We have curated this collection of resources to support your work before, during, and after a nonprofit leadership transition or succession planning process.
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Resources from the Field
Building Movement Project: Leadership Transitions
Visit BMP's leadership transition hub on the web.
Transitions in the top leadership of nonprofit organizations can be times of crisis or opportunity. Intergenerational and racial dynamics inevitably impact leadership turnovers.
As more Baby Boomers consider leaving long-term jobs and even organizations they founded, other long-term leaders will look for new ways to contribute while making space for new leadership.
Their resources provide information on how to facilitate just and equitable leadership transitions to better serve your organization and mission.
Building Movement Project: Move the Money
Building Movement Project (BMP) presents Move The Money: Practices and Values for Funding Social Movements, a set of resources geared towards grantmaking institutions eager to expand and deepen their support of organizations, networks, and leaders involved with social change movements. Move The Money consists of four videos and accompanying discussion guides with reflection questions that highlight the perspectives and experiences of movement leaders and funders, and builds on the wave of ongoing efforts that encourage the philanthropic sector to invest in movements.
Onboarding and Supporting a New CEO
The number one responsibility of any board—for-profit or nonprofit—is effective management of the senior executive, especially a new one. Yet, nonprofit leaders often report to Bridgespan that their boards fall short of that goal. Here are five ways nonprofit boards can more effectively onboard and support their new CEOs.
What's Not Changing: Multiyear GOS
Nonprofit leaders have long called for funders to provide more multiyear general operating support (multiyear GOS) grants. These grants provide nonprofit organizations with stability and position them to grow their impact by enabling nonprofits to plan, to flexibly use resources where they are most needed, and to do the long-term work of addressing systemic and complex social issues.
Social Justice Philanthropy Framework
Choir Book: A Framework for Social Justice Philanthropy is a guide to support you and your philanthropic organization in aligning your grantmaking practice with social justice values. It defines core values, individual competencies and actions that support values-aligned practice to create a comprehensive framework for effective social justice philanthropy.
Listening & Feedback: Action Menu
A resource to help foundations think in a systematic way about how they can promote listening and feedback across the many dimensions of their work.
Using Knowledge to Improve Funder Practice
Many organizations are creating and disseminating knowledge about the practice of philanthropy, but does that information actually influence how funders operate?
Influencing Funder Practice
The Ford Foundation commissioned Milway Consulting to look at 12 independent initiatives aimed to influence how grantmakers and others engage in philanthropy and identify what advanced and prevented the adoption of good practice.
NPQ’s Webinar Series on Executive Transitions
This is an archive of many webinars presented by Nonprofit Quarterly on this topic.
Transition Planning Considerations
This quick overview of some basic transition considerations and list of handy resources comes from the Nonprofit Sustainability Initiative, built on learnings from their work in supporting executive transitions.
Trust-Based Philanthropy Project
The Trust-Based Philanthropy Project is a five-year, peer-to-peer funder initiative to address the inherent power imbalances between foundations and nonprofits. At its core, trust-based philanthropy is rooted in a set of values that help advance equity, shift power, and build mutually accountable relationships. No matter where a foundation starts its trust-based journey, to fully embody this approach grantmakers rely on trust-based values to guide four key dimensions of their organization’s work: culture, structures, leadership, and practices.
Love Notes to Our Social Justice Leaders
This workbook introduces key leadership concepts, reflective leadership questions, inspirational and thought-provoking quotes, as well as resources you can use to deepen your leadership practice.
Structuring Leadership
For the past ten years the Building Movement Project has addressed leadership in the nonprofit sector by focusing on generational shifts, multigenerational leadership and new ways of leading. In each of these areas, the question we are most often asked by younger generations is whether we can provide them with new models of how to run/lead organizations that do not concentrate authority and responsibility in one top person. We believe these models exist but they are either unrecognized or embedded within traditional looking hierarchies. We also believe that highlighting different leadership structures will offer organizations examples for effective ways to operate that can increase impact.
Lessons and trends in nonprofit capacity strengthening
What does nonprofit capacity strengthening mean and why is it important? How has it evolved and what are emerging trends in the field?
As part of its Organizational Effectiveness (OE) strategy refresh, the Hewlett Foundation’s Effective Philanthropy Group set out to answer these questions and better understand the current field of nonprofit capacity strengthening.
Employee Engagement & Belonging Practices in Nonprofits
This hour and fifteen minute podcast covers:
How to identify and address employee engagement differences based on employee demographic makeup
New ways that employees may expect to influence, engage and be heard in the workplace
How to create meaningful employee engagement practices aimed at fostering belonging
Executive Transition Timeline
Executive transitions vary in length based on the unique circumstances of each organization. However, almost every transition involves the same phases and key steps on behalf of the board and staff members.
The Future of Nonprofit Leadership
A wave of nonprofit leadership transitions is upon us. The COVID-19 pandemic, a deep economic recession, and an era of racial reckoning are leading to a number of nonprofit leaders in a variety of fields and movements in the United States to step down. Their successors, many of them BIPOC and female, have the vision and new ideas to rejuvenate their organizations and constituencies, and to reach for social and racial equity in ways that were hard to imagine just a few years ago. As these new leaders step in, major funders have to step up to offer responsible financial and other support.
Othering & Belonging Institute
A key part of Ford's BUILD grants is the Organizational Mapping Tool (OMT), an open-source assessment tool to help nonprofits identify and prioritize where they need strengthening as organizations. The tool is designed to provide clear qualitative markers of development, creating an assessment of an organization’s current state as well as a roadmap for its improvement.
Understanding Organizational Needs of Grantees
A key part of Ford's BUILD grants is the Organizational Mapping Tool (OMT), an open-source assessment tool to help nonprofits identify and prioritize where they need strengthening as organizations. The tool is designed to provide clear qualitative markers of development, creating an assessment of an organization’s current state as well as a roadmap for its improvement.
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