Breaking the Silence: Making Leadership Transitions Safe for Nonprofits

00:00:04:08 

INTRO

Welcome to the Fund The People podcast. I'm your host, Rusty Stahl. I'm president and CEO of Fund The People where our mission is to maximize investment in America's nonprofit workforce. We give funders and nonprofits cutting edge ideas, research and tools to help drive equity effectiveness and endurance in the social sector. So let's start the show. 

00:00:37:14

RUSTY

All right, everybody, welcome to the Fund The People podcast. Today, we're featuring the work of Cricket Island Foundation, a private family foundation based in New York City that works to develop the capacity and commitment of young people to improve their lives and communities, as well as the world around them. And we’ll also be talking about Cricket Island's role in a national organization called Leading Forward, which is helping funders to invest in nonprofit executive transitions.

We've got some great guests here today, and you're going to get a lot of value if you're a nonprofit executive director who is looking to figure out your executive transition now or in the future, if you went through an executive transition, if you're a board member who needs to support an executive transition at some point, or if you're a funder who has grantees, and that's all of you funders, every grantee is going to naturally go through some leadership transition at some point, and it helps if you're prepared and have thought about it. So this one is for all of you. And even if you're not an executive director or funder, if you're a nonprofit program person, if executive transitions happen at your organization, it impacts you and your programs. And so it's helpful to think about what resources are out there to help your organization go through that.

So I'm pleased today to welcome our guests, Liz Sak and Hana Sun. Liz has served as executive director of the Cricket Island Foundation since 2008. Prior to joining the foundation, she spent more than two decades running nonprofit organizations at the intersection of youth organizing, the arts and youth development. And Hana supports Cricket Island Foundation's leadership transitions work as a consultant. Her background is in gender justice, education, digital media and community based organizations. And previously, Hana served as executive director of Global Action Project, a youth media organizing group. So welcome, Liz and Hana.

00:02:49:15  

LIZ

Thanks for having us.

00:02:51:09 

HANA

Hi! Thanks for having us.

00:02:52:11

RUSTY

Yeah, Thanks for making time to be here and to share your knowledge and resources with our listeners. So, Liz, did I get it right about who you are and what the Cricket Island Foundation is? Give us a quick overview of Cricket Island.

00:03:09:16 

LIZ

Sure. We are, as you mentioned, a family foundation that was started in 2000, I believe, and we fund primarily youth organizing and youth led social change work nationally. We do it with a cohort based model. We're right now focused in New York, New Mexico and New Orleans. We've also done some work in Chicago as well, and we have also started working around and supporting executive transitions.

00:03:37:02 

RUSTY

Fantastic. So tell us a little bit about why did Cricket Island Fund start funding leadership transitions?

00:04:00:00 

LIZ

Initially, it started because we had a bunch of groups that were in transition. That's a sort of very baseline. I think when we started to scratch the surface a little bit about kind of why the groups were in transitions and what was so challenging for groups once they got into transition, we realized a few things. One is that philanthropy really doesn't create an environment that enables groups to enter into the process in a sort of thoughtful, long time horizon kind of way, because we don't encourage leaders to think about it. We don't encourage groups to plan for it. And that sets groups up to sort of have to rush into a process, sets leaders up to wait to say that they're leaving or think about, or planning for leaving until they're kind of burnt out. 

And oftentimes organizations aren't prepared, meaning one of the most important roles for a nonprofit board is to sort of lead the transition, and if an E.D. hasn't started thinking about creating a structure where they are replaceable, and every leader is critical and important and their leadership is critically important, but the organization needs to be able to survive an individual leader, which means having a deep bench. It means having a board that's engaged and understands and values aligned. And those things, again, often don't exist and part of the reason is philanthropy doesn't support the creation of those things, and it's not normalized. 

And I think for us, it was 2019, the world is going crazy, I mean, it's still going crazy, and we're seeing just a steep increase in transitions which has continued since then. And then recognizing concurrently that we're not set up to support the numbers of transitions that we're seeing, the philanthropy and we organizations. And so for us, it was thinking through initially, how can we better support groups that are doing that? And then what does it mean for funders writ large in terms of creating a world where groups can do that better, leaders can do that better.

