Nonprofit Executive Transition Program
Empowering Leaders, Preserving Legacies, Strengthening Organizations
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Each NExT cohort brings together three peer groups: outgoing executives, Board representatives, and incoming executives. Over 18 months, organizations will engage regularly in peer group and full-cohort settings, supported by a blend of facilitated and peer-to-peer learning.
Cohort-Wide Sessions: These sessions bring together outgoing executives, participating board representatives, and incoming executives for facilitated workshops, speaker panels, and shared learning. Organizations join a learning community of peers also navigating executive transitions.
Peer Learning Groups: Each of the three key leadership groups — the outgoing executives, the Board representatives, and incoming executives — participate in tailored, facilitated peer learning circles. These confidential spaces allow participants to share candidly, test approaches, and receive feedback from peers in similar roles.
Coaching & Mentorship: >Individual support throughout an organization’s transition is a core program benefit. Participants have the option to work with professional coaches who provide guidance, reflective questioning, and accountability. NExT also creates opportunities for participants to connect with mentors, often program alumni, who share practical insights from their own executive transitions.
Asynchronous Learning: Participants will gain access to curated supplemental learning resources, including readings, templates, and reflection tools.
Recognizing the fluid nature of executive transitions, NExT provides structured support to each peer group at the point in the process when their engagement is most critical. Outgoing executives participate in program sessions and components during the first 8 to 12 months. Board representatives meet regularly throughout the first 12 months, followed by periodic check-ins for the remainder of the program. Incoming executives typically begin participating around month 8 with flexibility based on individual circumstances, and will continue with their peer groups through the conclusion of the 18-month program.
Participation in NExT strengthens leaders during pivotal transitions and builds organizational resilience and agility.
For Organizations
- Stability During Change: Organizations benefit from structured support that reduces risk and disruption, ensuring leadership change does not derail momentum.
- Collective Learning: Participation in a peer cohort creates opportunities to build community and expand networks in order to exchange practices, share challenges, and apply lessons learned across organizations.
- Mission and Values Alignment: Transitions are framed as opportunities to operationalize organizational values, especially around diversity, equity, and inclusion, strengthening the connection between leadership and mission.
- Long-Term Resilience: By engaging in intentional succession planning, organizations position themselves for sustained impact and resilience.
For Leaders
- Outgoing Executives: Departing leaders are supported in navigating the practical and emotional aspects of transition. They gain a dignified pathway for concluding their tenure, opportunities to reflect on their legacy, and tools for preparing the organization to navigate change.
- Board and Search Chairs: The board representatives strengthen their governance and oversight capacity during a pivotal moment of change. They gain new strategies to lead succession processes, manage uncertainty, and align the transition with the organization’s long-term vision.
- Incoming Executives: New leaders receive mentorship, structured guidance, and a trusted peer network to help them step confidently into their role. They gain strategies to build credibility, establish trust, and set a foundation for early success.
NExT is designed for nonprofit organizations navigating complex and high-stakes leadership changes. Ideal participants are organizations that:
- Are undergoing a founder or long-tenured (7+ years) executive transition (e.g., CEO, President, or Executive Director), with the executive’s departure occurring 8 to 12 months from the start of the program. Volunteer-led organizations or C-suite transitions outside the nonprofit sector are not eligible.
- Employ full-time staff who will be directly impacted by the transition.
- Anchors transition planning in organizational values that reflect the voices of the community served.
- Are navigating unique or complex transitions, such as hiring or promoting a first-time nonprofit executive, shifting to a co-executive or shared leadership model, experiencing transition alongside significant organizational growth (e.g. separating from a fiscal sponsor, expanding programs, or managing new funding streams), or considering both internal and external candidates. Organizations with a pre-identified successor may find less alignment with the cohort model.
Program Participation Commitments: By the application deadline, the outgoing executive must have notified the board of their planned departure. Each organization’s board representative, outgoing leader, and (once identified) incoming leader are expected to attend both virtual and in-person peer group and full-cohort sessions. In-person gatherings will be held in or near Downtown Los Angeles.
Because transitions unfold over time, NExT engages each peer group when their involvement matters most: Outgoing executives take part during the first 8–12 months; Board representatives meet regularly through the first 12 months, with occasional check-ins afterward; Incoming executives may join around month 8 and continue through the end of the 18-month program.
Who Should Submit the Application: While any individual associated with the organization can submit the application on behalf of the organization — including search or transition consultants — it is best practice for the outgoing executive to submit the application and be the organizational point of contact until the program commences.
Note: Cohort selection will be based on a variety of factors, including demonstration of some succession planning and early transition planning activities, an intention to operationalize organizational values through the transition, transition circumstances, and a transition timeline that will optimize peer learning opportunities. Priority will be given to organizations who have not yet identified a successor.
Coro helps leaders deepen their innate abilities by providing the tools, the practice, and the network needed to activate change.
Coro training is not just about finding the right answers; it’s about learning to ask the right questions. Participants learn to move beyond reacting to differences, and engage across identities, ideologies, sectors, and generations. This requires openness to personal reflection and a readiness to engage with perspectives that may differ from their own.
We view leadership as a practice, strengthened through hands-on experiential learning. Participants are expected to be fully present, minimize distractions, and actively contribute to the growth of the cohort.
Coro leaders learn to shift from judgment to curiosity, navigate ambiguity, and embrace empathy and vulnerability as essential leadership practices. By fostering psychological safety, participants unlock deeper learning, innovation, and authentic connection — all key to leading effectively through complexity and change.
Tuition: NExT is tuition-free.
Stipends: Thanks to the generosity of NSI, each selected organization will receive a $5,000 stipend to offset the cost of participation.
Executive Transition Fund Grants: NSI will provide larger grants to at least five (5) participating organizations. These grants aim to support the organizations’ executive transition, planning, and implementation. Grants are limited. To be eligible for consideration, organizations must:
- Complete the Grants Application section of the NExT application.
- Be based in and serve Los Angeles County.
- Have paid staff (a minimum of 5 FTE staff advisable).
- Have an annual budget less than $10 million.
- Have organizational diversity, equity, inclusion goals tied directly to their transition plan.
Meeting all criteria does not guarantee a grant award.
In Partnership With
