4 lessons for a smooth leadership transition
Learn four essential lessons for a smooth leadership transition in nonprofits, from planning and documentation to trust building and co-leadership.
Managing a change in nonprofit leadership is like moving a piano out of a fifth-floor apartment. You can do it without a plan, but you’re likely to break everything in the process. Effective leadership transitions require thoughtfulness and preparation.
Nonprofits today are going through leadership transitions at an unprecedented scale, meaning that change is a question of “when,” not “if.” As the former and current leaders of California College Guidance Initiative (CCGI), a nonprofit that has scaled from an idea to an organization helping millions of California students plan for life after high school, we’ve been through this process first-hand. Here are some lessons we learned in the process.
Leadership transition requires time, capacity, trust, and space
Over decades working in nonprofits, philanthropy, and education, we’ve both seen what happens when transitions aren’t handled well. Vital institutional knowledge gets lost. Organizational agendas are disrupted, creating discord among staff. Incoming leaders can find themselves set up for failure, without the staff’s confidence and trust. All this can bring the organization to a grinding halt.
By allowing adequate time for transition, developing internal leadership capacity, setting new leaders up for success, and building space for onboarding through co-leadership, leaders can ensure their organizations can continue making an impact—on day one and into the future.
Time: Allow for a long ‘runway’
These steps are only possible if you build enough runway. Major transitions require more than two weeks’ notice. It’s vital that you give the current and incoming leaders enough time to prepare thoughtfully for the change as a team.
We settled on a two-year process. The first was dedicated to preparing the organization—developing plans, reconfiguring operations, training internal leadership for new roles, and identifying what CCGI would need to put in place to be most ready to support the strengths, style, and needs of the new leader. We also used this time to begin introducing our co-leadership, if informally, with key external partners, ensuring there was time to build confidence in and rapport with the incoming leader.
Capacity: Document practices, processes, relationships, and resources
With an adequate timeline in place, the next three steps are “document, document, document.” Institutional memory isn’t a nice-to-have; it’s a core survival strategy. A clear, regularly updated record of operating processes, practices, resources, contacts, roles, and responsibilities—along with the context of why they were adopted—ensures vital work can continue amid staff changes.
This is true even if the new leader comes from within the organization, as happened for us. Nonprofit leaders and founders who have been hands-on for years—as almost all are—have knowledge, experience, and relationships that may be unknown to the rest of the organization. For the new leader, access to that information can mean the difference between success and failure.
Trust: Engage the staff in the leadership transition
Another common mistake is not engaging the entire organization in the transition, from the board and senior leadership to staff. Each group has different needs to ensure a seamless change and set the new leader up for success.
We started at the executive level, with a focus on preparing the organization for the transition, making structural changes to support the new leadership, and preparing people for the roles they would assume in the future. Next, we informed the full staff, bringing them in and making them a part of the transition process. Once the full organization was engaged, we began to share the news more fully with external partners.
Space: Onboard through co-leadership
During the second year, we co-led the organization. The Bridgespan Group calls this approach the most successful model for a nonprofit founder transition, because it provides the departing leader with time and space to onboard their successor while enabling the new leader to learn the role, ask questions, and prepare to take over.
During the year of co-leadership, the two of us worked with the CCGI’s executive team to develop a logic model and new set of objectives for CCGI’s next strategic plan. This enabled us to create a clear direction grounded squarely in lessons learned over the life of the organization. As a result, our staff felt confident that, even amid a major change in leadership, CCGI’s work would remain focused on our core mission, vision, and values.
Seek out resources and support for a smooth leadership transition
Leadership transitions are challenging, but there are many resources out there to help you through the process, for example from the National Council of Nonprofits, the Federal Reserve Bank of Kansas City, and the Nonprofit Sustainability Initiative.
Many funders also offer training, resources, or support to grantees and other organizations undergoing leadership changes. As CCGI embarked on its transition, we were fortunate to receive a grant from the Kresge Foundation to support the process and document the lessons learned in our start-up years to benefit other organizations.
Finally, anyone who’s gone through a leadership transition can tell you it’s an emotional journey. Taking the time to celebrate the progress made and acknowledge the grief of separation is good for the outgoing leader, their successor, and the organization as a whole.
Building a nonprofit comes with a near-infinite number of challenges, from developing effective programs to fundraising to building a strong team. But the hardest part is letting go. By committing time, focus, and resources for an intentional transition, a departing leader can put their mind at ease while setting their successor and the organization up for success, so they can continue changing lives far into the future.
Photo credit: Robert Shireman