00:05:58:19 

RUSTY

It totally resonates with my experience, too. Like, you know, if you know funders are not going to want you to leave as an ED or you have a relationship with your funders and everyone else in the org may not have that relationship because the funders want to talk to the EDs, they want the relationship with the EDs. And so even if there is a strong bench of leadership in the org, the funders may not know it and then if you think your funder is going to respond badly, like withholding renewal, you don't want to talk to them about it. But if you know your funder is going to likely be supportive if they signaled that or proven it in some way, it's encouraging, then you feel it makes sense to talk to them early and often, because they're going to help you through the process and help the organization. So it is about what incentive systems are set up and what signals are sent to the groups, it has a really huge impact.

00:06:55:18 

LIZ

Right. And for boards too, if you don't have that relationship with your board where you can say, I'm thinking of leaving in three years, or even I'm thinking of leaving at some point. I think it becomes really isolating for an ED who's struggling with I'm thinking about leaving. Who are they supposed to talk to? And I think for us was the starting point. I think I got one of those phone calls from someone who said, like, I'm leaving in a week. Every funder’s had that experience and sort of reflecting, why is that happening? What am I doing that's causing this leader to not want to share this with me earlier, to not want to go through this in a healthier way? What am I doing wrong? And I think that for us was really the starting point.

00:07:34:03 

RUSTY

Right. But I think that's really helpful, especially for funders who support grassroots groups or even for EDs to hear this costs money. It's a significant situation in terms of cost and doing it well. And so I'm sure that people appreciate the three year nature of that general support during that period. So Hana, how did you get involved? And tell us about your role at Cricket Island and the Leadership Transition Fund.

00:08:02:14 

HANA

Yeah, so I was actually working at Cricket Island Foundation at the beginning of this process in 2010, so I was the program officer there and supported some of the research for this fund. Then after I left, I worked for, I feel like, many, many organizations, but one of them as a grantee of Cricket Island. So I was working at Global Action Project when this fund launched, and then when I left that role in 2021, I came on as the consultant for the Leadership Transition Fund, which we identified as important because we wanted a person to manage this fund who was not an employee of the foundation, but as an external consultant, which is supposed to serve as a firewall between grantees or prospective grantees and applicants and the foundation.

00:08:57:21 

LIZ

Yeah. And I should say that for us was a core value going into it that we were super clear that there needed to be a firewall, that the foundation running the program directly wouldn't work because we recognized that there was a lot of distrust between the nonprofit leaders and funders in terms of even acknowledging that they were thinking about leaving. And so rather than try to push through that, we made a decision structurally to have it be held outside the foundation and obviously super grateful that Hana came in to do that.

00:09:26:20 

RUSTY

So is it like the foundation grant puts the fund somewhere else and then Hana helps make the grants out of there, or what's the firewall look like.

00:09:36:21 

LIZ

I mean, it looks like right now that Hana makes all the decisions. We've maintained the structure of having an advisory board of field leaders designing the program, and I'll let Hana talk more about that, but all of that happens outside of the foundation. So Hana comes to us with, you know, here's what the criteria are, here's what the grant making, here's our recommendation, all of the things. And then when it comes to the grantmaking, similarly.

And it's interesting, you just brought up, does it live elsewhere right now? We still cut the checks, but it is something that we've been exploring the idea of should we actually have this live at an intermediary and see if we can get other funders who are interested. Again, recognizing that, you know, in the first round of grant making that we did, it was before Hana came on, there were a couple of groups who said, we won't accept the money to participate in this leadership transitions grant unless you commit to not releasing the names of your grantees. We're clear that if we just put out, hey, are you interested in a leadership transitions fund where there are people who may be early in their process that are not going to raise their hand because they don't want to alert other funders about the transition. Hana, you can talk more about it.

00:10:48:11

RUSTY

That’s interesting, yes. So Hana, tell us more about the fund itself, how it works, what you do, what you support.

00:10:56:10 

HANA

Yeah. So I think Cricket Island has been really great actually, in letting go for this process and trusting this external group of like minded funders, but also recently transitioned grantee EDs in making the decisions in this process. So I work closely with Liz and Cricket Island staff to figure out like the logistics, how much money we have, the timeline, all of that kind of thing. And then separately, I run a grants advisory committee that is a new committee of people every year. So we try to have a mix of funders who, right now Cricket Island funds youth organizing, and so we have funders who fund similar groups or hold the same values as us. And then, the other half of the committee we have EDs, who have recently transitioned from their roles serving as decision makers on the committee.

