66: Camille Acey on Conscious Nonprofit Endings and Closures
Camille E. Acey is a mom, a community organizer, a former tech support leader, and founder of the conscious nonprofit closures consultancy The Wind Down. As part of this work, she currently facilitates the Practices of Composting and Hospicing community under the Joseph Rowntree Foundation’s Emerging Futures initiative. She was a co-founder of the Collective for Liberation, Ecology, and Technology (CoLET), a radical feminist tech collective. She also served as an advisor to The Ada Initiative, an advocacy group for women in open tech/culture, and was board chair for Whose Knowledge?, a global feminist NGO focused on elevating marginalized voices.
Main quote:
Any chance I get when I can leave something and just say I'm not going to take on this kind of stuff for a while, I think is also really good. Not having to jump into whatever is next. And a sense of pride and not much regret. Letting go of that kind of stuff. I've definitely stepped away from things and then been so impressed by what the people that come afterwards have done, things that would have never occurred to me.
Additional Quotes:
I would like people to begin with the end in mind. I think that's really critical. One of the things I'm trying to push forward is to get foundations thinking about this, fiscal sponsors thinking about this. As part of the work of the wind down, I offer a free hotline for anyone who's closing or in discernment around closing.
To connect with Camille:
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Transcript:
In this episode today, we talk about the necessity of conscious closures when it comes to nonprofit organizations. You might be thinking, what in the world does conscious closures mean? Well, it means that we are intentional and that we are thoughtful and that we plan for the way that we close organizations.
One of the things that I thought Camille talked about so beautifully was that the intention around an organization called Watershed, who closed after 10 years. And that was the point from the very beginning. We talk about making sure that you have a plan for your organization's website when you close.
We also talk about something fun called Closure O'clock, which you'll be able to hear in this episode. And we also talk about making sure that there is time for grief. I'm excited for you to hear this conversation with Camille. I hope you enjoy.
Camille E. Acey is a mom, a community organizer, a former tech support leader, and founder of the Conscious Nonprofit Closures Consultancy, The Wine Down, which is the perfect name. As part of this work, Camille currently facilitates the practice of composting and hospicing community under the Joseph Rowntree Foundation's Emerging Futures Initiative.
She was a co founder of the Collective for Liberation, Ecology, and Technology, a radical feminist tech collective, and she also served as an advisor to the ADA Initiative, an advocacy group for women in open tech and culture, and was board chair for Who's Knowledge, a global feminist NGO focused on elevating marginalized voices.
Camille and I have had many conversations about the work of ending and closures and leaving well. And so I'm excited to have you on today, Camille, and have this conversation. My first question for you is how did you come to begin your work in supporting conscious closures? Thank you for having me, Naomi.
I'm a listener, I'm a subscriber, and it's nice to be on the podcast. You know, I came to the work of the Wind Down I guess in sort of a roundabout way, as you mentioned, I worked in tech, but alongside tech, I was also always involved in community organizing different, you know, different organizations, cooperatives that we developed in the neighborhood, as well as open source projects.
And as time went on, I started to see a certain pattern of things just kind of devolving or blowing up in a way that It was really disharmonious, you know, friendships ended, a lot of critical resources were just totally lost, and I think around 2019, no it was, it was 2019 2018, I sent an email out to the mailing list of a group I'm involved with called the maintainers, and I just said, does anybody have good guidance on, you know, how to do sunsets in organizations?
And that sort of started my obsession where I'd just bring it up with everyone all the time. People were like, Camille has this organizational death doula thing that she's working on. And, um, you know, from there I, I continued to keep thinking about this. And, like, squirreling away little resources, um, around this.
Because I, I really wanted to see, you know, and this really probably comes from the tech background, from the open source background. Like, could we develop. A protocol and system of best practices so that people don't have to reinvent the wheel every time or, you know, just get frustrated because there's also so much emotion and endings.
There's it's it's negative emotion that doesn't really propel things forward when things are starting. There's all this positive excitement energy that really can, you know, people want to volunteer. People want to give a little extra time, that kind of stuff. But, um, There's this kind of breaking, you know, and breaking like a car breaks or something like that.
