Category: the rest

Hey you!

At the beginning of every month. I feel so confident that I am going to churn out So. Many. Issues. of CR, and then I look up and it is almost the end of the month, and I have only done one. A friend told me not to beat myself up; she thinks the infrequency is good. In a world of 20 kajillion Substacks and deals! deals! deals! clogging our inboxes, a newsletter that comes ehhhhhhvery once in a while sticks out. It’s a rare treat! I’m trying to look at it that way.

In the meantime, I want you to know that my infrequency is due in large part to the fact that I am out here doing the work of delivering care-ful closures. I am trying to reason with angry members, soothe the nerves of well-meaning nonprofit CEOs, make sure we are giving the right level of info to trusted board members, help employees think through their Next Things, and the list goes on and on….plates are spinning y’all! But it’s all for you and this movement of trying to do endings well. I am gaining so many wild and wooly experiences that will all feed into newsletters and blogposts and other words that I am so grateful I get to share with you and you and you!

Thanks for reading this….whenever it gets to ya!

Here are the links:

1) Alaska LGBTQ clinic closure highlights queer care crisis

In May 2026, just shy of its “golden” 50th anniversary, Identity Alaska announced it was shuttering. Among the reasons listed were financial strain and employee burnout. Draconian laws at the state level coupled with drastic Medicaid cuts in Washington have created a situation in the US, where health centers serving this beleaguered community have found it increasingly difficult to keep their doors open.

2) UK community services org hits 40 and falters

Since 1986, Gatehouse, which is based in Bury St Edmunds, in Suffolk has provided such varied services as a food bank, furniture reuse project, community cafe, social supermarket and overall wellbeing support. Despite an effort to raise operating funds off the back of the anniversary celebration, they did not reach their goal. They’ve given themselves until the end of August to tie up loose ends and find other local groups to carry forward some of their work.

3) Community museum calls it quits but keeps swimming program afloat

Stages of Freedom is a Providence, Rhode Island-based nonprofit known for its downtown museum and bookstore that shared the stories of Rhode Island’s African American community and also offered youth programming such as its free swim empowerment program. After their building was sold to a new owner, they were forced to shut down their physical location and pivot their focus.

However, its organizers — longtime local activists — say they are undeterred by the loss. They plan to double-down on their commitment to uplifting Black Rhode Island and ensuring that local black youth (who are statistically 76 times more likely to drown in a pool than white children of the same age!!) learn to swim.

4) Funds no longer flow for menstrual product provider

Helping Women Period in Lansing, Michigan was created to raise awareness about the phenomenon known as “period poverty”, which means a female-bodied person has inadequate access to either sanitation, products, time, and education to deal with their menstrual period. Since 2015, the group was able to distribute more than nine million products It also pushed Michigan to repeal its tampon tax in 2021 and funded a pilot program to provide free period products in schools, among other accomplishments. While leaders say the need is still great, the group was forced to sunset operations due a large drop in funding and donations.

5) Beloved Hong Kong bookstore enters its final chapter

As Chinese government policies reach further into Hong Kong, cultural actors are being forced to make hard decisions. When Elmbook in Mong Kok was informed that it would not be able to participate in the Hong Kong Book Fair this year, due to “imported Taiwanese books”, the shop’s owners realized the end was near. While an exact date has yet to be shared, their lease will be up in April 2027.

6) A Season for Solidarity

“This has not been an easy decision. We badly need a better food system. For many years we persisted despite organizational challenges because of our dedication to the mission of AJP: to transform the food system by seeking justice, fairness, and empowerment for everyone from farm to retail.

However, after an extended process to evaluate our programs and future possibilities for our work, we still lack the resources to keep going. While we take this step of closure with heavy hearts, we also know that many of our friends and collaborators are doing vital, beautiful work to transform our food and agriculture system and win a better world for our people. We trust that this transition for AJP will make space for new voices, new visions, and new projects to emerge that continue the important work of fighting for the people of the land.”