So the committee gets together, they design the RFP, they design the criteria. So since we've now done this for a couple of years, the committee has really been kind of refining the criteria. So every time we do an RFP process and an application process, it does look a little bit different. And the goal of that is not to just continually change our requirements as a funder, but really to be responding to what organizations are experiencing right now in their leadership and in the context of what they're working in.

And then the committee is also part of the application process. So that has looked slightly different every year. In our most recent year, we gave applicants the option of doing a written application or an in-person or an interview over Zoom. Interestingly, they were divided half and half. We thought that most folks would want a Zoom interview, but I think that's not always the easiest option, right? And then they're part of the final grant recommendation and decisions, which then formally go to Cricket Island Foundation's board for approval. Every year they've approved our recommendation so far. So that's been really great. 

But I think part of my role in this process too, is that we have gotten more and more applicants every year, which I think is both an indication of more people knowing about the fund, but also the frequency with which transitions are happening right now in the social justice sector in particular, most applicants don't get funded, unfortunately, because we don't have the budget to fund everyone. But I think that the key there too is that many of the applicants have said that they wouldn't have applied if it was just a foundation putting out this process. So there is also like, you know, this fear of, or kind of trepidation, I guess, around coming to a funder who they don't know and introducing themselves as an ED who's about to leave, right? So I think there's value in having me or any consultant or a person as an intermediary, because I don't share all of the names of the applicants with Cricket Island Foundation at the end.

One thing to add, for our grantees we found that the funding was important, it’s not enough to cover the full cost of their transition, but many of the grantees mentioned that even just having a grant that is specifically resourcing their transition helps them go to other funders and say, hey, I'm going to transition from my role in X number of months or a year and we already have a foundation who is committing to helping us see that through. I think for a lot of grantees, their funders having the reassurance that another funder is already supporting them has helped ease kind of the freaking out moment that some funders may have when they hear that news. So the funding is foremost the most important, but I guess the messaging and the way that a funder approaches a group's transition also makes a huge difference.

00:15:08:05 

RUSTY

Yeah, the domino effect of risk factors versus like, oh, reassurance factors. That's really interesting here. Hana, could you tell us what's the general cost of a transition in your mind like and what's the scale of the grants that you all provide if you don't mind sharing?

00:15:28:22 

HANA

It's hard. It's hard to answer because every group is going to do their process so differently. So not as a way to sneak out of an answer, but our grants are $45,000 a year for three years for many of our organizations, and it's general operating support. So for many of our grantees, that has just helped with their general operations and knowing that they have this amount of funding that's going to come through during a potentially vulnerable phase in their revenue streams. 

We have a few of our smaller grantees it's covered their full transition, but for most of our grantees who are maybe hiring leadership coaches for incoming and outgoing EDs and senior staff or holding retreats or hiring a transition consultant to manage the search process, it hasn't covered everything. So I guess our grantee's transitions have ranged from the 45k a year being sufficient to being closer to $200,000 maybe for the full scope of the transition. And again, that will vary depending on the organization's size and what things they choose to prioritize.

00:16:44:01 

RUSTY

So is the Leadership Transition Fund open to grantees of Cricket Island only, or is it a broader anyone can apply, or what's the kind of parameter around eligibility there, just trying to understand how it relates to Cricket Islands’ other grant making.

00:17:04:05 

HANA

Yeah, this is Cricket Islands Fund that is open to all, but we do have a pretty narrow criteria as a way to help us screen because I think the reality is that all nonprofits deserve to be supported for their leadership transition, right? And so we do need some way to kind of narrow our grantee pool. So in line with the types of groups that Cricket Island already funds, our criteria includes funding groups that are relatively small. So we're benchmarking that as groups that have budgets of 1.5 million or less. We also have a priority for groups that are grassroots, have a youth leadership lens or a youth organizing lens. Some points like that which allows us to kind of narrow the pool a little bit so that we're not in a position of having to evaluate thousands of applications.

00:18:05:19 

RUSTY

Okay. So, Liz, it sounds like the criteria has been tweaked and improved or changed at the request for proposal over time. Anything you've noticed or observed from that process that you think has been interesting or affected how you think about it?