That breaking energy along with the emotions and worry and anxiety that comes up in, in endings really just doesn't lend itself to working in a structured way towards an ending you can be proud of. It's interesting that you, so you said so many things that we could go off on really long tangents, but one thing I'd like to ask you a little bit more about is the critical resources that are lost, because I think especially about startup culture, whether it's tech, for profit, nonprofit, there's so much energy, like you said, that goes into the starting of the thing, and then how terrible to actually then realize everything that's just lost.
What have you found is. In your work and your conversations with different organizations, is there a better way forward for someone when they're starting something out to think proactively about how to curate, collect and not necessarily lose those resources? It's really going to vary from organization to organization in terms of the nature of the work that you're doing.
For example, with the composting and hospicing community of practice, just last month, we had a gathering where we. Our guest speakers were from the endings project, which is part of the digital humanities program at the University of Victoria, and they are archiving massive. There was one example that the woman showed was like a map of 1600s England or something along those lines and being able to put that.
somewhere and know that if browsers change, if the technology changes, that it'll be pretty stable because it's old, reliable, it's the old reliable standard that the internet, you know, and the, and the web is built on, I think was, is a really interesting framework. They have this idea of making projects endings ready.
So when people in the digital humanities go to start a project, they're already like, here's the checklist to go through. So that. When you move on to whatever is the new cool thing to pursue in the area of digital humanities, that this can go on with relatively little maintenance. So that's a great checklist that they have, but it really varies from organization to organization.
I, there's another group I wrote about the other day that I've, you know, uh, always admired in terms of their intentionality around winding down is, uh, there were a global activist collective called the rules and they had a lot of. technical, what they call culture hacking tools, and they put them up on GitHub, which is a place where you can set up a code repository and that will persist even after your organization winds down.
So I think being thoughtful about platforms you can leverage that probably have a longer shelf life than your group might have and starting already while you're in operations and in good health to point people to those other places rather than Um, you know, your website being the central hub, I think is a really critical way to ensure the longevity of those resources.
But I think it's also, I'm still really thinking this through in terms of intentionality around degradation. We had a another session with Sarah Wumbold and Sandh Hostin, where they're thinking about the sort of second life, that or second death that happens for people after you lose like a, You Person in their physical body, like all the remnants of them across the internet.
What does that mean for them just to be out there in perpetuity and you maybe run into them and be in some ways, maybe re triggered or re traumatized. Is there a possibility that things can, just as the human body degrades, just as anything biological in nature degrades, can some of these digital artifacts, can we have a forcing function where some of these things degrade So I'm, I'm still very much thinking about it because it's so hard to, to do that future think of and know, you know, what's going to be really important to people 50, a hundred years from now.
And sometimes they open these time capsules and they're like, what even is this? It's cute. And it's a novelty, but it's not anything we can, can build on. Yeah. I, I love thinking about this when you, when you said, while an organization is still in their best health. To be able to think about that is often, like you said, so impossible for an organization.
And I would love to skip a little bit to a question that was, I had held for later, but it's timely right now. Um, you recently wrote an article about the necessity of a tombstone for a nonprofit organization's website, which is hand in hand with what you were just talking about. Can you share more with the listener about why it's important and some of the things that you've uncovered about What a website's function should be as an organization's ending.
Yeah, thanks for mentioning that. I'm glad I got that out ahead of this interview. I've been wanting to write it for, for a long time. I, you know, I, I'm of two minds. I just was actually on a call earlier today with an organization. I, you know, some organizations, their website really is a hub for their community and a place where people garner information, but more and more, these things are really dispersed across a lot of different platforms.
I think the important thing is to signal we're not taking things in anymore, and we're not servicing people anymore. Because I've seen this so many times when people are like, sign up for our mailing list. And you're like, the organization ended two years ago, there's no mailing list. I mean, unless there is, in which case that should be really clearly specified.
So I think just signaling that things are over and in. And sending them in another direction, not letting them go down a rabbit hole or be misled, sending emails to nowhere, that kind of stuff. I think it's really comes back to my background in customer support and customer care, where it's just this question of like, how do we treat people really well?
