Facilitated board conversations
that work through the scenarios that matter most for your organization: an unexpected departure, a retirement announcement, a resignation with short notice.
Executive Transition Planning: Build Your Executive Director Transition Plan
Have you thought about what happens if your executive director leaves unexpectedly? Or announces their retirement?
Don't wait until it happens. Plan now, so you're ready to calmly and proactively enact your policy, without panicking and scrambling in the moment. Blue Heron Nonprofit Consulting helps your board build that executive director transition plan while everything is calm, so it's ready the day you need it. If your board hasn't had this conversation yet, we'd be glad to help you have it.
What's included
What Your Executive Director Transition Plan Includes
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Perspective on how other organizations typically handle each scenario
so your board isn't starting from a blank page.
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A fully written policy document covering multiple scenarios
ready for your board to formally adopt.
How Long It Takes
This depends entirely on your board's pace. Some boards do it in one focused 2 to 3 hour session and have a finished policy within a week. Others prefer to spread the conversation across a few regular board meetings. Both get you to the same place: a policy your board adopted and knows how to use.
What You Walk Away With
A written policy your board can act on immediately if a transition happens, whether that's next month or five years from now. It's the standing document your board turns to the day a departure becomes real.
If a Transition Becomes Real
Your policy may call for interim leadership during the gap between one executive director and the next. When that day comes, our Interim Executive Director service covers that period. Margot and Angela lead day-to-day operations while your board runs the search your policy already planned for.
The Board Stays in Charge
We facilitate the conversations and write the policy. The decisions stay with your board: what the policy says, who holds authority in each scenario, when it gets revisited.
Engagements are project-based, with clear deliverables and timelines.
Pricing
Executive Transition Planning: $800 flat.
That covers up to 4 hours of facilitated board conversation and a fully written policy covering multiple scenarios. Everything beyond this service is scoped individually based on your organization's situation.
Thinking bigger than just the ED role? Succession Planning covers leadership continuity across your whole organization. Find out more.
Ready to Plan the Transition?
A quiet moment, before any departure is on the horizon, is the right time to build this policy. We work with a small number of organizations at a time, so we can give your board's policy the attention it needs. We respond within one business day.