00:18:24:18 

LIZ

I mean, I think, recently in the most recent cycle, our criteria has always been to focus on leaders of color, particularly emerging leaders of color. And it came up that using that language just stating we were supporting organizations that were looking to bring our leader of color, that we might be incentivizing boards to bring in just a leader of color and tokenizing that leadership. And so for us, the caveat was to add in, it's a leader of color from the community in which they're working, because for us it was really about building community leadership and building local power, I think. And so that was one shift. And it was interesting because it coincided, I think, with a lot of research, again from the Building Movement project about the struggles of leaders of color coming in and feeling tokenized. So I think it was our way of addressing that.

00:19:13:20 

RUSTY

Great. Thank you for that. So I was curious, Hana, what does a grant look like from the Leadership Transition Fund, like what do people get, what do organizations get and how does it work?

00:19:26:19 

HANA

Yeah, so the organizations, once they're funded, they're funded for three years. The intention is that they're funded before, during and through the onboarding of a new ED. So before, during and after the leadership transition happens. We found that transition processes are not that cleanly divided. And so it's really just for us to acknowledge that a transition is not just one moment in time, but takes a process and is a transformation for an organization. 

And the groups are also, we convene them as a cohort, which to be honest, that's been a question for us every year because we know that there are so many funder convened cohorts out there already and so a lot of groups are kind of cohort tired. But when we do the application process every year, the applicants and the final grantees have told us that they want to be in a peer learning space. And so, we've convened each kind of generation of grantees in a cohort. There are 6 to 12 groups and each cohort it's varied by year, so it's relatively small, but it's been a great space for the organization EDs to talk through all of the emotions that come up in the transition process. 

We, in our first year of running the cohort, we actually thought that the space was going to be focused on most of the tactical pieces of a transition. So timeline, how to hire a consultant, how to develop a transition budget, those types of things. And while we do talk about that, I think most of those pieces have been covered in resources we've shared or emails or kind of side conversations. But in the peer learning space, most of the groups have really wanted to do peer coaching, have wanted to talk through conflicts that are arising in their organization, that are related to the transition or maybe kind of impacting the transition. And also just figuring out their own I think for EDs, especially those who have been in their roles for a long time, for founders or who are, you know, embedded in their community, it is a huge identity shift for them when they're going through the transition process, right? Because they, that ED role has been so central to who they are and how they identify and how they spend most of their days. And so that's actually been a significant part of the peer learning spaces that we didn't necessarily anticipate when we set out to design the cohort.

00:22:13:05 

RUSTY

It's really powerful and it resonates with me from my own executive transition out of Emerging Practitioners in Philanthropy as a founder. Both the stress of figuring out the logistics of the budget for the transition, the process, but then yeah, the emotional side of it is very real. So I love that you help people kind of get both kinds of support.

00:22:40:04 

LIZ

I think almost all of the EDs that have been in the cohorts are first time EDs and, you know, creating an opportunity to put together your own kind of network of support, network of people you know, who are going through similar things is really important for the folks coming in and for some of the groups those relationships have continued. The groups are connecting outside of the spaces that we're creating for them, and for us that's been huge. I mean, just to see that happening and to really understand the value that it's adding, that's been super important. 

And we should have mentioned the other piece of the advisory committee is that we always have one board member, and I think this speaks to just sort of how we've been able to navigate this and why it's gone as smoothly as it has. It's an opportunity for our board members to sort of be in community with folks that are on the ground and they're bringing that learning back to the full board, which I think Hana mentioned how smoothly it's gone. And I think that's been a huge piece of it. And it's also an opportunity to shift the power dynamic a little bit because everybody gets the same vote when they're working on the advisory committee. So I think that's played a significant role in enabling us to make the shifts that we've needed over time.

00:23:54:10 

RUSTY

Love that, that makes sense. So you have like a built-in champion for this on your board at any time?

00:23:59:04 

LIZ

Exactly.

00:24:00:01 

RUSTY

One thing that Hana you said that also I wanted to just emphasize for listeners is you know the sort of before, during and after, that transitions there's lots of dimension to them. And sometimes boards or EDs think it's basically just a job search to replace or find a new Hana or a new Liz or a new Rusty. And that's not really what it is, there's a lot more to it for everyone involved, not just finding a new employee. So I just wanted to thank you for lifting that up. 