And if they're looking for something and we can't offer it being really transparent about that straight out of the gate. I also think, you know, I talked a little bit about just the legacy and the storytelling. There's a opportunity for some healing and some grief work to happen if there's a collective project of building out the narrative and saying, you know, we should have on this website is this or that, you know, so people can collectively tell the story.
So it's kind of when people gather. At a wake, you know, or if they're sitting Shiva for somebody that died, you know, I can remember that person and funny stories, that kind of stuff. So I think there's an opportunity there, um, in building that. And then also, as people go on to look for their next role, then they can point to that site and say, here's all the stuff that we accomplished.
And it just gives that extra level of social proof. If the website's completely gone, if there's hard to find breadcrumbs, that kind of thing. Um, and then, as you're going forward, you don't have a lot of, you know, we, we create these kind of like hypertext resumes now, right? Or you're just like, check this out, check that out, that kind of thing.
So when those kinds of things, is a link that leads to nowhere or link that leads to confusing messaging about whether the organization is still around. Uh, that can be a, I think that could be a particular challenge or something you'll have to speak to in, in a job interview. So the three things that I just want to reiterate that you just said, Camille.
One that's so powerful is that there can be healing work done in the process of gathering the stories to then archive or tombstone an organization's website. That's so powerful. And I think that when, when I talk with clients about, you know, I don't do the closures work like you do, but when I, when I talk with clients about navigating to the next leadership's legacy or shifting it from Founders led to founder inspired as an example, the best opportunities for healing do come when people gather to talk about what just happened.
What did we accomplish? What did we not accomplish? Um, I think the other point that I wanted to just reiterate that you said is point people somewhere else. If you are closing your organization, uh, sunsetting it, even a merger, let your. Work speak for itself and then point to other community partners. My gosh, that's so important, especially thinking about I laughed, uh, quietly when you said if there is no more email list, do not still have the sign up box.
I hadn't thought about that, but that's so obvious now that we're talking about it. I think the other thing that's interesting, Camille, is when you were talking about letting the work speak for itself, especially when you're thinking about folks that are going on to other jobs. It makes me think about a future where, you know, when you go to a website and you look at the about us page, it's the current team.
There's no mention of past team. And I just think what beautiful opportunities there are in the future for us to think of a new way to honor the past people who have worked with and in an organization that could be really powerful. Yeah, I love that. I think kind of the full alumni list is actually quite a great idea because at that point, it's pretty sealed, you know, who work there and.
I think that's a, that is actually a great idea. I don't know that I've seen anyone do that. So I'm putting that, I'm stealing that idea. Yeah, I haven't seen it either. And the reason I was thinking about it is because I've recently been helping an organization through a founder led to founder inspired transition.
And there was a lot of talk about, you know, this person gave a lot and really helped with the foundation of this organization. And we're just going to take down the The photo and the name and the bio, like, is that right? So it just made me think of that. What, what is the biggest myth or misunderstanding as you have conversations with folks and work with organizations about endings in nonprofits, sunsets, closures, et cetera?
I think the biggest myth is that these things are always a tragedy and that they're always the result of, of. Couldn't get funding, something went wrong, all these things, and I always like to point to my favorite ending, or one of my favorite endings, which is Watershed, a project in Cambodia. We had Jeff Revell was one of our, was our first speaker when I sort of rebooted the composting and hospicing community of practice, and that group was started intentionally.
It was always ever going to be 10 years. They were clear from the beginning. They a common refrain when they were doing the work is who's going to do this when we're gone because they had a lot of programmatic areas and they spent their time in addition to running the programs looking for Locals on the ground either for profit or non profit who would take this work over and as The different programmatic areas were transferred over to those locals There was a lot of celebration around it and when other people saw the celebration They were like I want a celebration too, and I want to kind of have this opportunity So They hired people who knew ever that it was, you know, so if you're hired three years in, this is only going to last seven more years.
And so it attracted people who were excited about making a real impact within a certain time box period of time. So I love that closure. And I love that he, you know, with all the challenges that he had and with all the dissonance, you know, because there's this messaging, the nonprofit space of working yourself out of a job.
But when he and his team said, we're going to work ourselves out of a job, they're like, nobody actually really means that. And I would definitely, if people want to read more, he wrote a great, great write up of this. It's called Exit Strategies. It's in the Stanford Social Innovation Review. Really, I mean, honestly, I was like, I need to smoke a cigarette after this article.
