Founder Transitions
Creating Good Endings and New Beginnings: A Guide for Executive Directors and Boards
A guide for founders, long-serving executive directors and boards facing a founder transition. It explains the particular challenges when a founder or long-term leader steps down and how to plan for both planned and unplanned departures. It argues that supporting founders through the exit protects their legacy and the organisation. Boards and executives use it to prepare the handover, the search and the founder's next role. It is part of the Casey Foundation's executive transition series.
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How to cite
The Annie E. Casey Foundation (2005). Founder Transitions: Creating Good Endings and New Beginnings: A Guide for Executive Directors and Boards. https://www.aecf.org/resources/founder-transitions
Related in the library
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Building Leaderful Organizations
Volume 6 of the Annie E. Casey Foundation's Executive Transition Monograph Series, written for nonprofit executives and boards. It sets out 3 approaches to succession planning: strategic leader development, emergency succession planning and departure-defined succession planning. A section on the tough issues covers common sticking points, and a resource list closes the guide. Boards and executives use it as a framework to start succession planning and to spread leadership across staff.
Start hereClassicKey manual or guideFree - 4.3C052
Leadership Transition: Overcoming the Threat of Founders Syndrome
A short INTRAC Praxis paper on leadership transitions in civil society organisations, with a focus on founders stepping down. It describes these transitions as rocky and risky yet normal. Drawing on the experiences of several CSOs in the global South that have been through the process, it suggests how founders, boards and funders can make the handover smoother. It expands on a series of INTRAC blogs from 2016 and is a free PDF.
ClassicKey manual or guideFree - 4.3C053
Making Founder Successions Work
An article from the Spring 2018 issue of Stanford Social Innovation Review, republished by Bridgespan. It questions the common advice that a founder should make a clean break when stepping down. The authors argue that many nonprofits gain when they plan a deliberate, bounded ongoing role for the departing founder. Boards, founders and successors use it to discuss what role the founder should keep and how to set its limits.
ClassicShort readFree - 4.3C054
Transiciones de liderazgo en la dirección ejecutiva
A practical Spanish-language guide for Latin American NGOs managing a change of executive director. It covers why transitions matter, preparing in advance, guidance for the outgoing director, key early decisions, a step-by-step hiring process, onboarding, the former director's board role and evaluating the process. It includes editable Word and Excel tools such as a transition plan, communication plan, job description, weighted selection criteria and candidate emails. It is licensed CC BY 4.0.
ClassicKey manual or guideFree - 4.3C055
How to Plan and Execute an Emergency Succession
A short Blue Avocado article on emergency succession plans, which cover a sudden leader absence for 1 to 3 months. It walks through 4 parts: naming first and second acting successors with limits on authority, or splitting the role's functions among staff; a ranked communications plan; and an operational checklist of contacts, accounts and key dates. It links to an editable Word template that a board and staff can complete in under 2 hours.
CurrentTool or templateFree - 2.2C023
Developing a Theory of Change
Guidance for funders and programme teams planning social change efforts. Part 1 explains theory of change concepts, benefits and limits. Part 2 gives step-by-step guidance, exercises and examples for writing an equitable theory of change. Part 3 provides fillable templates for components, assumptions and audiences. Part 4 shows example models. The guide stresses equity and community engagement, and it replaces a 2004 guide the foundation commissioned from ORS Impact.
CurrentKey manual or guideFree
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