COVID19 – 2008 LESSONS REPEATED MULTI-FOLD Harnessing the Past, Welcoming the Future Transitioning Leadership with Intention & Grace

This article was written for and first published by the Wallace Center in May 2020

On April 28th 2020 I googled the words “non-profits and covid19” and as I  navigated through page after page of links, reading the headlines and the  little blurb under them, it struck me that the articles were from diverse areas  (issues and geography) of the non-profit complex. Just as I was wondering  how many more there could possibly be and at what point they would begin  to be repetitive, I read a message from google at the bottom of 32 pages of  links; “In order to show you the most relevant results, we have omitted some  entries very similar to the 320 already displayed.” Clearly the pandemic and  its impact on non-profits was not just something I was thinking about.  

A number of articles were about the precarious financial situation created for  non-profits. The Council of Non-Profits sited on its website “Conversations  about nonprofit sustainability have turned into conversations about their  survivability.” Some writers predicted the demise of many non-profits during  this pandemic and others pointed optimistically to the sheer creativity of so  many grass roots agencies and how they have pivoted to serve their  communities during this time. Some articles referenced the lessons we can  learn in this moment from what is often described as the “great recession” of  2008. For Community Services Unlimited the experience of 2008 was deeply informative of how we have since built our work in South Central Los Angeles. 

The general impacts of the 2008 economic crash and specifically of the  looting of billions of dollars of entrusted foundation funds by Bernie Madoff  led to the shutting down of a large number of non-profits in the USA. At one  time in 2009 I read that some 40 percent of non-profits with budgets lower  than $1 million had closed their doors as a direct result of the economic turn and the theft by Madoff. Already thinking about how to make Community  Services Unlimited Inc (CSU) financially sustainable, I was alarmed by how  easily and rapidly non-profit stability was affected. Reliance on one or two  major funders seemed to be a commonality for those who had shut down. 

As a team at CSU we had already been working towards creating diverse  funding sources, with earned income as part of the portfolio. We urgently stepped up these efforts and I also became interested in other factors that  lead to the death of similar sized organizations. The reading rabbit hole I  went down brought to my attention that a change in leadership, especially a shift from founding leadership is a major reason that leads to non-profits  closing. Further, that even when an organization survives such a change it  often goes through a period of instability and is highly susceptible to mission drift.  

This broad systems learning has been underlined by witnessing specific  leadership struggles in organizations CSU has directly worked with:  Community Food Security Coalition, Sustainable Economic Enterprises of  Los Angeles and Growing Power. All three cases involved personal acrimony between the founding Executive Director (ED), staff and/or board, and two  resulted in organizations ceasing to exist. I found it personally galling that  people who had worked so hard for so many years to build viable  organizations doing really important work were cast aside and isolated from  the movement they had been part of for so long. Whatever the failure or fault  was of these individuals it felt unconscionable that their years of experience  and struggle was so summarily and wholly dismissed. Apart from feeling the  injustice of the situations for them as people, I also felt then and feel more  strongly now that this was such a deep loss to this movement.  

As someone who became an Executive Director by default and not plan  (read this interview) I have been thinking about and wanting my replacement  from the moment I took on the role. Seeing these situations play out with  people I had known and admired and worked with for some time made me  determined to find a different way. 

As I began to research how to carry out a healthy leadership transition, I  found that materials that do exist about this subject are geared toward big  corporate non-profits and often are using the same language and tools of the  corporate world and do not speak to the needs of a very community based  small organization like CSU. I have therefore tried to also learn from what I  have seen first hand and from conversations with mentors and peers.  