It was so good. But yeah, I mean, I think really taking that seriously, in sort of a naive way, to be honest, but taking it seriously and saying we're going to be here for 10 years only. He's a Canadian. If Cambodian people want to continue to improve access to clean water, sanitation, sanitation, sanitation, They should be empowered.
It should be about self empowerment, self determination. I shouldn't be here as, you know, a USAID funded Canadian white man doing this. You know, let, let others do it. So you were you were talking about, like, when you talked about the exit strategy and about, um, that organization being so specific. I actually got goosebumps because I think that there's so much power insane from the get go.
This is what we're here to do. And this is about how long we're going to do it. And how incredible to then, you know, Throughout the whole time, say who's going to do this and to seek out other folks and locals. And that's really incredible. I also think about the, you're right that there's such dissonance around.
We should work ourselves out of a job. Our whole point is for this to end, but systems, um, systems often take longer than we want to imagine. And so nonprofits life span often isn't going to be around long enough to break through those systems. That's really powerful. Thank you for sharing that. What is your dream future when it comes to nonprofits and the way that industry ends things?
I would like people to begin with the end in mind. I think that's really critical. One of the things I'm trying to push forward is to get foundations thinking about this, fiscal sponsors thinking about this. As part of the work of the wind down, I offer a free hotline for anyone who's closing or in discernment around closing.
And one of the patterns I I've seen frequently is fiscally sponsored organizations that are take the leap to become a 501 C three, perhaps too early. So that education on the fiscal sponsor side of being able to say, let's talk to you about like, what's your strategy here, you're going to move out of fiscal sponsorship.
What, how are we going to be viable for a longer period of time and also meet all the federal government requirements of a 501 C3 and the reporting requirements? There's a lot of things that are obscured from the organization when they have that fiscal sponsorship around financial responsibility. So, making sure people are prepared.
To make that leap before they make that leap and have a familiarity with what working intentionally looks like. I think it's really important. And also foundations, like, working with them to think about. Their funding cycles, how they work with organizations and making. Funds available foreclosure, if it's in the natural order of things, so saying, hey, we're not going to leave you on a large, just because you're not going to do the programmatic work anymore, or that it's not viable anymore, or you just want to end.
Because you said you wanted this to be five years. We can see you through operationally and programmatically through to the end and to creating a legacy that you're proud of. And I think a lot of times people are even afraid to broach the issue with their funders because the funders are here for the outcomes and the deliverables and the quote unquote impact.
And when you say we're going to step back from that, that's when, you know, a lot of times the money dries up. So. Those are the places I really want to be, I want to have those conversations and start to get that into common parlance, like if five years from now people have a sense of that and they have tools they can point to, my work is done in a lot of ways and I can move on and pursue my million other interests.
It's interesting that you said that about funders. I think it would be incredible to have funders. on purpose and intentionally provide funds for closing. I think that would change so much of the narrative that we have around the fear that comes from thinking about what happens if we go away. Um, and so if you are, if you happen to be a funder and you're listening, I would encourage you to get in touch with Camille and start talking with Camille about how can we do this?
Shift the language, even it could be in our grant applications. How powerful that be in grant applications to say, have you considered or do you have a plan in place for the end of your organization, not as a eligibility for the grant, but just to start gathering some information or I'm even thinking of sending out to your current grantees a survey around okay, great.
Thank you. Thanks How ready you are to, for example, navigate workplace transitions and how ready are you to talk about closures. That's really good. The other thing that came to mind when you were talking, Camille, is I wonder about who's ultimately not responsible, maybe, but who holds the highest level of decision making that you found around closures?
Is it Are there opportunities where staff has come together to bring this up? Is it an executive director kind of starting point where it comes from? Is it board of directors, community focus? Like where does the conversation about closures often start in your experience? That's interesting. It really varies.
I don't think it's usually staff. We just have that. Typically we have like a strong, strong link between people's wellbeing, their ability to cover their bills and keeping this thing alive by Any means necessary. So I think it's hard for staff to be able to have Enough security to bring these to the fore The people i've been talking to have been executive directors and and um also board members um, there's one foundation whitman foundation and I talked to One of the co eds started out as ed and then he he moved into a co leadership role.
