If the title irks you, this post is for you. It is also for you if you’d like to supercharge your efforts to create meaningful change in the world.

I have dedicated my life to launching and scaling transformation — that big, bold change. Imagine my surprise at discovering that such efforts benefit immensely from facing their inevitable sunset. So, I do a lot of exit and succession planning and wish that every changemaker could experience the clarity and freedom of confronting the end. Every construction project ends (or should!). Even the most exploratory road trip has a final destination. And the fact that every day will end enables us to make the most of it. So why do we dilute ourselves that our transformational projects will live forever?

And what could we unleash if we defanged the underlying stigma?

Image credit: Jill Wellington from Pixabay

Plan for exit because your venture may run its course

One of the most fascinating paradoxes of my work is that changemakers are not prepared for success, mistaking it for failure. Let me explain on Pollinate, the incredible social enterprise operating across Nepal and India that I serve as a Board Director.

While reviewing the first formal risk register over a decade ago, I noticed that our communities getting electrified was indicated as a risk. On the one hand, an understandable placement: Pollinate’s model relied on bringing decentralized, clean-energy solutions to slum communities living off the grid. If a community got electrified, Pollinate was no longer needed. However, classifying this possibility as a risk unfairly put it in a negative light. Which is precisely why we have since reconsidered our perspective: we celebrate opportunities to “pack up and move on” if that means that some of the world’s poorest communities are no longer desperate for our service.

One of the most fascinating paradoxes of my work is that changemakers are not prepared for success, mistaking it for failure.

As long as ventures exist to solve problems, they should be working towards making themselves obsolete

A few months later, I had the amazing opportunity to support the next phase of strategic planning at Pollinate. At the request of the remaining co-founders, we developed a couple of exit scenarios. While time has eroded details of my memory, one of them indicated that Pollinate could exist by merging with another organization as long as somewhere in the world, there remained people without access to affordable, reliable electricity. Another scenario had us ringfence the scope of the problem, for example, to the poorest of the poor communities across India and Nepal, and to close our doors, with a bang of a party (we actually called that scenario “the party,” if I remember correctly!), when we were no longer needed.

The world loses when we put nonprofits on life support

It was nonprofits that first convinced me that an exit plan is essential because it crystalizes the venture’s ultimate objective. It was 2008. I was assisting the emerging Green Building Councils (transformational industry associations advancing sustainability) of New Zealand, South Africa, and Russia while working for the more established Green Building Council of Australia. Compared to those new ones, it seemed to be losing its way. Mind you, I was young, idealistic, and judgy in ways that, in hindsight, were not always fair or justified. In fact, the Green Building Council of Australia is one of the most impactful organizations I know. However, my insight — tempered by a more complex perspective — has held.

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I started referring to nonprofits like green building councils as terminally ill patients (yes, two more decades into life, I see that as crude) because they seemed to have only so much time to make a difference.

I hypothesized that the very systems they instituted in the name of impact triggered a timer of sorts: with more mouths to feed, a nonprofit may be forced to take compromising funding or to cave to members’ demands it would otherwise reject. I also hypothesized that the beginning of the end started when rather than focusing on its foundational question, the nonprofit became vested in a specific set of answers as manifested by its products and services. For example, a green buiding may have been fueled by a wondering about how we could leverage the full potential of the built environment to transition to a future where all thrive in harmony with the natural environment. As illustrated by the building blocks of transformation (the output of my current PhD research that I am progressively sharing through this Substack), questions like this have the power to coalesce people. By contrast, answers tend to divide because they eliminate other possibilities. In this way, the timer starts the moment that a standard — a rating system — a product — a program — is forged. Why? Because past that point, it is no longer a hypothesis but rather a certainty, which is much more fragile.

The irony of holding on to life

The irony I saw is that by fighting for its earned space under the sun — by expanding its base of membership, sponsorship, and government support — a nonprofit was in danger of losing the very support that brought it to life. Those who dared to lead and wanted an objective line in the sand may lose interest in a diluted mission, as may those who sought to speak truth to power or to back an uncompromising vision of a future, however confronting.

The more we perfect the answer (for example, a rating scheme with its robust system of certification), the less open we are to the possibility of the question being posed again. We are now vested in our answer, and we can’t help justifying it. It is human nature, and a phenomenon I recognized, however crude my analogy at the time, nearly two decades ago.

Is it possible to stave off decline?

Absolutely. At least in part by keeping the mission defined enough to know when it has been achieved.

If your mission is to provide affordable clean energy to the poorest of the poor; to offer quality public education to every neurodivergent child; to improve the overall perception of your country’s value; to make the vegan diet a mainstream choice; or to offer any willing recovering addict a pathway to secure employment, closing your doors because your work is done should be hugely satisfying. It should be targeted, welcomed, and celebrated. It is the cherry on top if you get there before you run out of steam.

Quite a shift in thinking, isn’t it?

Unfortunately, we tend to treat nonprofits (and other mission-driven ventures) differently than commercial organizations even when we should not.

Closing your doors because your work is done should be hugely satisfying.

We believe that competition benefits the customer by pushing businesses to offer ever better solutions. This does not stop collaboration. Neither does it spell the end. On the contrary, it keeps businesses agile and responsive. So why, tell me, do we treat nonprofits altogether differently? Like they don’t have to be any good, let alone excellent, to command unconditional patronage?

We expect that only the best builders or bakeries survive. Why? Because there is a finite need for construction and pastries. We expect the best value for our money, and we trust that competition is like a tide that lifts all boats. Then why are we willing to put nonprofits on proverbial life-support? Why don’t we let them go? Why don’t we insist that mission-driven projects reinvent themselves or shut their doors (perhaps with a celebration of all the good done!), freeing up headspace and capital for missions yet to be fulfilled?

Why do we treat nonprofits like they don’t have to be any good, let alone excellent, to command unconditional patronage?

While I have not done empirical research on this, I suspect that it has at least something to do with the leaders of those outdated nonprofits. They tend to be the most engaged and selfless members of our communities, and we support their ventures out of respect for them as individuals. Perhaps, more of them can be compelled to let go. Or, perhaps, we can find ways to support and honor them without keeping obsolete ventures forcibly alive. Still, perhaps, I’ll look upon this issue differently, yet again, with another twenty years of hindsight.

What I know for sure is that if your changemaking venture sets out to solve a problem, its success lies in becoming irrelevant. Surely, we can only hope that one day, we no longer need to solve hunger, species extinction, climate change, or racial discrimination.

If we do our jobs right, then our insignificance and obsolescence — I am using strong, confronting words intentionally to make my point — are the ultimate confirmation of success.

While realism compels us to plan for the long term, wouldn’t we all love to fulfill our missions next year? What if in pursuit of success, we aimed for not for perpetuity but for completion, with its celebrations and champagne?

In future posts, I will help you explore your exit options and plan for the best outcome for you and for the legacy you aim to create, as well as address what happens if you don’t. Stay tuned, and let me know what resonates!

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