Is There a Looming Succession Crisis in the Nonprofit Sector?
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Research from the United States points to a scary statistic. The average time a new nonprofit leader stays in the job after taking over from a founder or a chief executive officer who has held the role for a long time is just 18 months. Around half of these new leaders leave or are ejected from their jobs before that milestone is reached.
Since 2023, B&G Partners has been running training for nonprofits on how to plan for succession. We draw on our own experiences of founding, running and leaving nonprofits, and these online workshops have proven extremely popular.
As consultants, we are also often asked by nonprofits to help their boards and leadership teams get their succession plans right. This work has taught us a few things.
Some organisations have no plan at all. They’re often caught off guard when a leader or founder leaves suddenly.
Trustees can have little understanding of how crucial their role is in the succession process. It’s a key responsibility of serving on a board.
As running nonprofits becomes more complex, leaders and founders are increasingly burned out but also fearful for their organisation’s future if they leave.
So is there a looming succession crisis in the nonprofit sector? As the current generation of leaders reaches retirement age or grows exhausted by the demands of the role, we’re hearing a few things about their younger counterparts.
They’re less willing to work the endless unpaid overtime that previous leaders often took for granted in nonprofit work.
They’re less interested in the typical hierarchical structures of many nonprofits and more interested in shared leadership models that allow for more flexibility and shared responsibility.
They’re more committed to giving those with lived experience of a nonprofit’s mission power in how it is governed and led.
So might nonprofits have to undergo fundamental change to attract new talent? We don’t have all the answers, but we try to ask the right questions. One area we’re exploring right now is how mutual mentoring could support leadership transitions in nonprofits.
This approach does away with the traditional model of an older, more experienced mentor handing down knowledge from on high to a younger counterpart, in favour of a more equal exchange in which both people learn from each other. This could be intergenerational, but our conversations so far suggest it could equally bring together people with different professional or cultural backgrounds and experiences. In fact, the key quality both people may need is curiosity about what they can learn from each other.
We are curious too. We want to explore this idea further and learn more about how to get succession right in the nonprofit sector. We’ve already started conversations about models like this with nonprofit leaders. The response has been very encouraging, and it’s clear that initiatives like these are really needed.
Succession starts before someone leaves
The best time to talk about succession is while the current leader is still in the room and there’s time to act on what comes up. A useful place for trustees to start is by asking what would be hardest to hand over tomorrow. It might be a relationship with a funder, the reasoning behind a difficult decision or a responsibility that has quietly become one person’s job. Each answer gives the board something concrete to work on.
It’s also worth asking what would make the role attractive and sustainable for the next person. What could trustees take more responsibility for? Which decisions could be shared? What might people with lived experience of the nonprofit’s mission change about how it is led?
This is where we see potential for mutual mentoring. Outgoing leaders can share what they’ve learned, while emerging leaders can ask questions that help the organisation see which habits still serve it. Those conversations can start well before anyone is looking for a successor.
Join us if you’d like to be part of this conversation. If you’d like to find out more about how we support leaders and organisations with succession planning, contact us.
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B&G Partners, Consultants, Storytellers, Coaches & Facilitators
B&G is a partnership between Ben Payne and Gerald Richards, based in London and Edinburgh. We help people and organisations be more creative, clearer about their purpose and tell a better story about what they do through consultancy and coaching, research, training and facilitation. Between us, we have over 50 years of experience across the arts, education, youth, nonprofit and voluntary sectors in the UK and the US.
