This podcast episode features leaders from the Open Society Foundations sharing why investing in new executive directors is essential to strengthening the nonprofit workforce. It explores how funders can shift their practices to better support leadership transitions and long-term sustainability.

The Takeaway: Funders will explore importance of continuous leadership support and development, rather than viewing it as a one-off, transactional effort.

This briefing offers foundations a strategic approach to investing in nonprofit leadership development. Foundation leaders will find this resource insightful for developing long-term strategies that align leadership development with broader philanthropic goals.

This blog post, featured on the Trust-Based Philanthropy Project website, urges funders to reexamine their approach to nonprofit leadership transitions. It advocates for viewing these transitions as opportunities for renewal rather than risks, emphasizing the importance of trust and proactive support for incoming leaders.

This toolkit from The Bridgespan Group provides funders with actionable strategies to support leaders of color during nonprofit leadership transitions. Drawing from research and interviews with over 30 leaders, it highlights the unique challenges these leaders face and offers practical ways to foster their success.

This national report from the Building Movement Project reveals how nonprofit executives of color are often hired into precarious roles, expected to solve deep-rooted organizational issues without the support or resources to succeed. It shares data, stories, and recommendations for changing the narrative.

This report from the Edward W. Hazen Foundation challenges traditional philanthropic approaches and offers bold recommendations for funders seeking to advance racial justice. It calls on philanthropy to shift power, center community leadership, and reimagine relationships with grantees.

Discover valuable insights from two decades of the Durfee Foundation’s sabbatical programs, emphasizing how structured rest can empower leadership, enhance organizational resilience, and facilitate long-term systems change—essential strategies for impactful funding decisions.

This Open Society Foundations report offers powerful, first-hand reflections from nonprofit leaders navigating leadership transitions, highlighting the emotional, strategic, and organizational realities of stepping into executive roles. It outlines how funders can better support leaders through these high-stakes moments of change.

This podcast episode offers an inside look at an executive transition through the voices of both the outgoing and incoming executive directors. Their candid reflections reveal the personal and organizational dynamics that shape a successful leadership handoff.

This podcast episode features leaders from the Open Society Foundations sharing why investing in new executive directors is essential to strengthening the nonprofit workforce. It explores how funders can shift their practices to better support leadership transitions and long-term sustainability.

This Nonprofit Sustainability Initiative report highlights how funders can strengthen the nonprofit sector by proactively investing in leadership transitions. It showcases the impact of the Executive Transitions Fund in helping organizations not only survive change but grow through it.

The Cricket island Foundation’s new report, Supporting Nonprofit Leadership Transitions: A Foundation's Journey, examines how funders can best support nonprofits before, during, and after leadership transitions—offering suggestions for how philanthropy can support the people, planning, and processes involved in all aspects of transitions.

Author: ProInspire
Publisher: ProInspire
Resource Type: Report
Leading ForwardPrinciple: Center & Support Leaders from Community

This report highlights the essential conditions needed for Black, Indigenous, and People of Color (BIPOC) leaders to thrive. Engaging 58 senior leaders across 39 U.S. cities, it identifies scalable strategies that foster growth and success for individuals, organizations and communities.

The Takeaway: Funders will explore importance of continuous leadership support and development, rather than viewing it as a one-off, transactional effort.

This briefing offers foundations a strategic approach to investing in nonprofit leadership development. Foundation leaders will find this resource insightful for developing long-term strategies that align leadership development with broader philanthropic goals.

Author: The Center for Effective Philanthropy
Publisher: The Center for Effective Philanthropy
Resource Type: Report Snapshot
Leading Forward Principle: Cultures of Belonging & Wholeness

This CEP Research Snapshot offers insight into foundation leaders’ perspectives and actions related to the well-being and burnout of staff at the organizations they fund.

Use this report snapshot to:

• Explore how foundation leaders understand the state of well-being among their grantees and what they do to support it.

• Access resources about assessing and supporting well-being practices in the nonprofit workplace.

Take away: Why you should loosen grant restrictions to end the nonprofit starvation cycle.

In this essay, part of the Leap of Reason Ambassadors Community's, authors Jeri Eckhart Queenan and Jeff Bradach depict the pervasive pattern of ingrained funding practices that undercut nonprofit financial health and effectiveness.

Effective organizations make their purpose clear. Externally, there is a vision statement, a stated mission, and a set of guiding principles. Internally, an organization may be working on how they model equity and uphold the values of ethical fundraising, storytelling, and programming. Change has never happened overnight (especially in our sector), but if there ever was a time to look at internal and external practices, it is now.

This report offers guidance to boards on how to support new leaders of color during leadership transitions. It addresses the challenges these leaders often face when following White predecessors and provides strategies to ensure a smooth and equitable transition.

This study reflects the insight of BIPOC leaders navigating positions of power in social change organizations as they succeeded white predecessors. Through a partnership between Ericka Stallings of Leadership Learning Community, Bianca Anderson of ProInspire, and AiLun Ku of BIPOC Leaders Network and the Robert Sterling Clark Foundation, we spoke with BIPOC leaders from across the country, who shared a wide range of experiences related to their transitions, their strategies for navigating these transitions, and specific recommendations for how to make these transitions better.

This tool, shared from RoadMap and Strategies for Social Change’s Leadership Transition Toolkit, maps out five primary stages in the leadership transition planning process. This tool helps organizations anticipating leadership transitions have a sense of what to expect through each part of the process.