Funders as Leadership Field Builders to Support Transitions
By Bipasha Ray, Leading Forward Founder
Aug 2026 (pub date early Sept 2026)
In the heart of a Queens neighborhood in New York City, the Damayan Migrant Workers Association is buying a building to serve as a community center – “a home away from home”– for Filipino migrant workers, caregivers, domestic workers who are often seen and treated as “disposable.” Beyond a significant real estate transaction, this move is a metaphor for opportunity within crisis. Amid a federal climate that is antagonistic and harmful to migrant workers and labor rights, Damayan and its new Executive Director Riya Ortiz are using their period of leadership transition to renew their commitment to their constituents and to rally funders to invest in this symbol of organizational stability.
When Ortiz was selected as the ED of Damayan, she felt excited and nervous with the new role, after almost 30 years of community organizing. After a competitive board search, Ortiz was selected to take on the reins from her mother, the founding ED of the organization. Instead of waiting for the new ED to prove herself, funders including the Worker Justice and Dignity Fund, stepped in. They invested in communications training for Ortiz, a cohort for peer support, and a leadership coach who offered the organization some “hard truths and a treatment plan,” said Ortiz. This holistic support enabled her to thrive as a leader. “It was so comforting to see that there are funders who believed in my leadership,” she said. She anchored herself in the organization’s values, raised staff compensation and benefits, and is now investing in community and organizational stability by buying a building.
This is just one of the ways nonprofit leaders are turning the vulnerable times of executive transitions into organizational opportunities, with support and partnership from funders. This was shared during the workshop “Not Just a Moment: Funding Leadership Transitions for Long-Term Impact,” hosted by Leading Forward at the biennial Grantmakers for Effective Organizations (GEO) national conference in Boston in June.
Funders as Leadership Field Builders
The nonprofit sector is currently undergoing a sea change of contraction, with organizations transitioning, restructuring, merging and winding down, amid massive funding cutbacks, increasing demands for social services, attacks on civil society, and widespread leadership burnout. In this landscape, one of the critical ways that philanthropy can support organizations to lean into their strengths and rejuvenate their social change missions, is to robustly fund leadership and executive transitions. If funders step back during these times, they risk losing the “knowledge chain” and institutional memory that keeps movements alive. “There's instability within organizations and leadership at the time when we want the most fighting power against fascism and authoritarianism,” said Nikki Dinh, ED of Leadership Learning Community. “We need to make organizations survivable for leaders. We need to invest in leaders now.”
A world of possibility can open up when funders start seeing themselves as “leadership field builders” rather than simply stewards of their grantmaking portfolio, Dinh shared. Whether a funder focuses thematically or geographically, “you are building the field innately, you know the ins and outs, you know the players, you know how to get the support to set up the organization and the field for success,” Dinh said, which builds trust for funders to directly support the leaders who power the work.
Holding Space for the Messiness and Emotional Aspects of Leadership Transitions
While acknowledging that leadership transitions can be messy, even the well-funded ones, these are critical periods to hold space for grief and human emotions which can then help gear up for long-term organizational health and resilience. During the workshop’s breakout discussions, participants discussed helpful grantee-centered funder practices before, during and after the transition, grounded by the Leading Forward Action Guide for Funders. Here are some of their recommendations:
Before an outgoing leader departs:
Fund leadership sabbaticals: sabbaticals for leaders support not just their sustainability but act as “creative disruption”– the name of a seminal report on this topic from Durfee Foundation – unlocking leadership prowess throughout the organization. This sets the stage for better succession planning that will eventually lead to healthier leadership transitions. Programs such as the Windcall Residency offer space for this.
Self-Education about True Partnerships: When funders blunder into conversations about succession planning with grantee partners without appropriate training, this can cause undue stress and even harm to grantees. Countering this requires self- and peer-education about how to center grantees, amplify relational practices, and reduce extractive ones.
During the transition and recruitment
Stand with the grantee as it navigates change: Funders should recognize and support the means to “hold space for the grief and emotion” of change, said Holly Bartling, Director of the Worker Justice and Dignity Fund. It is critical to remember the humanity and emotional toll of transitions on the leaders themselves. Funders need to “stand alongside the organizations as they are navigating all these things including the emotional parts,” and be invested in those leaders’ success.
Support Interim Leadership: An interim leader can support organizational and new leadership success, giving the board and staff time to adjust to new leadership, clear the pathway, and make necessary decisions while a permanent hire is made. While an interim leader chosen internally can be helpful for leadership development, it can also pose challenges if the interim applies for the permanent ED job and doesn’t land it. Another common scenario – of board members stepping in as interims – also pose challenges including blurring of management and leadership oversight functions. Hiring a transition consultant as an interim ED can mitigate these risks, said Dinh.
After a new leader starts:
Step up not back: Funders often wait to see if a new leader will succeed before committing funds, when the opposite is necessary to continue organizational momentum, said Bartling. “Fund transition plans because transitions actually require additional resources.” Beyond money, this includes creating space for multiple funders to work together and getting creative about supports beyond money.
Address the Glass Cliff: Speakers and workshop participants raised a painful trend that is also bolstered by other research including from the Building Movement Project. Women leaders of color, in particular Black women leaders, are often brought in to rescue failing organizations without being given the resources to succeed. This is often accompanied with funding relationships leaving with the outgoing leader or the departing founder. To counter this, Bartling recommended funders offer wrap-around support for new leaders including making introductions to peer funders, sharing intelligence about philanthropy with the new leader, and hosting funder briefings. Working together to stand by incoming leaders during their “growth edge” gives them a “runway” to launch rather than a cliff.
Lean into relationship: Bartling encouraged her peer funders to move away from written narrative reports to more informal and relational ways of checking-in such as phone calls. This can help build a deeper relationship of trust, and can also serve as an “early warning system” for grantees to have an opportunity to share t possible challenges including burnout.
Social change movements and organizations are only as strong as their ability to support its people and leaders through change. When funders see themselves as leadership field builders and robustly support leadership transitions, they help build space for multiple leaders to grow, which lead to stronger movements.
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