Succession and Transition Planning – Ensuring Sustainability for Your Organization’s Future

A guest post by Donna Asbury, Executive Director of the Association of Partners for Public Lands.  If you have any questions, email her at dasbury@appl.org.

Okay, I admit it, I’m a Baby Boomer – and so are a good number of my colleagues. We love our work and we want to help ensure the future success of our organizations. We aren’t quite ready to bolt for the door, but we want to apply our skills where they are most needed, developing our organization’s talent and helping to ensure a solid position for future organizational success.

APPL is also a capacity building association – which means that we provide services to our member nonprofit organizations and partners focused to helping them better fulfill their missions. These services include consulting, training, resources, and networking on topics that address both ongoing needs and current trends. One of these needs and trends now faced by most nonprofits is the current or eventual transitioning of key leadership – both within our staffs and our boards of directors.

So, it was with both personal and organizational interests that I recently participated in the two-day Transition Guides Workshop for founders and longstanding leaders of nonprofit organizations. My first surprise was that the room was not just full of Boomers, but also younger organizational leaders ranging from one nonprofit founder who looked to be in her late 30’s to some approaching that dreaded “50th” benchmark. The second surprise was that many of these accomplished organizational leaders were there in secret – fearing that if it was known they were attending a “transition” workshop it would signal concern in their organizations that could affect relationships with staff, board members, colleagues, and donors.

I had guessed that this was one of the reasons that APPL’s convention workshops on Succession or Transition Planning were typically slow to sell. We are an often close-knit group of longstanding colleagues with extended and valuable partnership ties. We are reluctant to fuel speculation and we haven’t set a timeline for any personal “next steps.”  However, we all owe our organizations the best in terms of thoughtful preparation, organizational assessment, risk management, and ongoing organizational growth and viability.

So here are a few things I learned that have applicability now…

• Develop an emergency backup plan – a written plan to address short- to permanent absences of the executive director or other pivotal leadership, which includes cross-training of staff in key functions
• Leader development –make an ongoing investment in the organization’s talent, tied to its strategic goals. This may include opportunities for professional development and training, short-term sabbaticals or exchanges with other like-mission nonprofit organizations, or representation  on task forces and committees
• Establish a succession policy to handle both the planned transition of leadership within the board, as well as a planned departure of a chief executive
• Integrate sustainability planning with strategic planning – which includes an assessment of the organization’s business model and strategy, financial health, leadership, culture and resources

If you are interested in learning more about succession, transition, or sustainability planning, it’s not too late to sign up for Building Your Bench Strength: The Journey of Succession Planning on Friday, February 25 at this year’s APPL Convention in Dallas presented by Charlotte Keany of the Center for Nonprofit Management in Dallas.  Two books by Transition Guides’ founders may also be of interest – The Nonprofit Leadership Transition and Development Guide: Proven Paths for Leaders and Organizations, 2010 by Tom Adams and Chief Executive Transitions: How to Hire and Support a Nonprofit CEO, 2009 by Don Tebbe. Both can be ordered at www.transitionguides.com.