I am completely bowled over by how much loving care the Agricultural Justice Project put into signing off from the food justice fight. Their sunset report is an absolute masterclass on how to depart while leaving breadcrumbs and planting seeds for the future!

7) Signing Off with Gratitude and Joy

“It is a gift to have four years to end well. Instead of fading into our sunset, we decided to pursue a more ambitious goal: to embed the principles and practices of high-quality, equity-centered listening into key philanthropy infrastructure partners and make funder listening to shift power standard practice in the sector.”

A fantastic announcement from the Fund For Shared Insight. I love how loving, orderly, intentional endings are coming more and more into the fore!

Yours in the end,
Camille

In some cases, closure comes at you fast. As I’ve covered in other articles, there are many reasons why an organization or project will close, and not all of them are related to factors that you can control.

However, in many other cases, the writing is on the wall and on the screen…and on the faces of your donors and clients and political leaders, well in advance. In those sorts of cases, I encourage organizations to announce these things earlier. Like this week or today or right now. But In many cases, people are worried about crafting one perfect message that explains everything and perfectly encapsulates everything that has happened and everything you feel. .

You do not have to do this. I spend a good amount of time looking at closure messaging (I even have a virtual museum where I collect them!), and I think there is a better way, folks. Rather than wracking your brain to formulate a message to encapsulate it all, here are some ideas for what you can do instead.

1. Signpost Transition

If you are blessed with time — and to my mind, this means anything more than 6 months — you can already start to signal transition. It is totally fine to telegraph that your organization is in a time of change. In fact, this particular sociopolitical moment has given you a perfect context and backdrop for no one on the planet to be surprised that you are taking stock of your situation. It doesn’t always spell certain doom.

So using language like “time of transition”, “time of reflection”, or any of the kind of chrysalis/pause language that I’ve shared about in this post are a good starting point for signposting an impending Big Change. Make people aware via whatever communication channels are most appropriate for your group.

2. Announce the decision

Once you are fairly certain you are closing, you can announce that you have made that decision You do not have to provide any information about your timeline or plans at this point — you might not have those yet. Just let people know that the End Is Nigh!

3. Share Details

Once you’ve landed on an ending date and a timeline, share what feels appropriate. If certain resources or efforts will be wrapping up at certain times, give people a heads up so they can make other arrangements. If you have a partner or other recommended group that might be able to fill the gap, don’t hesitate to send people that way.

I also love when organizations take us along on their closure journey and share the good, the bad, and the ugly. If you *can* do that, people (and by “people” I mostly mean me) will love you for it.

4. Say goodbye

Once you’ve done all the above and are ready to shut the doors, THIS is where you can drop your teary, goodbye letter. This is the place where you can thank God, your mama, and the Academy. This is where you can share your hopes and dreams for the future of your community and your field. This is also the time to tombstone your digital communications channels.

….And/but/also

During the time that you are issuing all the above types of comms out to your people and the wider sector, you can — and should! — continue sharing out other updates to your community. If cool stuff is still happening, if certain staff members are transitioning out (or even in!) that is still worth sharing in the normal way you would. Just make sure that the language stays consistent and you don’t give anyone the sense that this somehow means you aren’t closing after all!

Also, once you do the Last Goodbye, that should be it. No more announcements. That is it the end. Bravo! Take a bow. Curtain drop.

My word, how is it 2026 already? It feels like just yesterday, I was a little babe in the woods pestering everyone I know about whether there was someone — anyone — out there thinking about how to do endings well in civil society. And here we are, two years into this project and every morning I wake up and the response keeps being, “The work is still on you, boo, it’s on YOU!”

Fortunately this past year was another amazing one of continuing to find the scattered others out there who are working on wind downs, sharing about shutterings, and seeking out sponsors for sunsets. So I wanted to take a second to capture a brief rundown of The Wind Down’s second year of operations — the highlights, the low points, and what is on the horizon for this bright year 3 of its life.