His name is john esterly and he You He talked about floating this idea extremely early and starting to have like a whisper campaign about spending down and shutting down the foundation. So that was really encouraging that he just, when they had like offsides gatherings, the board and staff, he'd be like, what if we shut this down sometime, you know, and started to socialize that idea year after year until it gained, gained some momentum.
But I've never seen like a group of staff, except for, I guess. You know what it is, and I outlined this in, I think I have a blog post somewhere on Windown, which is just about, you know, seven reasons why, you know, common reasons I've seen why non profits closed down. And one of them is infighting discord, that kind of thing.
And there was a group called Campaign Generation, something like that, in the UK. And they, everything kind of came to a head around issues of class, race, and leadership. And the staff pushed forward a lot of sort of facilitated conversations around this to see if they could do some power shifts in the group.
And I think when those came to nothing, it was time really to close down. So I wouldn't say the staff comes together and it's like, let's close this down. The staff usually comes together to say there's a persistent issue of sexism, racism, classism, homophobia. You know, whatever it is, just overall power, inequality, and empower dynamics.
And then those conversations just push forward and forward, and they don't get resolved in a way that's yeah. And they don't get resolved in a way that's satisfactory to the employees. You know, you start to lose staff, you start to lose morale, uh, repute, you take a reputational hit and it becomes pretty obvious that the organization's on the ropes.
And so it's just sort of a logical conclusion in most cases. Um, you know, and I've spoken to actually. That period of COVID and quote, unquote, racial reckoning was a big time for organizations where they would say, they would look and be like, wait, why do we have those white leadership? We're serving, um, you know, primarily people of color.
How can we shift these power dynamics? And the inability to do so was definitely, um, I guess, big, um, like a crack of doubt, we call it, you know, like that sort of thing that just kind of like, Kept leaning into it, and as people laughed, people would write like very public letters or call the organization out on social media, that kind of stuff.
I think the viability or organization really was called into question. And I think about, you know, social media definitely has, I think, a lot to play in where we might see staff having a little bit more say or contributing to a closure. But then it goes back to what you said early on, that not every closure has to be a tragedy.
And so I think that's. Really important as you're listening, if you are a decision maker by title, so a board member or a, an ED or CEO, pay attention to that, because if you've got a retention issue based on some insular internal problems that need to be addressed, it could lead to Uh, to a quicker closure than you might be planning for, and I will find a link to your, um, blog, your article, Camille, about the seven reasons, and we'll get that linked in.
Is there, I have two questions left for you, but is there anything about your work, about closures, about hospice work inside of organizations that I haven't asked you that you'd like to make sure to share? One thing that I, that came up for me the other day, we were having another community of practice gathering is just the idea that, you know, Part of me, it's self interest of like, yes, hire me to do this work.
But I think there's an importance in someone external to the organization, holding the space for these kind of conversations and also being able to have conversations confidentially. While not working within the context, our session yesterday was with Katarina Moreno, who I want to introduce you to actually Naomi, who is a serial interim for nonprofits and has, you know, Participated in at least 3 closures and her ability to hold the work of closing the organization down and taking the ire of the staff and all the opinions of the staff and handling the board her ability to do that and also try and hold a space for people to grieve and vent.
Like, it's just the work of. You know, that that 1st, group of work that critical, like, I just have to manage the day to day of this organization and manage us out of the storm. Like, it just, it took up all their capacities. The ability to also hold other people's emotions and then also kind of find a place to put her emotions.
It's too much. So, I think there is a value in having an outside role. An outside person here who even if at all, just is like a physical representation or a time on the calendar and a cadence where. Now it's closure o'clock, you know, as opposed to business as usual, because most people who are closing still are managing their stakeholders and their public at large to the end.
So being able to say, okay, every Monday at one o'clock or whatever Camille comes in. And that's when we talk about our closure, as opposed to it getting kind of swept under the rug by an internal person. I know it's a luxury to be able to do this, but again, that goes back to that larger question of.