And so the three years of funding sort of enable that to happen, for that process to play out. I know that you recently helped convene a retreat for nonprofit EDs who have recently gone through these transitions and I don't know if that's for the people who were leaving or the people who are coming in or both. So can you just tell us a little bit about the retreat and what kind of roles or people participated and then any themes you heard from that group or other things you want to share.

00:25:06:00 

HANA

So, yeah, so the retreat that we convened, this is actually an idea that came about through with Liz’s and my conversation with a similar foundation called Claneil Foundation based in Pennsylvania. But we convened all of the EDs or equivalent kinds of roles, so there's co-directors, there's, you know, people have different titles, that have been part of our leadership transition side in person. And the focus was just about visioning, exploring your leadership, meeting each other, supporting each other. So it wasn't necessarily focused on the transition of each of the organizations, although that inevitably comes up because that's the shared thing that they have. We wanted to use Claneil’s model as kind of an experiment to see if that's something that would feel valuable to our grantees.

So we had all of the groups come together last summer. It was optional, which I think was a really important part of the convening. And I and our cohort facilitators and I think Liz as well, reiterated the piece of it being optional for everyone because we wanted people to show up and want to be there, right? Like we didn't want someone to be there and kind of feel like I'm just here because our funder required us to be. So we wanted it to be this, like, generative and supportive space. 

Yeah, we had leaders who were at different stages of their transition process, so the first cohort of grantees actually that we funded their three years were up, but they were still invited to the retreat and many of them came, which was great. I think most of them had completed their transitions at that time. So we had the new EDs who didn't really know what the Leadership Transition Fund was, other than that they'd seen it in their past, you know, incoming budgets or in their cash flows. And then we had our newest grantees who mostly had not started their transition and the hiring process yet and we're still trying to figure out what they need to do to prepare for that process.

And so we broke people up into their respective groups in some parts of the cohort, but mostly it was about them coming together and envisioning as organizing groups as well, which in addition to them being transition groups, they're all grassroots organizing groups. So I think that is an important part of them thinking through their leadership and their relationships with both their members and their community and their staff in their role at the organizations that they're in.

I guess to touch on your question of what kind of themes came up, there was a lot of discussion about leaders' roles in their wider ecosystem or their wider movement. And so recognizing that yes people are employed in a particular role in their organization, but they're not just responsible or caring about just the people who are involved in their nonprofit, it's about the broader community of people that are impacted by the issues they work on.

And then there is another theme that came up was people using the space as kind of a self accountability space, if that makes any sense. I heard from a few of the EDs in debrief that they realized when they left the retreat that they weren't really doing everything they could to set their team and their organizations up for success, for their transition. And so it was kind of an incentive for them to go back and, you know, dive into the things that they're kind of avoiding, I think, at their organization.

00:28:57:21

RUSTY

Yeah, thank you for that. Avoidance is a big, big issue in transitions, right? People don't want to talk about it, whether they're board members or executives or funders, there's a lot of avoidance about this issue. So, that's fantastic. Wow, it sounds like an amazing retreat and I love that you had the people at those different stages of transition, outgoing, incoming and that they all had a chance to be there together to think about this. That sounds incredible. 

So now there's another part of this story, which is that Cricket Island Foundation has helped with some other funders create a community of funders who are striving to support healthy executive transitions in nonprofits and it's called Leading Forward. So, Liz, can you tell us when and why did you and Cricket Island help to start Leading Forward?

00:29:52:00 

LIZ

Sure and I realize as we're getting to this part of the conversation, I probably should have mentioned some of this earlier. But, you know, the issue with transition for organizations, I mean, as we all know, they are moments of crisis for organizations, they can be if they're not entered into well. And I think we spend some time thinking about, you know, kind of what's happening, what's happening in those moments that's causing the issue. 

In particular for me, I had a conversation with one of our grantees, and I'm sure many funders, whoever is listening have had this happen, where you get the phone call and someone says, I just want to let you know I'm leaving next week, kind of a thing. And you know, you're sitting there going, wait, I thought we liked each other, you know, I thought we had a relationship and why am I just finding this out? And in any case, I had a good conversation with the leader about why they were telling me this. And sometimes, I won't say often, I hope it's not often, happens they had waited until they were sort of just really burnt out and like desperately needing to leave. 