The Bright Spots

The People

As mentioned, I met so many fantastic people this last year. Between hosting the monthly community sessions and attending the fantastic Deceleration Assembly, I met and got to deepen relationships with so many fantastic people who incepted new ideas into my gray matter and pointed me in cool new directions or even just went along with me on wild goose chases and flights of fancy (I am looking at you, Tess!).

Some of the folks I am most grateful for are all the fantastic folks in the Slack community, Jessica Meyerson at Educopia, Katya Fels Smyth (who fearlessly shuttered Full Frame Initiative this year), Naomi Hattaway, and the intrepid Kate Harris, Nonprofit Merger Mistress Supreme, who saw my museum and decided to close hers. If you’re looking at this and thinking I should have named you here…I did! It is in *invisible ink*. Yup.

I am also grateful for the leaders who contacted the hotline or worked with me on longer engagements,shared so openly. and insisted that I (finally!) start charging for this work. I wasn’t sure when the time would be right, but folks just told me. They were like, “We are giving you money, and you can’t stop us.” Thank you for helping me put a dollar (or pound or euro!) amount on this work.

The Places

In 2025, I was able to take my work and ideas to the streets. In June, I was honored to sit on a panel for the great Women’s Leadership Council. In September, I facilitated a session at The Sidebar event that the Skoll Foundation supports on the sidelines of the United Nations General Assembly.

Then in October, I hopped across the ocean to Birmingham, UK for The Deceleration Assembly hosted by our UK frenz at The Decelerator. I was stoked that my good (above-mentioned) pal Katya was there too. It was way too short but marvelous (my full review is here). I love being out and about amongst the people!

The Things

When I started working on The Wind Down, I jotted down a dream list of publications I would love to write for or be written about in: Stanford Social Innovation Review, Devex, and Nonprofit Quarterly. This year, I was in ALL THREE! What a thrill. I was even mentioned in Chronicle of Philanthropy. Look at me, ma, I;m in the papers!

Last year, I invested in my tech stack, upping my game to use bespoke tools like Harvest (for invoicing and time tracking), Bigin (for tracking opportunities), and also moving over to Mailpoet for my newsletter. I also totally overhauled this here website. Hat tip to the great Joshua Christman for the website and the snazzy logo and the unwavering friendship and support (hire this man, y’all!)

The Hard Knocks

The Money

This was probably one of the toughest years for me, financially. I just didn’t make much money on this and this was pretty much all I worked on last year. I had hoped my engagement with Joseph Rowntree Foundation would grow into something more fruitful, but they cut me and the Community of Practice project they were supporting off in February. It was a hard pill to swallow, but I soldiered on.

Previous to this project, I spent more than a decade in tech where salaries and benefits and snacks (!) are a-flowin. The precarity in the social sector has been hard to wrap my mind around and I refuse to get used to it.However, I did have to accept it last year and do my best to live a full life on my savings and resourcefulness.

The Supportive Community

In 2024, the launch of TWD was coupled with the launch of another group called the IMMA Collective, an organization founded to give social impact solopreneurs a sense of community, support, and accountability. Being a part of IMMA gave me colleagues, cheerleaders, and people to share resources with and bounce ideas off of. Unfortunately, in April of 2025, I hit a wall with the group and couldn’t work things out. I stand by my decision to leave, but I also ache for the community I lost. I am a member of many groups, but none of them have (so far) filled the hole that IMMA left in my days and my heart.

Hopes For Year Three

I took my lumps this last year but also had some solid wins to build on. Moving into this new year, I am already entertaining some interesting opportunities.

• Speaking – I have two speaking slots already, but I did have to turn another cool looking one down because they didn’t offer much in the way of travel support. Like I said, I love the peoples and the streets, so I will be out amongst them one way or another
• Writing – I hope to post more here on this blog and also continue writing for civil society publications (and even publications not in this sector!). In a move that hearkens back to my punk rock youth, I am exploring doing some zines with a friend. I look forward to sharing those with you and leaving them at conferences and libraries and stuff!
  