Finding the funds to support this and also If you have a sense you might need to close like really start way earlier, you know Don't run all the way to the edge of the cliff and then say oh god, we could have used help Really engaging a person like me much earlier and seeing if, even if it's a skinny way, like we can work together.
The other thing I think that's important when you say, you know, it's a luxury is I think that when you know this, I know this, there's some other people in this work that know this. If you don't close in a way, or if you don't leave in a way that honors and prioritizes your, your rest and your wellness, you will be paying for that for years post closure or years post leaving.
And so I think that we need to also shift that narrative around. It is that important and it shouldn't be a luxury. It should be a wellness priority for our staff, for the organization itself. Um, I also love that you talked about, um, Kateryn Moreno, Kateryn, Kateryn Moreno, Katerina, Katerina, because I think that one of the things that I find interesting as I serve as interim is there's, Usually not space for a board to hear that closure should be on the table.
And so when I bring that up, I do an organizational assessment or an audit. And it's always one of the things. Is this still an organization that needs to be in existence? Should we talk about a merger or a partnership? Or should we go forward with a merger? 2. 0, for example. And it's so uncomfortable.
Board of directors do not want to hear that. And, and maybe it's just about they're not used to being, um, having that be a conversation. So I'm so thankful for the work that you're doing, um, because one by one, one conversation at a time, one community of practice gathering at a time, it's helping to normalize, um, that closures are necessary and that they can be done, um, With, with ease, with some grace and some love.
So I thank you for your work. What three words would you use to describe your own personal relationship to change and transition? I don't know. Maybe I'll just, I like alliteration. So I'll say resistance, realization, and release. That's good. What does leaving well mean to you? Yeah. I mean, leaving well to me means intact relationships.
It means, yeah, the door is still being open in a way for. Return, or collaboration, or input, that kind of thing. I would also say, like, rest afterwards. Like, any chance I get when I can leave something and just be like, I'm not going to take on this kind of stuff for a while, I think is also really good. Not having to, like, jump into whatever is next.
So yeah, I think like, and like a sense of like, pride. And, and not much regret. I think letting go of that kind of stuff. I've definitely stepped away from things and then been so impressed by what the people that come afterwards have done, like things that would have never occurred to me. I, just a quick example at my church, we'd started a hunger program and I moved on, not from the church, but from the hunger program.
And they brought someone in who just was like full of ideas. And the people that came in were not parishioners, like they didn't attend our church at all. I don't know where these people came from. My pastor said, when our church is bigger, because this is a tiny church, when our church is bigger we can do all these things.
And I said, if we don't do all these things, it won't get bigger. And so it was really amazing to feel like we took a leap as a really small group of people, And then all these people, people that aren't religious, don't believe in God, all these kind of things came because the mission of feeding. Hungry people, needy families in our community was really compelling to them and the idea of expanding it out to help people with paperwork with the government and with feminine hygiene project products and all that kind of stuff that I never would have thought of.
So I was like, I got to step back more. Once I saw that, I was like, I got to step out of the way more and really see who emerges to fill that gap. I love that. And that goes back to when you were talking about watershed, about finding other people locally or other people that have the experience. I, I have had moments in my life where I'm, I'm typically a hand raiser.
I'll say I'll do it because I want to, I want something to be done. Yeah. Yeah. And then you realize like, Oh, if I sit on my hands for just a minute, someone else who may be way more equipped than I do, or fresher ideas or more energy, uh, we'll be able to raise their hands. So yeah, that's good. Camille, thank you so much.
We will have links on where to find you. We'll make sure that your hotline information is in the show notes. I appreciate you, like I said, for all the work that you're doing and how you're contributing to changing the conversation around non profit endings and closures. Thank you. Thank you. If you've not yet taken the Workplace Transition Archetype quiz to discover your natural relationship to change and transition, you can do that at NaomiHadaway.
com forward slash quiz. To learn more about living well and how you can implement and embed the framework and culture in your own life and workplace, visit NaomiHadaway. com. It's time for each of us to look ourselves in the mirror and finally admit we are playing a powerful role in the system. We can either exist outside of our power or choose to decide to shift culture and to create transformation.
Until next time, I'm your host, Naomi Hadaway, and you've been listening to Leaving Well, a navigation guide for workplace transitions.