Chronicle of Philanthropy: Nonprofits Are Doing Leadership Transitions Wrong. Here’s a Better Approach.
Let’s face it — leadership transitions can make or break a nonprofit. And yet too often, organizations stumble through them, scrambling to replace key leaders while keeping everything from falling apart. It’s a recipe for burnout, missed opportunities, and mission drift.
But a key solution can keep organizations stable through the chaos: hiring an interim leader.
I’ve seen the benefits firsthand, both while working under interim leaders, and as an interim president myself at the reproductive health and justice publication, Rewire News Group. I wasn’t just tasked with keeping the seat warm. I had to stabilize the team, galvanize our funders, and set the next leader up for success. Rewire’s goal wasn’t to just survive the transition with minimal casualties, but to thrive through the process.
As a Rewire board member who had just launched an independent consulting business, I was a good fit for the role. I had both the institutional knowledge and free time to step in. For three days a week, I lead the organization’s operations, finances, and development while the editorial team steered the newsroom. This part-time arrangement gave Rewire the leadership continuity it needed without overextending its budget during a critical transition.
The experience taught me that interim leadership doesn’t have to be a perfunctory role thrust upon the most senior team member left standing. It can help an organization enter its next chapter with confidence and clarity. With the right philanthropic support, including funding for the leader’s compensation, search-firm fees, and additional support for staff navigating the change, interim leaders can be a stabilizing force.
Steady Hand in Turbulent Times
Increased stability is particularly important right now, as nonprofits struggle with burnout, staffing shortages, and declining interest in leadership positions. Various pressures from the Trump administration — from federal funding cutsto heightened regulatory scrutiny — will only exacerbate such problems. These headwinds underscore the need for consistent leadership to navigate turbulent times.
Rewire had benefited from strong leadership for four years under its first non-founder president. But when I became interim president, the organization was facing a widening fundraising gap due to shrinking philanthropic interest in niche journalism, growing hostility toward the media and abortion-related organizations, and an urgent need to cover escalating attacks on reproductive health and rights. When its previous leader departed, the board was aware that additional turnover could be a real issue for such a small organization. With Rewire’s future at stake, a steady hand was needed to guide it forward.
An interim leader brought in specifically for the transition period is well-suited to that stabilizing role, while also providing a fresh perspective. Unlike a permanent executive director, I had no attachments to previous or future strategies or processes. I’d served on the board, so had some institutional knowledge, but had never worked inside the organization. This objectivity is particularly valuable when navigating staff dynamics and tensions.
Without pressure to cast a long-term vision or campaign for internal buy-in, I could focus on the essential infrastructure that’s often overlooked during a leadership void. During the nearly one year I served as interim president, I maintained and strengthened funder relationships, developed a short-term strategic plan to guide staff priorities, helped lead the search for a new executive director alongside an executive search firm, and overhauled the budget approach.
We launched the search for my permanent replacement in June 2024 and welcomed the new executive director in December — a fast timeline considering nonprofit leadership searches can take a year. Once Rewire hired my replacement, I built a comprehensive onboarding plan and served as a senior advisor for two months to support her team restructuring and fundraising pitches, make high-level introductions, and create a first-year communications roadmap. With these elements in place, the new leader could hit the ground running and tackle more substantive, long-term projects.
The experience led me to wonder why the nonprofit sector doesn’t demand more from transitions. I’ve seen nonprofits pour hundreds of thousands of dollars into executive searches and strategic consultants but then neglect the internal chaos that often unfolds in the meantime. In my experience, most nonprofits don’t have a succession plan. Rewire certainly didn’t. This lack of preparedness can lead to major disruptions. Without an interim leader, the burden of keeping the ship afloat falls on already overstretched staff who may delay or abandon key projects. Funders get nervous. Morale drops. And yet, all of this is entirely avoidable.
It’s time to stop pretending that rushing through this process works.
Room to Breathe
Here’s where donors come in. To truly support nonprofits, they need to provide the breathing room to do transitions right. That means not only covering the interim leader’s pay but funding the full arc of the transition: executive search firms, staff stipends to boost morale during a disruptive time, onboarding, retreats for staff and board members to discuss long-term goals, and coaching for incoming leaders. Funders can also provide enough money so the interim leader overlaps with both the outgoing one and the replacement.
A one-time grant should cover these needs, but if a transition is expected, donors can provide the necessary funds when they renew annual grants. Rewire, for example, repurposed the previous leader’s salary, but also tapped its largest funders, one of whom provided a grant to fund my role, run a successful search, and set up the new leader and team for long-term success. (Given the sensitive nature of funding Rewire’s focus area, I can’t reveal who these grant makers were.)
Nonprofits, for their part, should consider hiring an interim leader as soon as they expect a departure. To set the temporary replacement up for success — and avoid causing more chaos — board members and other senior staff should provide them with a clear description of what the job entails. Ideally, the interim leader should focus on keeping essential programs running, preparing onboarding materials for the permanent replacement, and addressing immediate problems.
To find a suitable interim leader, organizations and boards should tap their own networks. The trick is to find someone who is both familiar with the mission but a relative outsider. Former staff members, consultants who’ve previously worked with the organization, or board members often fit the bill. To ensure objectivity, the interim leader ideally shouldn’t throw their hat in the ring for the permanent position.
An interim role should truly be short-term — no longer than a year. A part-time position also works well as it forces the leader to focus on the essentials in their limited time. Organizations can hire part-time consultants as Rewire did with me, or take advantage of the recent rise in part-time executives — also known as fractional leadership.
The nonprofit sector is no stranger to burnout, and leadership transitions can often exacerbate the problem. But what if the field did it differently? Instead of holding its breath and hoping for the best, nonprofits should embrace interim leadership as an essential tool rather than a stopgap measure. If grant makers want nonprofits to thrive through leadership changes, they should view interim leaders as not just a bridge but a lifeline to a stronger, more resilient organization.