And, you know, we talked about how I thought that she needed to tell some of her funders so that they could support her through the transition and as well as kind of putting the transition up. Long story short, about a week later, I got a call from the same ED who said, I told X funder, because it was one of their largest funders, and they said they were going to pause our funding until we got through the transition. Now, this was completely destabilizing for the organization because it was literally their largest funder. And I first realized my own just irresponsibility at not thinking about that. I had obviously given just really bad advice and I had to take responsibility for that. 

And the second thing is in sort of thinking that through, I realized that it wasn't enough. I mean, it's never enough for any funder to do any one thing because none of us can solve these big issues on our own. But in this particular area, if we wanted organizations to be able to get through transitions successfully and again, this was 2019, the world was insane again, we're all having deja vu, I guess. But, you know, there was a real need for these kinds of organizations and there always is to be able to get through these transitions and grow, and for it to be a transformative moment, where the leaders are handing off and the organization's able to grow into whatever the next phase of its existence is.

And even though I thought our funding model was good and that we were doing these three year grants, if the rest of the ecosystem wasn't moving in a similar way, if, you know, 90% of an organization's funders were pausing funding or, you know, not supporting the full cost of a transition, it wasn't going to help. And so, we started talking to other funders who were similarly concerned about kind of the impact of philanthropy on transitions, because a lot of this is about the way funders fund in our own skittishness when we hear leaders are leaving. And created Leading Forward as really a funder organizing tool to try to get funders to think differently, not just think differently about how they think about transitions, but to support transitions separately. And so it's really, for us, been a learning gathering, organizing space, thinking about how philanthropy engages with transitions and whether we can get that to change.

00:33:07:08

RUSTY

Fantastic. What resources do funders get who participate in Leading Forward?

00:33:13:17 

LIZ

Well, any funder who's interested in transitions can go to their website which is www.leading-forward.org and on the website there's a ton of resources and research. And actually if any of your folks listening have resources they want posted there, we're happy to put them up and that includes resources for nonprofits or funders. So that's an open source space. 

One of the reasons we created the website was that twofold. We heard from nonprofit leaders that there were resources out there on the Internet, but it was piecemeal and some of it was behind firewalls, like you had to be a client of or working with a consultant or so on and so forth. And for funders, similarly, there was no space to just go to type in like, I'm thinking like, I don't know how to do this. And so it's open source, anyone can go in there and access it. 

There's also, we have a community practice that you can sign up for that's part of that website. That's just a space to talk about challenges, you know, finding like minded funders to think this through. And as I mentioned, we often tell funders and I'll just shift a little to practices, you know, funders will say, we don't fund transitions so I don't know, I don't really have anything to say to you. They're not that bad but, and our response is, you fund transitions because every organization that's in your portfolio is going to go through a transition at some point. And one thing you can do to signal that that's an okay thing for them to talk about with you is to just tell them if they're interested in transitions to look at this website. But, you know, that's an important practice for funders, is just to start with the little things signaling that it's okay for you to bring up succession planning, it's okay for you to talk about the transition long before you're thinking of going into it. 

And ultimately that's what leaders need to do. I mean, the most successful transitions are the ones, research came out, again, I think it was Building Movement Project, that a three year process and a one year onramp to getting to the actual transition, that that creates the best opportunity for success when the transition. And for leaders to know that and feel comfortable leading into that, philanthropy needs to make that okay. We need to make it sort of part of how we talk about just organizational development and organizational sustainability and we need to, you know, Chitra Aiyar wrote an article recently about term limits for nonprofit EDs, I don't think she actually meant term limits, she meant just a board to say like, let's make this part of our regular check ins with our EDs. How are you, what are you thinking about, what are you thinking about your own timetable? But we really need to normalize these conversations and for us, Leading Forward was kind of a way of starting to do that.

00:35:56:13 

RUSTY

And Hana, will you want to jump in here? Any resources that you would recommend for people to check out, whether they're a nonprofit or funder around transitions?

00:36:07:04 

HANA

Yeah. So, I echo Liz's recommendation for Leading Forward, both for funders and nonprofits. There are a lot of resources there that have come out of our grantee learnings and templates from our grantees, so that's a great place to start. 

We also wrote a report about the Leadership Transition Fund that came out last summer, which really details the process of designing the fund in collaboration with our grantees and our peer funders and a lot of the learnings that we've had that have come out of that fund from both our grantees and us as the funder. I think one of the most poignant pieces, that is probably a surprise to no one that came out of that report process, was us recognizing that at least for the organizing groups that we fund, the sustainability of the organizations is often tied up in the ED sacrificing all of their time in their work rate. And so it just flagged for us the importance of funders adequately resourcing their grantees in general, whether they're going through an active transition or not. 

