Sunlight on Sunsets

Attitudes About Nonprofit Closure and Perpetuity

Foundations’ closing their doors after spending down their endowments with forethought and care (“sunsetting”) – even if their missions aren’t fully realized – is now firmly ensconced as a valid strategic option in philanthropy.

The same isn’t true for nonprofits. Far from being a strategic option, nonprofit closure is often seen as failure, laden with shame for leaders and boards. Intellectual arguments for nonprofit closure as a natural organizational life-stage do not translate into closure being a phase necessitating or worthy of philanthropic investment, in contrast to launch and scaling.

Through structured interviews with 50 leaders in philanthropy and nonprofits, the Sunlight on Sunsets project is surfacing prevalent assumptions and attitudes about nonprofit closure and nonprofit perpetuity, and how these attitudes affect decisions and behaviors in the social impact sector. The outcomes will inform questions for further research, and the WellLeaving Project’s work more broadly.

This recorded “works in progress” presentation at Indiana University’s Lilly Family School of Philanthropy gives a peek at what’s emerging from these interviews.