?

Behind every event, every stage and every article in Polish stand specific people who do it, most often, after hours. Łukasz Bujło points out plainly that the cost of the Polish Salesforce community's existence is borne privately: in the evenings, at weekends, alongside a full-time job and alongside family life.

That model has one flaw that only reveals itself after a few years. Work built on enthusiasm has no changing of the guard, because nobody hands over duties that do not formally exist. A meetup organiser who runs out of energy simply stops organising, and the event disappears without any decision.

The rise in the share of people with no interest in the community from 13.76% to 17.15% in a year is, in that light, a warning signal, not a curiosity. Fundacja TeamCo & Friends reads that figure as a measure of the depletion of a resource nobody is replenishing.

Why do active participation and lack of interest rise at the same time?

The rise of both extremes at once describes a shift of weight onto an ever smaller group. The engaged engage harder, because there are fewer hands for the same work, and those who used to participate occasionally drop out entirely, because the barrier to entry rises along with the intensity.

The third figure from the Salesforce Ecosystem Report Poland 2026 completes the picture: participation in online events fell by 14.58 percentage points. The format that for years lowered the barrier for people from smaller towns, with childcare duties, or with limited energy after work, stopped working. The disappearance of the easy way in leaves only the hard way in, namely travelling to an in-person meeting.

The market consequence reaches further than meetup attendance. With juniors at 5.85%, the community is today one of the few real channels of entry into the profession, because companies have stopped running mass onboarding of beginners. Organiser burnout therefore means closing further doors into the ecosystem, not just fewer events in the calendar.

What can organisers and companies do?

Fundacja TeamCo & Friends sees four actions, none of which requires a budget, and all of which require a decision.

For organisers:

• Set up the changing of the guard before it is needed. Co-hosts from the start, not at the moment of crisis. An event with a single owner is an event with an expiry date.
• Allow yourselves a break. Two fewer meetings in a year are better than an initiative disappearing forever. An organiser's rest is part of maintaining the community, not its failure.

For companies employing community-active people:

• Recognise this work as work. A talk at a meetup builds employer brand as effectively as a campaign, and costs an employee an evening. Hours to prepare a talk during work time are the cheapest employer branding that exists.
• Do not count community activity as a requirement for promotion. Mandatory volunteering is a contradiction in terms and produces exactly the tiredness Łukasz Bujło describes.

Fundacja TeamCo & Friends runs part of such activity within its own programmes, gathered in the Initiatives section. Substantive materials organisers can use without preparing everything from scratch are provided by Trailhead, and ecosystem partners, including Craftware, support community events organisationally and financially.

Should the community replace what companies do not do?

No, and that is a limit Fundacja TeamCo & Friends sets deliberately. Over recent years, the Polish Salesforce community has taken over tasks that in a mature market belong to employers: introducing beginners to the profession, translating new technologies into the Polish context, building professional networks.

The takeover happened naturally, because someone had to do it, and enthusiastic people were on hand. The problem appears the moment companies get used to that arrangement and start treating it as the natural state. Free after-hours mentoring is not a talent development policy, it is the absence of one, dressed up in someone else's goodwill.

The practical test for any organisation in the ecosystem is simple: if all community initiatives disappeared for a year, would the company still be able to bring one person with no experience into the profession? A "no" is not an accusation against the community, but information about where a piece of this puzzle is missing.

What do these data not say?

The Salesforce Ecosystem Report Poland 2026 measures declared engagement in the community and does not measure burnout as a health condition. The rise in the share of uninterested people from 13.76% to 17.15% shows withdrawal, while its causes are described in this study through practitioners' comments, not a separate measurement.

The study also does not separate organisers from participants, so it cannot tell us how large the group of people actually running initiatives is. Fundacja TeamCo & Friends states that limit plainly, because the scale of that group is key to assessing the risk, and the next edition of the study is a good place to measure it.

Frequently asked questions

Is interest in the Polish Salesforce community falling?

According to the Salesforce Ecosystem Report Poland 2026, active participation rose from 41.38% to 45.39%, and lack of interest from 13.76% to 17.15%. The community is polarising rather than growing or shrinking evenly.

Who organises Salesforce community events in Poland?

People doing it after hours, alongside a full-time job. Łukasz Bujło, Salesforce MVP and president of the coffee&force foundation, points to that model as the main cause of tiredness and of people moving away from the community.

Why did attendance at online events fall?

The Salesforce Ecosystem Report Poland 2026 records a fall in online event participation of 14.58 percentage points. The disappearance of the lowest-barrier format restricts access for people for whom travel to an in-person meeting is a barrier.

What does organiser burnout have to do with the shortage of juniors?

With juniors at 5.85%, the community is one of the main channels of entry into the profession. Fewer events means fewer chances for a first contact with the ecosystem.

Where to read the full data

The full section on community engagement, including Łukasz Bujło's comment, is published in the Salesforce Ecosystem Report Poland 2026 by Fundacja TeamCo & Friends. The report is free, available in Polish and English, and based on 585 fully completed anonymous surveys.