I have long had ‘Publish a piece in NonProfit Quarterly’ on my bucket list. Even before I started The Wind Down, I felt myself drawn to this fantastic publication and the work of its many editors, and I wanted to be part of the conversation!
So, it was a great honor when I was contacted by one of its editors — a lovely person, who I happened meet and work with over 25 years ago! — to say a few words about the art, science, and magick of closing things down.
Since April 2024, I have been the facilitator of the Practices of Composting and Hospicing community. Next month, we will be joined by the team behind the Tending To Endings card deck, a tool to help groups and individuals design and have better endings. The cards are inspired by concepts from nature and are absolutely beautiful and inspired.
These past few weeks have been rife with the abrupt shuttering of government programs, firings of thousands of government and nonprofit employees, and the long tail. knock-on effect on everyone from aid program employees to dock workers and rural farmers. The topic of endings has been front of mind across the globe, so people have been reaching out to basically say, “Wow, everything is closing! This must be your moment!”
It is so very much NOT my moment.
This is basically everything I don’t ever want to see happen. Cruel, callous ejections of people that THE WORLD STILL NEEDS — all while we have more than enough money to keep them working — is nothing like what I prescribe or want to occur.
Now, don’t get me wrong. I am a person who stands very far to the left — miles away from the left of the left of congressional chambers, and no great fan of the state or representative of representative democracies. But you know what I detest more than any of that? EVIL. My opposition to humans bringing misery to other humans or the planet solely for their financial and political gain (or because they think it is a fun game!) is at the heart of my political convictions and also at the heart of the work I am continuing to develop here at The Wind Down.
In a previous post, I wrote about what is lost when things close down poorly. Just to recap, that list includes:
knowledge loss
breakdown of relationships – external and internal
reputational damage
leaving a service vacuum
loss of breadcrumbs/traceability back to the work you did and the people that did it.
In yet another post, I also wrote about reasons why projects and organizations close. Having to close suddenly usually happens when an organization suddenly runs out of money, finds itself in a dangerous situation such as an actual warzone, or when the/their work finds itself in say a hailstorm of controversy. While the institutions are under attack, I’d say it’s not quite the same as a warzone situation. An artificial warzone has been created, which, ironically, is now endangering the lives and well-being of many people in actual zones of war, disease, and famine and likely contributing to their increase.
Needless to say, these closures represent the kind that are not prominent on my BINGO card. It is just about the nightmare scenario of total failure and loss, and the consequences are likely to reverberate for years — if not decades — to come.
“I’ve learned that people will forget what you said, people will forget what you did, but people will never forget how you made them feel.” – Maya Angelou
So what do I recommend when you are in the absolute worst case closure?
Well, first of all, let me say that I am IN NO WAY implying that the people in this situation have any responsibility to do anything more, this is just if people are at loose ends and want to explore how to maybe make a splash of lemonade out of lemons. Feel free to do nothing but plot revenge, if you wish. Lord knows these devils deserve it. But for anyone who wants to continue on with me and this thought experiment. Here are a few ideas*:
SCENARIO 1: THINGS ARE BAD, BUT YOU STILL HAVE YOUR JOB.
If you can, back up contacts, important (non-proprietary) documents, and start taking some of your desk stuff (if you work onsite) home. Also, I know a lot of people end up using the work computer as the personal computer, but if they demand you give it back you will lose a lot. So, look into getting your own device or backing up bookmarks and whatever else you need to the cloud. Get phone numbers of some of your co-workers and give them yours.
Ask around for names of labor lawyers now just in case. If you can get a free consult just so you know your rights, take it!
SCENARIO 2: THINGS ARE BAD, AND YOU’VE BEEN TOLD YOU MAY SOON BE LET GO.
See above and do everything listed there. Take home EVERYTHING (if you work onsite). Wipe your computer of anything personal NOW.
SCENARIO 3: YOU’VE BEEN LET GO BUT THE ORGANIZATION IS STILL OPEN
If you weren’t able to get your physical things, first try to reach out officially to see if they can put your things in the mail. It sucks because they may miss stuff, but it can be better than nothing. If they refuse, you can see about getting a lawyer to write an official letter. If you can, hold off on signing your separation paperwork until you got your property returned.
As for documents, you might try reaching out to a trusted co-worker via phone, email, or LinkedIn. DO NOT write them on work email. You might jeopardize their job and make things worse for both of you. If that person can safelyget documents to you, they should download and send via a non-email address. Sharing via GDRive or some other work system is NOT THE MOVE.
SCENARIO 4: YOU’VE BEEN LET GO, EVERYONE WAS LET GO, AND THE WHOLE ORG IS CLOSED.
Find the others and get creative. If there is legal action you can take, take it! I particularly love that the former employees of (now-shuttered) 18F swarmed on a website the day they were fired and had it stood up in under 4 hours.
The other day, I attended a really beautiful, early morning, grief circle hosted by Fearless Project for people that worked with and through USAID. It was valuable for people to just see each other and not feel alone. I heard so much confusion, loss, fear, grief, love, and resilience. People are disappointed and heartbroken, but no one was talking about giving up or going corporate. However, I was moved by how much they still wanna find a way to do the do-goodery stuff that drew them to charity and public service.
The new 18F website created by former staffers
What did I miss? What have you seen that has been effective in salvaging a bad ending?? Lemme know in the comments!!
*GIANT DISCLAIMER: I am not a lawyer. None of this is legal advice. I HIGHLY recommend you get a lawyer if you are in a bad situation in any organization. Lawyers have saved my professional bacon many times, and I can’t suggest enough that you work with them when things get (or even feel!) bad.
I was honored to speak with my dear pal Naomi Hattaway on her fantastic Leaving Well podcast. It’s relatively short and I hope you will listen! The link is here, and it is available on ALL the places where one can find podcasts.
