This week's Leaving Well podcast features Katya Fels Smyth, who just did what most nonprofit leaders think is impossible: she wound down the Full Frame Initiative after 15 years — proactively, with integrity, and in partnership with her community.

Not because she had to, but because staying wasn't serving the mission anymore.

Who gets to decide they're leaving? What are the implications? Who's left holding the bag? These aren't just operational questions. They're power and justice questions.

Here's what conventional wisdom says about organizational endings:

The board and leadership should hermetically seal themselves off, develop a perfect plan that answers all questions, and only then tell staff — with minimal notice, because "who knows what they'll do."

Here's what Katya actually did:

She told her staff the day after the board vote. Before they had a plan. She asked them to sit on the news for two weeks while they figured it out together.

Every single person stayed. Every single person showed up. Because they felt included in something meaningful rather than subjected to a decision made about them.

They spent November and December meeting with 50+ partners — current and past — asking: What would it look like to end well with you? What would it take for this mission to live on?

Partners didn't just say they'd continue the work. Nineteen leaders formed a Stewards Council. Many became champions. They built a resource library with hundreds of assets.

The uncomfortable truths Katya named:

• "We remember endings. We remember the high and the low of our experience. And we remember how it felt when it ended."
• "Your legacy isn't that you stayed around forever. Your legacy is how you left people feeling and equipped. Did you respect them enough to not walk out on them?"
• "People have so few experiences of good endings in the workplace. Very, very few."

One of the least talked about requirements to end well: Money

Katya's team had to raise additional funds — not because they were out of money, but because ending with integrity required severance packages, transition support, and runway to hand off work properly.

One major donor turned around a request in 48 hours. Another in a couple weeks. This was due in large part because Katya could frame the sunset not as failure, but as protecting their investment and honoring the mission.

The nonprofit sector needs funders who are willing to support good endings.

The ripple effect:

Staff members told Katya that experiencing this ending changed how they show up in job interviews now. They're less fearful and don't see endings as radioactive anymore — they see them as things to be cared for and done well.

That's culture change and is precisely what it looks like when leaders choose to lead transparently, in partnership with communities, rather than hoarding power when things get uncertain.

My takeaway:

Good endings aren't about making everyone comfortable. They're about respecting people enough to tell the truth, include them in decisions that affect them, and protect mission over organizational ego.

The conversation you're avoiding about succession, leadership transition, or organizational sustainability? That avoidance is a choice. And that choice is an expression of power.

Until next time,