And then we have a few projects coming up this year that will be made available to everyone, so not just our grantees. But we're working closely with Leadership Learning Community, who we haven't talked about enough in this conversation yet, but they are focused on supporting liberatory leadership. They're our cohort facilitators for one of our cohort of grantees, and they also facilitated our retreat. But we're going to be doing some kind of transition one to one workshops this year, the first one we're planning for quarter two of this year, so sometime soon. And then we're putting together a leadership transitions resource hub that will be available to all nonprofits and you can access them anonymously too. So that should be ready sometime this year..

00:38:15:20 

RUSTY

Well, and when those come out, we'll make sure to, if they're public, share them on our LinkedIn, on the Fund the People LinkedIn page, and hopefully add them to our show notes here as well. But folks can find the report right now, it's called Supporting Nonprofit Leadership Transitions: a Foundation's Journey, and it's up on the Cricket Island Foundation website. It's under publications in the main menu and then under nonprofit leadership transition. But if you go to cricketisland.org/publications, it's right up at the top. Again, it’s called Supporting Nonprofit Leadership Transitions: a Foundation's Journey. 

And again, folks who are listening to get to an amazing set of resources and writings from across the sector about executive transitions go to leading-forward.org/resources, and you can find materials for nonprofits, for funders and board members, and more generally, about nonprofit executive transitions.

Well, thank you both for a fantastic conversation, for all the work you do on this issue and have done, how can listeners connect with each of you? Can they find you on LinkedIn or other social media or anywhere else you want to share?

00:39:38:04

LIZ

LinkedIn or they can email me at liz@cricketisland.org. And I just want to make a farewell pitch to say folks that are listening that are leaders of nonprofits, it's okay to be thinking about when you want to leave and you should be thinking about it even if it's not going to be in ten years and, you know, find one ally, you can call me, Hana, to help you think that through.

One of the things we've learned is that that's a real challenge, is that leaders often feel really isolated in even starting this conversation or starting thinking about this, who do they talk to about it? And one of the things we're really working on and hoping other funders will join us in is is creating a space, maybe through an LLC, but where folks can learn about transitions and where there's an honest broker, not somebody who, you know, is trying to be your leadership transitions consultant or somebody, but that you could just call up and say like, hey, I'm thinking about transitions, what's the checklist of things I should start thinking about? 

Some of that is on the website, it's on the Leading Forward website, but it's missing and we hope to create it. And in the interim, you can get in touch with Hana or I, if you're thinking at the very beginning of your journey or just sort of beginning to think about it, even if it's four or five years from now and thinking about how do I get my organization to a place where it's ready for that, because it's something that I have to start thinking about far in advance, not at the moment you've decided to leave.

00:40:57:22 

RUSTY

Right, I love that. Thank you for the pitch there at the end and I love the idea of like a transitions doctor as in like somebody you can just talk to who's objective and not selling something and not funding you or on your board.

00:41:12:11 

LIZ

Exactly.

00:41:14:02 

RUSTY

Hana, how about you, how can people find you?

00:41:16:20 

HANA

That's funny because we've been playing with this idea of a transition help line, but I don't know if anyone would actually call it. But I guess I am on LinkedIn, but not very actively, but we also have our leadership transitions email address, which very seemingly unofficial is ciftransitions@gmail.com.

00:41:45:21 

RUSTY

All right. I appreciate that. People like a good Gmail address once in a while, So CIF transitions…

00:41:53:20 

HANA

ciftransitions@gmail.com and we can put that in the notes as well.

00:41:59:19 

LIZ

That does not go to the foundation for any folks that are concerned. It's just the email address, it goes to Hana and again, Hana is total confidentiality if folks reach out to Hana about anything. 

00:42:13:05 

RUSTY

Fantastic. Well, Hana, Liz, thank you so much for being here and I look forward to learning more as you go forward.

00:42:22:12 

LIZ

Thanks so much for having us.

00:42:23:22 

HANA

Thank you.

00:42:24:24 

RUSTY

All right. Thanks for listening to the Fund The People podcast. Keep it tuned here, we got more great episodes coming your way. Talk to you soon.

00:42:38:07 

OUTRO

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