  Hit me up if you wanna do in-person or virtual writing sessions. I need accountability partners!
• Video – I started experimenting with video last year and still really believe the format has potential for spreading the word I am hoping to mess around with shorter form, especially if I can find some open source/non-algo-driven platforms to post them to.
• Get paid or grow increasingly exasperated trying – Nothing more to really say here. I am gonna keep putting myself out there both for closures work and also non-closures paying work.

What about you? How did it all turn out last year? What are you up to this year? I wanna know!

I am just coming off a rejuvenating and rewarding time in the magical, revitalized industrial hub that is Birmingham, England. I was there for The Deceleration Assembly, the first ever (as far as I know!) gathering of practitioners working on endings and closures in civil society.

After almost 2 whole years of doing this work full-time, it was amazing to be live and in-person with so many others who also tackle endings and think very deeply about how it could be done better. From the moment I walked into the pre-conference gathering, held at a lovely pizza place in central Birmingham, I knew I was with my people. Conversation flowed, pizza was nibbled, heads nodded, and lots of knowing laughter spilled out.

The conference itself was held in the Old Library, a beautiful (if drafty), refurbished, old building that I imagine used to — per its name — be a library. After some brief icebreakers, we were joined by two marvelous speakers from the adjacent field of grief and funereal care. Then after lunch, we did smaller group sessions focused on themes and tools.

My brain is still buzzing with what I heard and I am touched with how raw and honest the conversations were, even over some tricky social and cultural divides. However, I’ve boiled my thoughts down into 4 main takeaways:

Community Building Matters

I went into this event thinking that I wanted to maybe wind down the community of practice. The work is no longer being funded and sometimes it feels like there is only a trickle of engagement in the Slack or at the gatherings. However, the feeling I got from the assembly is that gathering is so very important, community is so important. People need a place for sharing resources, job opportunities, challenges, and even epiphanies with each other.

The Decelerator folks have a large reach but I, sadly, don’t see them building community beyond this conference. How can we bridge the gap? I’m trying to nudge them a bit, but I am also open to what else can be done to meet the obvious need. I still do very much called to be a convener and connector in this space. Someone give me the money to keep doing it, please!

“The feeling I got from the assembly is that gathering is so very important, community is so important. People need a place for sharing resources, job opportunities, challenges, and even epiphanies with each other.”

Endings – Professional vs. Practice?

I also came away wondering whether this needs to be consultant work. The lion’s share of the attendees were independent consultants (as am I) and I came away so curious how people were sustaining themselves and whether many of us were just competing over ever-shrinking pots of funding. I also wondered whether coming in as strangers for what should be deeply relational work was the way to approach this.

Should endings, succession planning, transition management ultimately be skillsets and toolboxes held by operational leaders or should outside specialists be marched or is it a both/and? I fully recognize the valued of shaking up the energy by bringing in the occasional outside facilitator, but should the intimate work of closure be held by such an outside entity? I am not so sure.

Thriving and Surviving while Ending

This takeaway is, again, brought to you by my deep concern and suspicion of consultant work. I’m concerned about the sustainability of this work if the people doing it are not well taken care of. I’m feeling it deeply for myself right now, not only financially but also interpersonally. I’d love to have more vulnerable and brave conversations about mutual aid and community care. This can’t just be work people do because they have a spouse with a stable job or have otherwise lucked out financially. Too many valuable voices and talents will be left out if we stay such a narrow group.

One of the things that struck me so deeply was when grief influencer Amber Jeffrey shared that she felt lonely in her work. This is also real. There is a conversation about coming and staying out of isolation when we are doing such tender work. I know The Decelerator has a supervisor to hold them through their challenges. We need to keep exploring such models.

Rooted in Faith, Spirituality, Culture

My particular practice is rooted in my own spirituality, my cultural traditions, and other cultural traditions that I try to respectfully adapt to meet the needs of the communities I work with. I came away from the gathering interested in connecting with more people who are interested in or actively elevating the role of ritual in endings.

Thanks again to The Decelerator Team for organizing a great assembly and big thanks to the city of Birmingham for being so dang charming. I am super smitten!

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.

Curious?

Join us!