For many founders, the success of the organization becomes a signifier of their own success in carrying out the mission. Growth and continued forward momentum provide evidence that the original instinct was right -- that starting the organization was worth the risk, and that the idea behind it deserved to exist.

But what happens when the road forward is more winding than you imagined? Or when the organization begins to require new resources to take it to the next level? Eventually, there may even come a time to hand the reins to someone else.

Those aren’t questions most founders contemplate on day one, but they become part of a journey few people tell you much about at the beginning.

I’ve given a talk in the past using a branching tree as a metaphor for this. Early in a career, the end of the branch seems impossibly far away. Every few feet there is another fork, each representing some future decision and another possibility for where the work might take you. For a long time, all you can see are branches.

Eventually, though, you begin to see where your branch ends.

The decisions don’t stop, but they start to feel different. Some choices are still about building and possibility, while others begin to serve an eventual conclusion -- what you want to leave behind, what you want to carry with you and what you are ready to let someone else take forward.

It is a season that resonates with me personally as someone continuing to do this work. The more I recognize it as a legitimate phase of the founder journey, the more I see others wrestling with many of the same questions.

Letting the Work Be the Work

I met Angela Gala at the beginning of the pandemic when we made a deal. She would introduce meditation to our team at Next Stage, then adjusting to the strange new reality of working from home, and we would help her nonprofit called Youth Meditation communicate its impact to others.

Learning to meditate helped me understand just how rarely my mind was ever truly settled. The practice Angela introduced became something I returned to during an increasingly complicated few years, and it remains part of my life today. Angela’s work with young people is built around that same idea of creating space between what happens to us and how we respond.

“This isn’t something where you hand someone a curriculum and say, ‘Here’s what you do,’” she told me. “It’s a practice. Over time, you begin to understand that you may not control the situation, but you have agency over how you process it and how you respond.”

It was a practice almost perfectly suited for the pandemic, particularly for young people whose routines, relationships and sense of stability had been disrupted. Youth Meditation helped children and the adults around them develop skills for managing emotion, finding focus and reclaiming some sense of control.

Redefining What Success Looks Like

Angela eventually realized she needed to apply some of those same lessons to the organization itself.

Youth Meditation initially focused on deployment through partnerships with Title I schools, but changing funding realities and a more complicated education landscape forced Angela to rethink where and how the work could be deployed. The organization has increasingly partnered with nonprofits and others serving children and families, following opportunities where there is genuine interest in the practice.

“My job is to open the door and give people an experience of what this work can offer,” Angela said. “The people who feel something in it, who see how it might serve them or the people they care for, can choose to walk through. Then my role is to meet them there and help them make the practice their own.”

That evolution has also changed how she defines success. Angela has learned that growth for its own sake can become its own trap, particularly when the pursuit of scale begins taking more from the founder than the work gives back.

“I think what I’ve learned most is not to wrap up my whole life’s purpose in my work,” she told me. “I love the work, but I live my purpose in everything I do.”

That may be the most important distinction of all.

Building Something That Lasts

Building something that can exist separate from you as its leader is among the hardest things for nonprofit founders to do.

I’ve known and worked with Susan Andersen longer than almost anyone else in this series. ANSWER Scholarship was among Next Stage’s earliest clients, beginning a strategy collaboration that lasted through much of the first half of the firm’s existence.

ANSWER began as an endowed scholarship fund Susan created at Foundation For The Carolinas to help mothers pursue a college degree. Over time, she began to see that tuition support alone was only going to be part of the story. Programming grew around the scholarship, relationships deepened, and eventually a standalone nonprofit emerged. Next Stage was fortunate to play a small role in helping Susan navigate those early years as ANSWER evolved into the thriving organization it is today.

“In the beginning, I was really focused on helping one mother at a time get the education she needed to create a different future for her family,” Susan told me. “Then you begin to understand everything around that goal -- the support, encouragement and community it takes to help someone get across the finish line. The organization grew out of listening to what women most needed.”

That instinct has helped shape ANSWER for more than two decades, impacting the lives of more than 160 women and their families while building an organization far larger than the original scholarship concept.

Knowing When to Exit the Train

Now Susan is preparing for another transition: stepping away from the Executive Director role she has held since establishing ANSWER as an independent nonprofit. She is making plans for a Q2 2027 departure.

For founders, succession can represent an especially complicated test of identity. You spend years willing an idea into existence and becoming inseparable from its public story. Eventually, though, stewardship may mean creating enough distance for someone else to lead.

“I feel like I’ve taken ANSWER as far as I’m supposed to take it,” Susan told me. “That doesn’t mean the work is finished. It means the organization is ready for someone with new energy and new ideas to take it farther than I can.”

It’s a powerful perspective, and not an easy one. Founders spend so much of their lives building something that reflects their values and sense of purpose that separating the person from the organization can feel almost unnatural.

But perhaps one of the final acts of founder leadership is recognizing that the organization’s future no longer has to depend on your own.

The Founder Journey

This month has been a powerful experience for me, reflecting on these amazing leaders I have the good fortune to know, work with and be inspired by. I’ve really needed it as we face a very difficult season for social good in America. I’ve been reminded of how resilience, perspective and a willingness to keep evolving are among the most important founder attributes.

Their stories have also helped me reconnect with my own why. I started Next Stage because I was drawn to people with conviction -- people willing to build something because they believed a better outcome was possible. A couple decades into this work, I’m realizing that supporting those people still gives me as much purpose as it ever has, even as my understanding of leadership, impact and success continues to change.

I think that’s my personal take-away. We begin by building something we believe needs to exist, and somewhere along the way the work begins shaping us, too. The organization may grow and become something we never imagined at the outset, but the deeper question remains the same: what have we learned about why we are here, and how do we want to use the time we have to impact what comes next?

Next month, we revisit my first love: the cultural sector. I look forward to more in The Work in Progress series!