I did not expect to be here at the end of the year. At the beginning of this year, I had (yes) purchased this domain and (yes) set up this website and (also yes) started offering the hotline. However, in the back of mind I figured I would end up back at a tech job, and this whole thing would be something I’d maybe do in my free time on evenings and weekends. Instead, I am here in December having spent the whole year working almost entirely on growing this business.
Before the year is out, I wanted to share a little of what I have learned, what I have achieved, what I have struggled with, and also show gratitude for the people that have showed me a lot of care and support over this very unanticipated year.
Listening Is The Main Thing
Product-Market Fit unlocked! People understand and value what I am offering. I have talked to a LOT of new people this year and everyone I talk to immediately understands the value of making endings better, hospicing what isn’t working, and gathering up the learnings and skills and people to nurture whatever comes next.
The free “hotline” calls started out as a way to validate my idea while also exploring how I could be of help to people in the sort of mission-driven organizations I would like to service. I have been bowled over by people’s willingness to be extremely raw and honest with me about their closure journey, and they have been grateful for someone neutral and non-judgmental to lend a listening ear. For those who don’t know me personally, I can be a bit of a chatterbox, so these calls have been an opportunity to train deeper listening and just be present.
People aren’t looking for me to fix things or offer solutions or point out silver linings, they mostly just want to be heard. Many times people have told me that the “nuts and bolts” of shutting down are “the easy part”; they reach out to me — a total stranger! — because they don’t have anywhere to go with all the feelings, anxieties, regrets, resentments and sometimes even sighs of relief that might be kicking up. Sure, if I can point out some things they might want to consider, all the better, but the listening is the thing.
The Field Doesn’t Have This Figured Out
Part of my hope in starting The Wind Down was that I would find out if anybody else had the challenge of “delivering better organizational endings” all figured out. Over the year, primarily through facilitating the Compost and Hospicing community of practice, I have been blessed to connect with so many BRILLIANT souls who all have one piece of the puzzle, but I — so far — only have a few peers who are holding civil society closures as their actual work day in and day out, and the great majority of them are across the pond in the UK rather than here in the US.
I’ve even had conversations with seasoned folks who’ve spent their entire careers in civil society and here they are asking little old me for suggestions and advice! This is all mostly unexcavated terrain! No one really knows much of anything! We are all slowly fashioning it together!
As political and socioeconomic climates continue their twists and turns alongside (and even hastening!) environmental collapse, I can only imagine this work becoming more urgent and hopefully better funded. As Ginie Servant-Miklos says in her new book Pedagogies of Collapse,
“This leaves us with two alternatives, in my view: deliberately dismantle thermo-industrial civilization now or let it collapse in an uncontrolled manner later. The temporal distance between the two choices is probably only a matter of one or two decades…The reason we are advocating for controlled degrowth is because the alternatives are much, much worse.” – Ginie Servant-Miklos
Sunsetting At Scale
I started the year thinking I might eventually want to work one-to-one with nonprofit teams who are in the process of closing, but the more I connected with leaders carrying out and/or contemplating closure, the more I began to feel like the real work is to work with groups of groups, speak at conferences, engage social enterprise incubators and accelerators, and maybe even write a book?
I am not saying I would flat-out refuse to work directly with just one group, but the issue feels urgent and one-to-one feels too slow. Some days, I feel like I want to run out and stop people before they start again! Or at least warn them to not get starry eyed about “new shiny”.
As Lee Vinsel and Andy Russell said in their pivotal Aeon article Hail The Maintainers
“In formal economic terms, ‘innovation’ involves the diffusion of new things and practices. The term is completely agnostic about whether these things and practices are good. Crack cocaine, for example, was a highly innovative product in the 1980s, which involved a great deal of entrepreneurship (called ‘dealing’) and generated lots of revenue. Innovation! Entrepreneurship! Perhaps this point is cynical, but it draws our attention to a perverse reality: contemporary discourse treats innovation as a positive value in itself, when it is not.” – Lee Vinsel and Andy Russell
Ushering The New AND The Old
When I threw myself into this work, I just sorta blanketed the spaces where my various communities hang out. Mailing lists, Slacks, Mastodon, LinkedIn, and also lots of random, cold emails to people who I admired and hoped I could talk to. I have been bowled over by how responsive so many total strangers were.
I have meet soooooo many super fantabulous people this year; some have become actual factual friends, while others who have just kept incessantly bringing my name up to people in conversations. Along the way, I have also had to (in true Wind Down-fashion) close some doors. Since I spent the first quarter of the year thinking I was going back to work in tech, I was juggling a lot of identities and jumping back and forth over a pretty “high fence”, but once I decided The Wind Down is what I do now, I knew I had to duck out of my “old life”. It was with a heavy heart that I logged out of some of those Slacks and unsubscribed from a bunch of those mailing lists. I also unfollowed many, many old tech colleagues and replaced them with people who were working in facilitation or in the impact space or at foundations. I also — just last week — loaded up over a decade’s worth of books I’d collected from my old field and put them, on-by-one in a local free library box down the street. I hope other people enjoy them! I now have space on my shelf for all the nerdy books I have on death and endings, ha!
I was going to start naming the names of the people I am grateful to/for here, but I am afraid I will forget someone and start kicking myself. I feel like the real ones all know and have been profusely thanked. The one thing I will mention is that I am a member of IMMA Collective, a global community of mission-driven solopreneurs and they have been in my corner all year long. They are the people I go to first with all my challenges, frustrations, confusion, and wins. It has so amazing to be building my own business but not even for a second feel alone. Thanks to Lilli and everyone who makes IMMA IMMA. #fuckitmode !
