How Should a Nonprofit Executive Director Prepare to Leave? Part 2: Where to Start and the Five Stages of a Leadership Transfer

Last updated September 2026

In Part 1 of this series, I covered why so many nonprofit leaders are heading for the door right now, and the difference between a succession plan and a leadership transfer. This post picks up from there, with what to do first if you're thinking about leaving, the five stages I teach in The Legacy Leadership Transfer, and the questions I hear most from executive directors getting ready to go.

If you're thinking about leaving, what should an executive director do first?

Most of us reach for the calendar. We start working out when to tell the board chair, how much notice is fair, what the announcement should say. That instinct makes sense. We are trained to turn a decision into a plan as fast as we can.

What I would do instead is going to sound like a delay.

Before you tell anyone, get what you have been carrying out of your head and onto paper. I mean the real version of your job, which is rarely the one in the job description. It is the relationships that exist because of you, the decisions nobody else has ever had to make, and the reasoning behind how things are done that never got written down because you were always the one doing them.

This takes longer than people expect, and it is worth the time for a reason that has very little to do with being organized.

Once you formally resign or set a date, the transition belongs to the board. They set the timeline. They decide when the staff hears it, who steps in, how the search runs. You can have a strong relationship with your chair and give a generous notice period and those decisions still move to them. I gave six months, and there was still a moment of panic in that first few conversations.

The window where any of this is yours to shape closes the day you say it out loud. Whatever you want to influence has to exist before then.

That is why I would start with paper rather than a phone call. The conversation matters enormously, and it goes differently when you walk in already knowing exactly what you are handing over.

A note for the leaders whose timing was not their own. Some departures are contested, pressured, or negotiated, and if that is where you are, get legal advice before any conversation about terms. What follows still applies to you. The organization needs the same things from you regardless of how clean the exit was, and your professional reputation travels with you either way.

What are the five stages of a leadership transfer?

The Legacy Leadership Transfer moves through five stages, which spell TORCH. The sequence is doing real work. Each stage depends on what the one before it produced, and the stage most leaders skip is the first one.

Tend. You name what you are carrying before you build anything. The story you have been telling yourself about leaving, the parts of the role that quietly became part of you, and the full scope of what one person has been holding.

Open. Everything that lives in your head comes out and gets organized, so the next person can find what they need without calling you. This is the longest stretch of the work and it produces the most.

Ready. You prepare for the resignation conversation and you equip your board for what comes after it. Your board will be making decisions in the first seventy-two hours whether or not anyone handed them a structure to make them with.

Convey. The handoff itself, through structured sessions with whoever is receiving the work. That might be a named successor, an interim, or your board chair, and the approach shifts depending on which one you have.

Honor. You close the chapter. Boundaries for what comes after, a letter to your successor if you choose to write one, and an honest look at what you are carrying into whatever is next.

Most leaders start somewhere in the middle, usually with documentation, because that is the part that feels like progress. The work holds together better in order.

Frequently Asked Questions

• How much notice should a nonprofit executive director give?

  For a planned departure, start preparing 6 to 12 months ahead (longer if retirement). Check your employment agreement for a required minimum and treat that number as the floor. When you tell your board chair depends on your relationship with that person and how much runway you have, and it is worth deciding deliberately rather than by default. Staff and public announcements usually come later, once the board has agreed on a timeline and an interim plan.

• Who should an executive director tell first?

  Your board chair, in a private conversation. What you bring to that conversation matters more than when you have it. By the time you sit down, the picture of what you carry should already be on paper, because once you resign, the timeline and the sequence belong to the board. Staff, funders, and partners then hear the news in a planned order so that no one learns it secondhand.

• What goes in a transition binder?

  Enough for your successor to run the organization without calling you. An annual calendar of deadlines, key relationships with the context behind them, financial and banking details, board and governance documents, vendor contracts, open decisions with dates attached, and the reasoning behind why things are done the way they are. Handle passwords and system access through a password manager and a documented transfer of ownership. Never a printed spreadsheet. I speak from experience.

• Should the outgoing executive director help choose a successor?

  The hiring decision belongs to the board. The outgoing executive director can help by giving the search committee an honest picture of what the job really requires, including the parts that never made it into the job description, and by preparing materials the new leader will use from day one.

• What if no successor has been named before I leave?

  Prepare anyway. Document what you know, hold knowledge-transfer sessions with the board chair or interim leader, and make introductions to key funders and partners alongside a board member. Decide who is responsible for getting your binder into the hands of whoever steps in, and tell that person directly.

• How involved should a former executive director stay after leaving?

  Less than you might expect, and on terms you set in advance. Put your post-departure boundaries in writing, including what kinds of questions you will answer and for how long. Clear limits give the next leader room to lead.

You can control what you leave

Here is the honest part. You cannot control what happens after you leave. The board will make its own choices, and your successor will lead in their own way.

What you can control is what you leave behind. The relationships you introduced in person, the knowledge you wrote down, the board you equipped, the boundaries you set before anyone asked.

The folder I was handed had a few documents and a password list with half the entries crossed out. Nobody meant to leave it that way. There was just nothing to work from.

Could your successor run this without calling you?

If you are asking that question right now, The Legacy Leadership Transfer walks through all five TORCH stages, with the tools your board and successor can use the day you walk out. You do not have to figure this out alone.

About the author:

Heather Hooper is the founder of Heather Hooper Consulting and a former nonprofit executive director. She spent about twenty years inside mission-driven organizations in North Carolina, more than ten of them in the executive director seat, and now helps executive directors and boards prepare for leadership transitions and build strategic plans that actually get used.