Toolkits and Guidance
In 2019, supported with an Ideas + Pioneers grant from Paul Hamlyn Foundation, the Stewarding Loss project set out to explore how and what can be done to support organisational endings which are responsible, intelligent and compassionate. This enquiry was rooted in our belief that endings are part of the natural cycle of change, renewal, transitions and innovation within the nonprofit sector.
Rooted in what we’ve learned through interviews with civil society leaders, funders and infrastructure groups, alongside coaching and consultancy work with organisations who are anticipating or designing endings. We developed 4 resources to support better organisational endings.
This work was rooted in our belief that we need to establish a relationship with loss. These 4 publications make a distinction between the enforced closing of organisations brought on by external events versus encouraging organisations to pay continual attention to their purpose, their strategic relevance and their lifecycle.
7 principles for better endings
No two organisations are the same, so no two endings will be the same. Some organisations will have time and resources on their side whilst others will have little. Yet we believe whatever the constraints of the time and resources you have available, there are some principles that can guide the anticipation, design and delivery of better organisational endings. You can read more about them in our Sensing an Ending Toolkit.
1. Root your organisation and its culture in its mission and purpose, not the organisation’s ongoing existence.
2. Acknowledge that endings, as with beginnings, are part of the inevitable cycle of renewal for people and organisations engaged in change work.
3. Find agency and determine your pace by bringing design and intent to the ending.
4. Harness the power language, metaphor and narrative.
7. Assign people roles which share the responsibilities needed to deliver the ending.
5. Understand the technical, practical and legal steps needed and your accountabilities.
6. Give space to emotions and the emotional journey.
Considering Closure?
A workbook to accompany the Sensing An Ending Toolkit from Stewarding Loss
Are you thinking about whether the time has come to close? Or are you simply wondering if you think the idea should be put on the table with a range of others? The guidance in this workbook is drawn from hundreds of hours of coaching and consultancy we’ve offered staff and trustees of charities and nonprofits who have themselves been considering or undertaking closure since 2020. Inside you’ll find a set of worksheets and guidance notes for people who are wondering if an organisational ending should be ‘on the table’.
This worksheet is framed to support staff, trustees, teams or communities to explore the idea of an ending - specifically in this instance, a possible organisational closure. However the prompts in here could easily be used to aid the consideration of other endings in organisations - eg. a transition of leadership, the end of a programme or project cycle, or the end of a partnership.
This worksheet is a bitesize introductory worksheet that sets the scene for the Sensing An Ending Toolkit: A toolkit for nonprofit leaders to help decide, design and deliver better organisational endings which Stewarding Loss published in 2021.
Sensing an ending:
A toolkit for nonprofit leaders to help decide, design and deliver better organisational endings
Sensing An Ending is a step by step guide to anticipating, designing and undertaking a nonprofit organisational closure or merger.
It contains the (first draft of) 7 principles to steward better organisational endings.
We believe this is the first resource of its kind to weave together both the practical and the emotional considerations of a closure or merger. This was a particularly crucial resource to compile in 2020 as it responded to the belief across civil society that countless organisations were facing hardship and possible closure as a result of the impacts of Covid-19.
Staying close to loss:
Practical ways to tend to organisational cultures which explore loss as part of life
Staying Close to Loss is an introduction to the idea of continual enquiry in an organisations’ life span — where loss is considered within organisational strategy as ordinarily as ‘growth.’ It explores the idea that there are, and have been for some time, civil society organisations that in the natural cycles of death and renewal, have had their time.
This is explored through a series of canvases. These are a set of tools for tending to organisational cultures so loss is explored as part of life. These canvases have been created to support organisations to develop an ongoing relationship with loss — to continually anticipate it — know how to respond to it, and have distinct roles for it, feels important to familiarise ourselves with in the next couple of years before crises happen on a wider and more regular scale.
Leading an intentional ending:
A case study for small to medium enterprises, small business leaders and other non-profit organisations
In November 2022, after 10 years, Year Here stopped delivering social innovation Fellowships and all operations ceased.
The organisation made the choice to proactively end the business operations and Fellowship. For the team at the time, an intentional ending was about designing and managing the way the organisation ended rather than defaulting to continue for as long as possible and risk ending in ‘crisis mode’.
The case study (viewed here). is designed to be the ‘how’ of ending Year Here’s Fellowship and operations. Why? Because leading the ending of something is one of the most mysterious undertakings everyone involved had ever embarked on. They want to shed light on their experience so that if you find yourself considering closure, you can gain a sense of what it will involve, how it might feel and how you can do it as well as possible.
Zoe summarised the case study in this blog here.