(we're back with another long form email! If you want to skip straight to read the articles I'm discussing in this email, you can visit the articles section on our website)

You're exhausted, I know.

• You're the only one who knows how the donor database works.
• Board members text you on weekends.
• Your team escalates every decision to you.
• You haven't taken a real vacation in three years.

And everyone tells you how dedicated you are. How committed. How essential.

But what they're not saying (but I'll tell you): your indispensability and dedication may be an organizational liability.

This is the accountability paradox at the heart of nonprofit leadership. The leader who won't get off the hook—who holds every responsibility, hoards every relationship, controls every decision—isn't demonstrating commitment. They're creating a single point of failure with a nonprofit tax status.

Here's the truth no one wants to say out loud: You are temporary.

Your tenure will end—through retirement, new opportunity, burnout, termination, or death. The only question is whether your organization will be ready.

[THE FRAMEWORK]

The Off the Hook Framework is a four-part series that challenges how nonprofit leaders think about accountability, delegation, and transition.

​Part One: The Accountability Paradox examines why great leaders actively work to make themselves replaceable—and why staying on every hook actually diminishes your accountability to mission.

​Part Two: Mapping Organizational Accountability provides tools to identify who's actually responsible for what in your organization, exposing the dangerous gaps where everyone thinks someone else is handling it, and the overlaps where too many people think they're responsible.

​Part Three: Getting Off the Hook Without Abandoning Ship addresses the guilt, shame, and fear that keeps you holding onto responsibilities you should release. We'll distinguish between healthy disengagement and actual abandonment—because they're not the same thing.

​Part Four: The Exit Hook tackles what you actually owe your organization when you leave. Whether you're planning a graceful departure, being asked to resign, or staying too long in a role you should have left years ago—this is about exit accountability that serves the mission, not your anxiety.

[THE ASKIDA EKMEK PRINCIPLE]

There's a Turkish practice called askida ekmek—bread on a hook. A customer pays for extra bread and leaves it hanging at the bakery for someone who needs it but can't afford it. The bread waits there, available, until the right person takes it down.

This concept captures something essential about leadership: knowing what to leave on the hook for others, and knowing when it's time to take yourself off the hook entirely. Go with me here for a moment: you're not the bread abandoning its purpose; you're the bread fulfilling your purpose by being available for the right person at the right time.

[THE INTERIM'S PERSPECTIVE]

I bring a specific lens to this work: I'm an interim leader. I provide temporary executive leadership for nonprofits in transition. Every engagement I take begins with an exit date. I'm hired knowing I'm leaving.

This teaches you something "permanent" leaders often miss: your value isn't in being irreplaceable. It's in what remains after you're gone.

I've learned to lead with non-attachment—caring deeply about the work and the people while holding my departure lightly. I attempt to document everything. I work to build systems that run without me. I transfer relationships that belong to the organization, not to me personally.

This isn't because I care less. It's because I care about sustainability more than indispensability.

And here's what I know from being professionally temporary:

[WHO THIS SERIES IS FOR]

This series is for:

• nonprofit CEOs and Executive Directors who know intellectually they should delegate but can't seem to actually do it.
• board members who don't know what hooks they're on—or who are on hooks that belong to staff.
• funders and foundation program officers who see organizations struggling with leadership transitions and want to support better succession planning.
• Deputies and Chief of Staff folks who know its in their purview to help build accountability tolerance for their organizations
• anyone who's ever said "if I don't do it, it won't get done right" and meant it.

[WHAT YOU'LL GET]

Every article includes:

Diagnostic exercises that force you to see your actual accountability gaps, not the ones you think you have.

Practical frameworks for mapping who should be on what hooks, and how to transfer them without organizational crisis.

Accountability checkpoints that ask hard questions you've been avoiding.

Real assignments with deadlines—not someday action items, but things you'll complete this month.

[THE SUCCESSION PLANNING CONNECTION]

Everything in this series is succession planning work—just not the way most people think about it. Succession planning isn't just creating a document for when you leave. It's how you lead every day while you're staying.

It's documenting your decision-making frameworks so they're transferable. It's building redundancy in critical relationships. It's developing your team's strategic capacity instead of protecting them from complexity. It's getting yourself off hooks you've held so long you've forgotten they don't belong to you.

Most nonprofits don't have written succession plans. Most leadership transitions are managed as crises instead of planned transitions. Most organizational knowledge walks out the door when leaders leave because it was never captured.

This series is about changing that—one hook at a time.

[THE CHALLENGE]

Here's your first accountability checkpoint, before you even start reading:

Name one critical organizational function that would fail if you were suddenly unavailable for 90 days.

That's your first hook to address. By the time you finish this series, that function will be documented, delegated, or systematized so it can survive without you.

Not because you don't matter. Because the mission matters more than your personal capacity to deliver it.

The greatest act of nonprofit leadership isn't being indispensable. It's building something that doesn't need you to be great. Welcome to The Off the Hook series. Let's get to work.

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