In thinking about some of the examples I have seen unfold, a common factor  seems to be an absence by existing leadership of intentionality around  leadership change. So at CSU we wanted to also look at examples where  organizations had spent time and resources planning a leadership shift and  we partnered with the Berkana Institute to create a learning journey that included this content. Four members of the CSU Leadership team travelled  to Santropol Roulant in Montreal and The Food Project in Boston. Part of my purpose was to learn everything I could from the very recent leadership  changes at both organizations. Both had recently transitioned from founding  to new Executive Directors and in both cases outgoing and incoming  leadership were gracious in sharing their time and processes with me. These  were the major learnings from those interviews and dialogues: 

1. Board Support for both the outgoing and incoming ED’s was cited as a  critical factor by both the outgoing and incoming ED’s. This happened during  board meetings, one on one time with board members, sharing of stories,  just simply spending time together. The outgoing ED’s mentioned that this  helped them deal with the difficulty of letting go of something that had been  such a huge part of their lives for so long. The incoming ED’s both said this  made them feel valued and seen as part of the team, even though they were  new. Board members we spoke to also shared that by doing this intense  connecting for a period of time, they were often able to see potential issues  from a distance before they actually became a problem and that it made the  ongoing work of the organization easier as they had already built a strong  rapport with the incoming ED.  
2. A strong formal onboarding process for the incoming ED with the outgoing  ED, that included a clear timeline and perimeters for both, but with plenty of  time allowed for introductions to partners, to staff, to funders etc. AND a clear  mutually agreed time for this to end and for a clear break in the outgoing  ED’s involvement.  
3. A hiring process that did the maximum possible to ensure that the right  person was hired. This included in both cases the writing of unique job  descriptions, interviewing processes, and onboarding time. In both cases,  outgoing leadership were fully part of the hiring process, and both  organizations shared that they would have had a harder time finding the right  person had this not been the case.  
4. There was an intentional effort to be sure that there was a very clear  expectation of the incoming ED that was communicated via a combination of  the job description, interview and onboarding process and board  communication, both group and individual. The time was spent leading up to  the transition to be sure that all the staff team was fully aware of what was  being planned and how it would be rolling out and that their expectations were also clearly laid out and managed, so that there was maximum stability  for the transition to happen.

CSU has learned, shared and talked over these learnings numerous times  amongst our staff and board team and we continue to refer to them and they  have been instructive in planning our own leadership shift. Most recently this  investigative journey has led me to propose and be part of a Wallace Center  peer to peer learning circle: Healthy Leadership Transitions in Grass Roots  Non-Profits. What has emerged from these conversations has underlined  and emphasized what I have described above, but a lot of nuance is  emerging as it does when many heads work together. Not least, is that to  really engage in a thoughtful and participatory leadership transition takes  dedicated time and resources and as a movement we have not done that work. 

COVID19 has shone a clear light on all that is unjust and inequitable in the  current food system. It is a system some of us have been working to  dismantle for many years, whether through policy changes or by building  new models. The additional financial hardships created by the pandemic for  people already living on the edge are real. We are seeing through our work  in South Central that more and more families are in need of assistance to  just survive. This hard moment is potentially a time for major change. How  can we who have been wanting and working for that change for so long  maximize its possibilities to create an equitable food system? 

In the past year I have experienced the loss of one dedicated food justice  warrior who lost a long battle with cancer and am seeing other colleagues  continue to work at full pace even when they shouldn’t, in a field where many have no pension plans, or safety nets. At the same time there are so many  bright, talented, young minds coming to this work. And as a result of  COVID19 people are now more interested than ever in growing their own  food and are seeing with crystal clarity the advantages of a local food system.  As a movement we must use the time to think created by this pandemic to  radically re-imagine our work. 

This moment is an opportunity for grass roots practitioners to challenge  funders to support our work in ways that create sustainability and self  reliance for the people we serve. One off projects that create marvelous  news stories, take lots of resources and leave nothing behind when they are  gone must become historical artefacts. Let us place resources directly into communities most in need to build equitable food oriented development  projects (www.efod.org) that create solid infrastructure for long term and  multiple community benefits. 

To effectively do this we need to re-think everything. A critical part of this effort is most certainly the commitment of resources so that food justice  movement organizations can make time to intentionally and collaboratively  shift the roles of long time food justice warriors. How much stronger can our  work be if we harness the leadership and experience of committed  individuals to welcome, guide and nourish people entering the fight with their  new energy and ideas. For a fight it will be, and if we are working together  and not at odds we can and will change and strengthen this food justice  movement and build the radically different future that is needed for humanity  to survive on earth. 

By Neelam Sharma