Succession Planning for Nonprofits

Join the Nonprofit Academy of Wisconsin for “Succession Planning for Nonprofits:”

“Prepare for leadership change – learn how to create your succession plan.

About this Event

What will happen to your organization when its leadership changes? It could be a sudden, unexpected change, or it could be planned. Are you ready for that?

The Standards for Excellence have as a guiding principle that nonprofits depend upon effective leadership to successfully enact their missions and programs. To ensure the short- and long-term sustainability of the organization, it is important to have a process that ensures a coordinated and seamless transition of leadership: a succession plan.

In the short term it is critical to have a plan for an emergency situation. If the board president or the executive director were to suddenly leave the role, can the organization continue to operate? This is the short-term succession plan.

A more traditional succession plan looks to the longer-term issues of the strategic directions the organization is taking and who is best to guide it. Identifying the skills that are going to be needed and developing them among the people already on the team, both board and staff, can be a critical tool to ensure sustainability.

In this 90 minute webinar, Gary Zajc will walk you through both the theory and the practice of developing long and short term succession plans. The basis of good succession planning is effectual governance based on your organization’s core values and principles. You will learn strategies and approaches to take to analyze what your organization needs and how to build the team you need. Theory is one thing, doing is another, so you will also get practical tools you can use to implement the strategies.

Gary Zajc has over four decades of non-profit and for-profit leadership experience in HR, succession planning, talent management, talent leadership, and innovation. Currently, Gary assists organizations with establishing policies and programs that drive employee engagement and retention. His efforts have resulted in Top Workplace awards by both the Milwaukee Business Journal and the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel.“