Perspectives
This platform shares “perspectives” and stories from the field to support and encourage more investment in equitable leadership transitions. If you would like to submit a blog post for consideration, please refer to the Perspective Blog Submission Guidelines.
Embracing Transitions: How Funders Can Foster Stability and Growth
The Ford Foundation’s BUILD program, a 12-year, $2 billion investment focused on helping social justice organizations become stronger and more resilient, has seen and supported an unprecedented number of leadership transitions. In the last six years, about 50% of our BUILD grantee organizations have experienced a transition—some of them more than once.
While leadership transitions are often viewed by funders as destabilizing, we know that they do not have to be.
Passing the Torch, Lighting the Way
The nonprofit field is rife with stories of executive transitions gone poorly – especially in cases where Black leaders replace white founders. For many white-led organizations, hiring a Black Executive Director is the organization’s first significant step towards equity. But that formula can cause great harm to the incoming leader – putting the burden on them to justify and make space for their own existence in an organization that isn’t ready to confront its internalized racism.
Trust-Based Transitions: Supporting Grantee Partners Through a Leadership Transition
There is currently a lot of dialogue around what it means to engage in trust-based philanthropy. Trust-based funders align on this holistic approach to supporting grantee partners and have done so with an in-depth examination of their current cultures, structures, leadership, and practices.
One area funders should consider in trust-based implementation is around the nonprofit leader transition. There are distinct ways trust-based funders can show up before the transition, during the process, and after the new leader is in place.
From Transition to Transformation: Leaning in to Support During Periods of Leadership Transition
We are in an unprecedented period of leadership transitions happening across the social sector, at the same time that organizations are navigating fundamental shifts shaped by Covid, the racial reckoning, and a fraught political environment. Two key patterns have emerged among leadership transitions that require us to build a different support structure for nonprofits and their leaders.