Why good charity endings matter (and how to have one)
Podcast transcript
The funding freeze: What is going on?
Podcast description
There’s no denying that charity endings – especially organisational ones – are extremely hard. The emotions that are tied up in charities, the expectations of service users and donors, the weight of responsibility that lies on the shoulders of leaders and the board – these are not easy issues to navigate.
In this episode we talk to four guests to help us understand why endings are so hard, and how to have a good one. Iona Lawrence, Chief Deceleration Officer at the Decelerator; Richard Litchfield, Chief Executive of Eastside People; and Alison Lucas and Lizzie Bentley Bowers, Executive Coaches and co-authors of Goodbye.
“Organisational endings are part and parcel of what it takes to lead and manage high quality, impactful organisations. And when handled well, they become an opportunity for renewal, impact and transformation. And arguably, those are the things we need at this point in time.”
Iona Lawrence, Chief Deceleration Officer at the Decelerator
“Right now, you’ve got these massive announcements coming through: USAID and DFID for international aid charities. You’ve got, just in the last couple of weeks, the announcements about 50% cuts to ICS spending and NHS England. And then we’ve got all of the NI changes that are about to come through, for pretty much all charities. So, I think, for that reason, it feels incredibly challenging. And then the impact for that seems to be there’s ever more pressure on business models, capacity and aligning people to the services that need delivering. It’s no surprise to say that a lot of our work is about helping organisations to understand and then manage their way through that funding crunch.”
Richard Litchfield, Chief Executive of Eastside People
“There’s a myriad of endings every day, they’re inevitable and we wanted to create a resource, a book, to help leaders navigate those endings.”
Alison Lucas, Executive Coach, Randolph Partnership Ltd
“When we are purpose-driven, when there’s something we’re trying to change for good in the world… it’s particularly counter-intuitive to stop doing it…to think of endings and to think of the good we’re trying to do. When we’re trying to do good, we’re doing. Both strategically and energetically, if we’re thinking about pausing, stopping, closing, we might have a sense that we’re preventing that contribution from taking place anymore.”
Lizzie Bentley Bowers, Executive Coach, The Causeway Coaching Ltd
Our hosts
Felicia Willow, aka the Mary Poppins of the Charity Sector, is a seasoned interim CEO and consultant in the Charity Sector, working primarily on strategy, governance, crisis and effectiveness. Her leadership roles include the Fawcett Society and the Shannon Trust. A lawyer by training, Felicia’s career has spanned government, UN and the UK charity sector (the ‘For Impact’ sector) and she finds herself increasingly focussed on discussing and challenging the systemic issues that are holding the sector back.
Chris Pitt is responsible for positive social and environmental impact at Benefact Group, a family of specialist financial services businesses owned by a charitable Trust. The Group is the 3rd largest corporate giver to charity1 and Chris oversees over £2m of giving, namely through the Movement for Good awards which give small donations to a huge diversity of causes and large grants to charities close to the customers and communities of the Group.
1 DSC – The guide to UK Company Giving 2023-24
Our guests
Iona Lawrence, Chief Deceleration Officer at the Decelerator
Iona is currently the Chief Deceleration Officer at The Decelerator where she leads a small team with big ambitions to help civil society navigate transitions with care, integrity, and purpose—whether closing programmes, winding up organisations, enabling leadership transitions and all the other endings involved in organisational life cycles. Previously Iona led initiatives across civil society, from co-founding The Jo Cox Foundation and securing the UK’s first Minister for Loneliness to shaping refugee policy with Safe Passage.
Richard Litchfield, Chief Executive of Eastside People
Richard is Chief Executive of Eastside People – an award-winning consultancy and recruiter for charities and social enterprises. Their support offer focuses on helping charities to manage change and transformation, and Richard is particularly proud that they have advised on 40 successful charity mergers in his time.
Richard writes and speaks on leadership matters including growth and development for not-for-profits, balancing profit and purpose, mergers & acquisitions, social finance, measuring the performance of not-for-profits, ESG trends, good governance, and career transitions.
Alison Lucas, Executive Coach, Randolph Partnership Ltd and Lizzie Bentley Bowers, Executive Coach, The Causeway Coaching Ltd (Co-authors of Goodbye)
Leading Executive Coaches Alison Lucas, of Randolph Partnership Ltd, and Lizzie Bentley Bowers, of The Causeway Coaching Ltd, are professionally accredited coaches and facilitators, working at board to top talent level across all sectors. Balancing clients’ individual and commercial needs and outcomes, they equip leaders to thrive and to navigate change in their complex and uncertain world. Their combined decades of learning and thousands of conversations with leaders led them to Endings, an overlooked aspect of change that they have since been determined to bring into the leadership conversation. Collaboration, shared experience and shared learning is a hallmark of their practice, and they enjoy and benefit from the support and challenge they offer each other. Holding the pursuit of the best outcomes for their clients lies at the heart of their collaborations. You can find out more about them at GoodByeCoach.co.uk.
Resources:
Good Bye: Leading change better by attending to endings https://www.waterstones.com/book/good-bye/lizzie-bentley-bowers/alison-lucas/9781788607292
Get support via The Decelerator hotline https://decelerator.org.uk/hotline
Campaign Boot Camp report – https://campaignbootcamp.org/resources/campaign-bootcamp-leadership-learning-report-2022/index.html
Fair Collective Mental Health Report https://www.faircollective.co.uk/post/small-charity-leaders-mental-health-is-at-crisis-point
The Good Merger Index – https://eastsidepeople.org/resource/charity-good-merger-index-23-24-report/
For more information on The Decelerator / to follow their work and findings on substack, visit – https://decelerator.org.uk
You can also follow them on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/the-decelerator-uk/
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