The Nonprofit Leadership Transition and Development Guide: Proven Paths for Leaders and Organizations
by Tom Adams, published by Jossey-Bass

Great nonprofits seem to hum. Passionate staff, dedicated board members, sensational outcomes, satisfied clients, and devoted donors tell the story. That story is leadership. But over the next five years, more nonprofit leaders will leave than ever before. Great nonprofits will need to sustain their success, while emerging ones will face wonderful new opportunities.

The Nonprofit Leadership Transition and Development Guide shows you how to seize the moment. Author Tom Adams shares secrets used with over 400 organizations over decades of experience as a leader and consultant. He'll teach you to harness the power of emotions in transition, how great founders lead stellar transitions, and how to diversify leadership. You'll see how to capitalize on the three critical stages of transition, how strategic succession plans lift the organization, why you must prepare today for emergency leaves, and what to do when the leader says, "it's time for me to retire." Finally, you'll learn how to apply proven Fortune 500 talent management methods that help even the smallest organizations grow their own great leaders. The result: A better-run, better-prepared nonprofit—the kind of humming organization that inspires ongoing success.

    

What They're Saying About The Nonprofit Leadership Guide

"Tom has taken the very practical advice that helped us and our grantees and has translated it into essential reading for the entire nonprofit field...Any reader of this guide will come away with the hard but certain realization that underinvestment in and lack of attention to leadership transition and development makes a fool's errand of even the best work in this field...Tom has illuminated the path to a better day. It's up to us to follow up and follow through." Ralph Smith, Executive Vice President, Annie E. Casey Foundation

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Sustaining Great Leadership: Succession Planning for Nonprofit Organizations
by Tom Adams

This free guide, compliments of the First Nonprofit Foundation, offers a 10-step approach to sustaining leadership in your nonprofit.

Click here to download

Leader Development & Emergency Succession Planning

The Leader Development & Emergency Succession Planning Workbook is designed to assist you in creating a plan to deepen and expand your organization's leadership capacity.

The concepts and strategies in the workbook are founded in practices to sustain healthy organizations. Key components for healthy organizations include: clarity of mission, strategic direction, values and behaviors that sustain the "life-blood and passion" of the organization, as well as the leadership, staff, financial and other resources needed to provide services to their communities of interest.

A critical challenge within all organizations is how to sustain health over time. How can the organization continue to effectively and efficiently respond to the growing and changing needs of the communities served -- and stay viable? Depending upon the nonprofit's size, budget, relevance to the communities served, stage of development or life cycle, growing and sustaining organizational health may be difficult. However, with effective leadership, an organization can enhance its capacity and develop through difficult times. The creation of a pipeline of effective leaders and managers can heighten an organization's chances of surviving difficult times and thriving in fulfillment of its mission and goals.

The goal of Leader Development & Emergency Succession Planning Workbook is to help leaders in organizations be thoughtful and intentional in cultivating greater leadership capacity among staff and the board.

Price: $28.99 (Delivered on CD-ROM. Shipping & handling are included.)

Order online and pay securely with your credit card or your PayPal account.

The Annie E. Casey Foundation and the Evelyn and Walter Haas Jr. Fund have developed a series of monographs on executive transitions management. Portions of this series reflect a joint effort of TransitionGuides and CompassPoint Nonprofit Services, except Ready to Lead, which is a joint publication of the Annie E. Casey Foundation, Meyer Foundation, idealist.org and CompassPoint Nonprofit Services.

	Capturing the Power of Leadership Change: Using Executive Transition Management to Strengthen Organizational Capacity by Tom Adams, TransitionGuides This report highlights the challenges associated with executive transitions and describes the model of executive management transition that has been used in the last decade. It also details opportunities for funders to further develop and implement strategies to better cope with executive management transitions. View PDF
	Founder Transitions: Creating Good Endings and New Beginnings: A Guide for Executive Directors and Boards by Tom Adams, TransitionGuides This guide examines the unique challenges presented by transitions involving founders or long-term executives. It provides clear advice for executives and their boards in confronting the complex issues these transitions present. View PDF
	Interim Executive Directors: The Power in the Middle by Tim Wolfred, CompassPoint Nonprofit Services This paper explores the benefits and basics of using an interim executive director during a leadership transition. It also highlights some considerations that organizations should take into account when deciding whether or not to use an interim executive director. View PDF
	Ready to Lead? Next Generation Leaders Speak Out by Marla Cornelius, CompassPoint Nonprofit Services; Patrick Corvington, Annie E. Casey Foundation; and Albert Ruesga, Meyer Foundation A skilled, committed, and diverse pool of next generation leaders would like to be nonprofit executives in the future, but concerns about insufficient work-life balance and lack of earning potential may keep them from it. This national survey of 6,000 emerging nonprofit leaders, produced by the Meyer Foundation in partnership with the Annie E. Casey Foundation and others, presents challenges and recommendations for training and supporting future nonprofit executives. View PDF
	Stepping Up, Staying Engaged: Succession Planning and Executive Transition Management for Nonprofit Boards of Directors by Tom Adams, TransitionGuides This publication focuses particularly on board leaders. It provides a set of practical perspectives, hands-on tools, brief case studies, and useful resources to help board chairs, officers, and members take a proactive approach to preparing their organizations for a transition. View PDF
	Building Leaderful Organizations: Succession Planning for Nonprofits by Tim Wolfred, CompassPoint Nonprofit Services This publication presents emergency succession planning tools, an important risk management practice. It offers executive directors guidance on when and how to leave an organization, and includes suggestions for boards to assure the sustainability of their organizations. View PDF
	Up Next: Generation Change and the Leadership of Nonprofit Organizations by Frances Kunreuther, Building Movement Project, Demos Research indicates that leadership transitions from the Baby Boom generation to Generations X and Y will become more common within the nonprofit sector. This report delivers a series of recommendations on how a variety of stakeholders can improve the hand-off from this generation of leaders to the next. View PDF
	Next Shift: Beyond the Nonprofit Leadership Crisis by Patrick Corvington, Annie E. Casey Foundation and Frances Kunreuther, Building Movement Project, Demos This is the second monograph in a series on generational shifts in the non-profit sector. In this monograph, the authors counter a variety of proposed interventions from infrastructure organizations and present an alternate to the current crisis framework. The authors posit that by applying a crisis framework to the transitional trends in the non-profit sector, leadership ignores the rich opportunities that lay ahead. The authors make suggestions as to how the non-profit sector can embrace this time of change and have positive outcomes. View PDF