Succession, Consulting & Your Next Chapter
Seasoned professionals owe the field a good handoff, and owe themselves a real plan. Succession, board service, consulting, and teaching.
Through the Arts & Culture lens
Succession has to route through the artistic director as well as the executive director, since major patrons are often as bonded to the institution's creative identity as to any development officer, and the introduction plan should name that third relationship explicitly. Consulting engagements in this sector often mean campaign counsel for a capital or naming campaign, where a museum or orchestra's board needs an outside voice precisely because the internal one has never run one before.
Continuing education
1.25 points · non-fundraising
Leadership and Management
Learning objectives
- State why succession is a fundraising problem, name the three things a good handoff protects, relationships, knowledge, and systems, and audit a program each year against the four markers of succession readiness.
- Build a master transition document with the state of the program, relationship briefs for the top 20 to 40 donors, the knowledge that lives nowhere else, and systems documentation, and run the introduction plan on the six-month, three-month, and final-month timeline.
- Decide whether independent consulting fits, using the honest self-assessment, a rate that covers the invisible costs, and the profession's line against percentage-based and contingency fees.
- Choose the paths by which a seasoned fundraiser gives the craft back, mentoring, teaching, board service, and stewarding the profession, and explain why person-to-person transmission matters more in fundraising than in most fields.
Designed for CFRE continuing education. Not yet accepted; no CFRE points can be claimed.
Lessons
- 19 minStart →
Video lesson
Designing your succession
I Pause · Leadership and Management
- 20 minStart →
Template· DOCX
The transition playbook
VI Accompany · Leadership and Management
- 21 minStart →
Field guide· PDF
Consulting: the honest starter guide
III Discern · Ethics, Accountability and Professionalism
- 15 minStart →
Video lesson
Giving the craft back
VII Multiply · Leadership and Management
Each lesson opens on its own page. Complete written lessons are available now. Downloadable editions open as each one clears review, and video editions follow.
More in this stage
Boards, Teams & Leadership
The CDO Operating System
Leading philanthropy at the institutional level: CEO partnership, cross-functional influence, and the systems that scale past you.
Capital Campaigns
Campaign Strategy: Feasibility to Celebration
The full arc of a modern campaign: feasibility, goal-setting, phases, communications, and the ending that sets up the next one.
Fundamentals & Ethics
Culture of Philanthropy: Leading Across the Organization
When program staff, finance, and the front desk understand their role in fundraising, the work gets easier. Building that culture is executive work.