7 States, 52 Schools, 30,000 Students: Gratitude and Impact in 2022
To our community;
We launched the Center for Sustainable Leadership in response to a persistent theme: after years of work to change school systems for the better, leadership transitions were costing schools, school systems, and nonprofit organizations years of impact. The tentativeness to speak openly about transitions before they occur—or more important, why leaders leave in the first place—was impacting kids and communities. We saw a landscape need for support in both having difficult conversations and taking a clear-headed look at the burnout seemingly required of educators and leaders.
We hear a pressing question in our work: can great nonprofit leadership even be sustainable? Can children come first without educators and leaders coming in last? The expectation for charter network leadership, like the expectation for educators generally, equates dedication with self-sacrifice. We know this to be a false and harmful trade-off.
This year especially, it’s been hard to miss the headlines—”quiet quitting,” the great resignation, mass burnout. There’s no denying that the pressures that nonprofit executive leaders face are enormous. As a team, we made the bet that sustainable leadership didn’t have to come at the expense of educational excellence. We operate from the firm belief that sustainability is the foundation of lasting change.
And over and over again, our partners have proven this to be true. We’ve seen board members have the hard conversations required to plan thoughtfully and proactively for the future. We’ve seen leaders take bold steps to manage their time and energy so they can better and more joyfully lead. We’ve watched as school networks prioritize equity—not as a talking point, but as the bedrock for everything they do. When nonprofits engage in this sustainability and succession planning, they preserve excellence not just for five or ten years, but for the course of a leader’s career. And then their successor’s career. That’s the stability our students and communities deserve.
2022 By the Numbers:
In 2022, we partnered with nonprofit executive leaders and boards in seven states. Through this, we impacted fifty-two schools and nearly 30,000 children. The breadth and depth of this impact is a direct result of leaders committed to having critical, often difficult conversations about the future of their work, the future of their organization, and what they as leaders need to remain excellent in their work. We are continually moved by the humility, candor, and depth with which leaders show up to these conversations.
What we learned from you:
This year, at the Charter School Growth Fund’s CEO conference in Denver, Colorado, we heard from researcher, author and speaker Jim Collins. He told us that in order to do work that truly changes systems, you have to be “in love with your job”—but that love is not enough to sustain impact. When a job gets too stressful, or unsustainable, it comes at the cost of both the longevity and excellence needed to make a lasting impact.
This resonated with us, and with many of you. We collaborate with leaders who are absolutely in love with their work, and who also navigate very high levels of stress. We found that leaders and board members alike were honest about the tensions that can emerge between that passion and intensity. We were therefore thrilled to find that organizations were very open to utilizing strategies such as sabbatical as a leadership development and longevity tool. We believe deeply in sabbatical, but we had worried about buy-in from across our busy field. We were excited to see leaders and boards embrace the idea.
Looking ahead to 2023:
In addition to our leadership succession and sustainability planning facilitation, we are expanding our work in response to clear demand coming from school networks and other nonprofit organizations:
Sabbatical Planning: Many of the organizations we supported in 2022 have adopted sabbatical policies for their executive leadership and will carry out those policies in 2023. We are excited to begin work on supporting those organizations in planning and executing sabbatical as a strategy for both leadership development as well as longevity in executive leadership.
Board Succession Planning: Without fail, when we begin work with boards on succession and sustainability planning for the executive leader of their organization, it occurs to them that they need board member succession planning as well. In response to this, we are piloting our Board Succession Planning process currently and are excited to support organizations in bringing more continuity, thoughtfulness, and strength to their boards.
Talent Planning Workshops: The natural question that arises during our executive leader succession and sustainability planning is how to apply the planning concepts to the rest of a team. We are now offering workshops to conduct exactly this planning for entire teams.
Leadership Transition Support: Organizations have articulated a need for more intensive, direct support for executive leaders as they transition in and out of their roles. We began to offer advisory services to boards and executive leaders to respond to transition challenges, opportunities, and risks that arise in real time.
We will continue to facilitate leadership succession and sustainability planning—particularly with organizations we have already supported in their first year of planning. We know that true impact doesn’t come from one year of planning but from an organization committing to a habit of annual leadership planning. We are so excited by the impact that we see among organizations that are many years into this work already. Finally, we will continue to facilitate talent and leadership planning workshops.
Gratitude:
We have been grateful for the chance to work alongside all of you. Whether you are a board member, a network leader, a school leader, or another partner, you have invested in children by investing in sustainability for the leaders and organizations that serve them.
In particular, the Charter School Growth Fund and New Schools for New Orleans have been invaluable collaborators and visionaries throughout this work. They have made our efforts possible.
Together, we’ve helped schools and networks across the country prepare for the long-term with clarity, equity, and calm. As we look to the year ahead, we are filled with optimism and energy for this work. We can’t wait to continue collaborating with you.
Cheers to you, the care that you bring to your work, and the lasting impact of your unique leadership.
To an ever-brighter future,
Amanda, Freddi, and Leah