Embracing Transitions: How Funders Can Foster Stability and Growth

By: Shireen Zaman, Program Officer, Building Institutions and Networks (BUILD)

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. With funder focus on transparency and trust, planning, attention to equity, and support, leadership transitions can be a healthy and normal part of an organization’s life cycle. 

Transparency and Trust:  How many of us, as funders, have gotten an email from a grantee with a message that reads, “Hey, do you have a few minutes to talk?” Many of us have learned that this can be a sign of a pending leadership transition. Too often, executive directors are nervous about telling their funders, and even their own board, that they are thinking about leaving because they feel guilty or worried about the consequences of their departure.

DO: Have open conversations about various areas of organizational development and change, including how things are going with the organization’s leadership. Succession planning and training potential leaders is part of a healthy organization, and by bringing it up, funders can normalize talking about the possibility of transition openly and early.

DON’T: Build a relationship with just one person at the organization; encourage the leaders to involve other staff in your check-ins and visits. Not only will this give you more insight into the grantee, it will also give visibility and leadership opportunities to others in the organization. It also sends a signal to the executive leader that while their role is important, you see the value of the full organization.

Planning: Many of the rocky leadership transitions I have witnessed were because of poor planning and rushed timelines. The Nonprofit Sustainability Initiative has an excellent roadmap and years of experience supporting transition cohorts. In the BUILD program’s experience, nonprofit executive searches can take anywhere from 6-12 months. If the organization wants some level of overlap between the incoming and outgoing leaders, this means, ideally, starting to plan for a transition at least 12-18 months ahead of the desired end date. Even if the plan is not to have overlap, finding an interim executive director in a transition also takes time and planning.

DO: Support organizations with multiyear and flexible grants so leaders have the ability to plan ahead for both their programmatic and organizational goals. Connect organizations to executive transition support specialists, and be realistic about how long a search for a new leader may take.

DON’T: Panic if there is an abrupt transition. Sometimes sudden events—illness, a new opportunity, or life change—can happen. As funders, we should honor the leadership of outgoing leaders and support the remaining staff. If you have built relationships across the organization (see above on trust and transparency) then you are in a good position to help them through an unplanned change.

Attention to Equity: Many organizational transitions can bring a new leader with a different perspective into the organization. We have seen an exciting increase in diversity at senior levels of leadership, but sadly, we have also seen these leaders in situations where they are not set up to thrive. Data from a report by the Washington Area Women’s Foundation found that among other challenges, Black women leaders in the region are undercompensated and face scrutiny and undermining of their leadership.

DO: In a cohort run by the BUILD program focused on supporting new women of color leaders, the participants cited supports such as individual coaching and a connection to a supportive group of peers as keys to helping them manage successful transitions. Supporting board development is also critical to ensuring that a leader has internal supporters and champions.

DON’T: Expect that a new leader will solve all the organization’s problems. It is unfair to place the burden of uncovering and fixing longstanding problems on a new leader in a short period of time. At BUILD, we have seen that these expectations seem to be especially high for people of color who come into leadership roles after a long-term leader who was not a person of color and was not as attuned to issues of equity and inclusion.  

Support: As funders, the single most important thing we can do to enable successful and healthy leadership transitions is to support organizations with increased funding.  (You read that right: increased!)  The hard costs of leadership transitions are high and can include board training, search firms, interim director costs, and coaching for the outgoing and incoming leaders.

DO: When considering whether to give a BUILD grant to an organization, we actually see the leadership transition period as an opportune moment to provide a five-year flexible commitment that has a focus on institutional strengthening, as these transitions tend to be critical to the long-term success and stability of an organization. Even if you can’t make that type of commitment, consider a multiyear grant to support the arc of the transition, or even a project grant for transition expenses.

DON’T: Take a “wait and see” approach, especially for long-time grantee partners. Disturbingly, the BMP’s survey data revealed that among respondents who had been part of an executive transition, 29% of EDs/CEOs of color and 19% of white EDs/CEOs reported that funding was withheld or withdrawn when they started their leadership position. Funders withholding funding not only undermines the legitimacy of a new leader, it hurts the organization's ability to do the critical work you have been funding. Even if you are uncertain about the strategic direction of the organization, at least consider a short-term grant to help them get through the transition.

As grantmakers at Ford, we are hoping to transform the way funders view leadership transitions and normalize these critical conversations with our partner organizations. With strategic planning and dedicated support, we can cultivate innovation and talent in the social justice sector. 

BIO

Shireen Zaman is a program officer on the BUILD team at the Ford Foundation working to advance the foundation’s efforts to support and develop stronger, sustainable, and more effective social justice organizations and networks across the globe. Shireen also helps lead the foundation’s Global Initiative on Polarization, a five-year effort to examine the harmful impact of polarization around the world.

Shireen has more than two decades of experience in the philanthropic and nonprofit sector, spearheading organizational transformation, resource development, and program management at a variety of organizations.  

Prior to joining the Ford Foundation, she was the director of the RISE Together Fund, a donor collaborative at the Proteus Fund. She was a founding member and served on the advisory council of the Emergent Fund.