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 Human Services lens
Founder-syndrome is the acute version of this module's warning: in a one-person shop, the executive director or sole fundraiser often holds every donor relationship personally, and an unplanned departure can stall a program that took a decade to build. The mentoring path matters enormously here because so many people enter this sector's fundraising by accident, and a seasoned professional giving even an hour a month may be the only training a new accidental fundraiser ever gets.
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.
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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.