I hope you've been well as June is solidly upon us? I'm still reflecting on my sabbatical last month, during which I traveled to Morocco. The trip was partially to celebrate my 50th birthday (wow!) but also to really lean into the medicine I dose to orgs we work with. It was magical, and I'm even more bullish now about encouraging leaders to take sabbaticals (not reserved just for leaders by title!).
We will share some more about lessons learned (including fiercely protecting your re-entry protocol) and the beauty of Morocco in a future email, but for now wanted to share some things we've spotted across our universe where the concept / ideas of Leaving Well are starting to take root in the ecosystem of nonprofit work.
From Nonprofit Quarterly, written by Traci Lester:
This experience revealed that the philanthropic community must understand that nonprofits need support beyond the actual grant.
From The Center for Effective Philanthropy, co-authored by Laila Bell, M.P.A., Stephanie Teleki, Ph.D., and Jaime Vazques, M.A., this piece on "When Shift Happens, What Does It Mean for Philanthropy to Leave Well?":
How we exit matters. A poorly executed transition risks undermining the progress made by a funder’s involvement, or worse — harming field partners and the work. In contrast, a responsible exit can help the work continue long after the foundation ceases its funding.
​Bayo's article on how to leave an institution struck a chord with me recently! I won't pretend to have been able to absorb all of his genius, and I definitely recommend you read the full article. But in the meantime, wow just wow on this take:
You don't leave the institution, because you are the institution: your body is institutional material. Your training, your language, your sense of what matters, your posture in the meeting, your instinct for what counts as knowledge, the creak under the floorboards, the umwelt of your sensorium: all of this is the accommodation's choreographic sedimentation flowing as you. You are not standing outside the institution looking at it. You are the marble floor and the undercroft. You don't stroll out. You don't "leave". That's too neat, too sovereign, too humanist, I suppose.
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Instead of an imaginary of leavetakings, I am (almost) completely taken by what I call the curapoiesis of cracks. My speculative geology of cracks. My cosmopoetics of cracks.
If you are a boards chair, BoardSource is offering it's annual Leading With Intent survey and requests the input of board chairs across the country. If that's you, take the survey here.
If you'd like an amazing resource on prioritizing a Good Goodbye, check this out from Katrina Mitchell (thanking Camille Acey for the heads up / introduction to this amazing human and their work!)
Podcast Guest Alert: My husband and I moved abroad together six years into our marriage. We lived in India and Singapore for a total of four years, and through those years we found new versions of each other ... and then we came home. The people we came home as were not who either of us expected. Our personal experience of living the "triangle" life literally maps to every organizational transition I've ever worked through with a leader or a board: you come out the other side fundamentally changed, trying to re-enter a culture that stayed the same while you didn't.
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I recently joined Katie Rössler, LPC on Relationship Reset: Reignite, Reconnect, Rebuild for one of the most honest conversations I've had about identity, partnership, and what it really means to leave well — across borders, across life stages, across organizations. If you've ever felt like a stranger in a life you built, this episode is for you.
Before we close out, please take a moment to learn about the services provided by Erica Olmstead; http://www.consultcompassnorth.com/services​
Erica Olmstead is the founder of Compass North Consulting LLC, based in the Adirondack Mountains of New York. She works with nonprofits, networks, and funders on the collaborative side of the work — partnership and coalition design, community engagement, facilitation, and program evaluation. Good strategy fails when the relationships needed to take root and hold; Erica helps organizations close that gap by treating relationships as both the means and the measure of meaningful work. She has capacity for new projects in the coming months and is available virtually nationwide. Learn more at consultcompassnorth.com.
If you are heading towards the end of your fiscal year this summer and have unspent budget for professional development or capacity building, and would love an idea on how to invest that budget to protect that prioritization in future budget years, hit reply and share what needs you have. I'd love to connect you to peers in my network who could support you and your organization.
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