Tools

• When We Fall Apart – A workbook about endings from the fine folks at Interrupting Criminalization
• Sensing An Ending Toolkit – a toolkit for nonprofit leaders to help decide, design and deliver better organisational endings by our friends at The Decelerator
• Considering Closure – a companion to the Sensing and Ending Toolkit (by Stewarding Loss/The Decelerator in UK)
• Staying Close to Loss – a set of tools for tending to organisational cultures so loss is explored as part of life (also by The Decelerator folks!)
• Strategic Sunsetting – guide from nonprofit consultancy Propel
• Closing the Doors – guidance on closure and strategic merger from The Power of Possibility coalition (includes a handy PPT deck!)
• How to Create a Checklist for Nonprofit Exit – guidance from the directors of Water for People, a global water access nonprofit that frequently has to face exits from certain projects or areas once they’ve hit their targets.
• Closing Chapters, Opening Futures: Working with Philanthropy for Better Endings (The Decelerator) – a quick, practical guide for organizations to maximize the support (financial or otherwise) from their networks of funders.
• Winding Down: A Risk Management Checklist (Nonprofit Risk Management Center)
• SeaChange Capital’s compendium of wind down resources
• Considering Closure – same name as the article above, but this time it’s an article from members of the Sustainable Collaboration Network in the US

Articles

• A Good Death: In Search of Developmental Endings by Doug Reeler of South Africa’s now-defunct Community Development Resource Association(this downloads a Word .doc file)
• Working at the Sharp End of Programme Closure: EveryChild’s Responsible Exit Principles (intrac for civil society) a great breakdown of how EC devised guiding principles for executing a deliberate and humane wind down
• If We Care About Justice, We Have to Care About Endings – As executive director Katya Fels Smith closed Full Frame Initiative, she shared her emerging thoughts about closure and endings. This article is just one of many great pieces!
• Ending Well: Evaluation of EveryChild’s Responsible Exit Process (intrac for civil society) – this is the “retrospective” of the process outlined above
• Graceful Degradation Survey: How Do We Manage Digital Humanities Projects Through Times of Transition and Decline? – Nowviskie & Porter
• Social Movement Stages: Emergence, Coalescence, Bureaucratization & Decline
• Exit strategies and sustainability. Lessons for practitioners (intrac for civil society)
• When Sunsetting Your Nonprofit is the Hardest (and Best) Option by Kristina Gawrgy, Monisha Kapila, Angela Romans (former board members of the now-defunct AchieveMIssion)
• Exit Strategies – by Geoff Revell former of World Bank and WaterSHED, a deliberate 10-year initiative to expand access to clean water in Cambodia (THIS IS A FANTASTIC, AMAZING READ!!)
• The Art of Exit by The National Endowment for Science, Technology, and Art: In Search of Creative Decommissioning
• “Sufficient Death Preparedness Correlates to Better Mental Health, Quality of Life, and EOL Care” (Journal of Pain and Symptom Management
• Why We Need Ritual: Inviting Ritual In (from the INELDA website)
• Zombie Missions: Organizations that should close but won’t – A great post from nonprofit leader Vu Le’s fun and irreverent blog
• Life, Death, and Zombies: Revisiting Traditional Concepts of Nonprofit Demise by Elizabeth A.M. Searing of University of Texas (wherein I learned that “unlike countries with lists of deregistered charities (e.g., Canada), the United States (US) does not have a definitive source of information regarding nonprofit demise”)
• The coming storm: A stronger civil society future needs us all to embrace better endings today by Iona Lawrence of The Decelerator
• There Is No Better Time Than Now for Philanthropy to Spend Itself Out of Existence – Co-written by the executive directors of the Stupski Foundation, The Compton Foundation, and The Whitman Institute
• We Need a Strategy for Spending Down – written by the folks who sunsetted The Chorus Foundation
• On the Power of Sabbaticals and Intentional Endings – a post on the the Community Foundations of Canada website from an ED who decided to put her whole organization on sabbatical

Books

• Ends by Joe MacLeod
• Endineering by Joe MacLeod
• How to Close A Museum by Dr. Susana Bautista
• Rebellious Mourning: The Collective Work of Grief by Cindy Milstein

Listens

• Camille Acey of The Wind Down (me!) on Conscious Nonprofit Endings and Closures (The Leaving Well podcast)
• Ask a Death Doula
• Anarchist activist Cindy Milstein on grief, mourning, and building institutions for care in anarchist movements (The Final Straw Podcast episode)
• Death doula and lawyer Alua Arthur – How Do I Live Presently and Die Gracefully? (New Day Podcast episode)
• Sounds of Mourning – Amazing sounds from mourning traditions around the world

Videos

• Making the Hard Decision to Sunset a Nonprofit Organization – a session with the folks who supported the wind down at AchieveMission (session was part of the Upswell 2021 Nonprofit Summit, see their blogpost above in the articles section)
• Closing well. Composting our network when it’s time – a discussion with The Decelerator’s Louise Armstrong and Sophy Banks of Grief Tending (YouTube)