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For years, the nonprofit sector and leaders have talked about a coming leadership transition. Baby Boomers would retire. Long-tenured CEOs would step aside. A new generation of leaders would move into the top jobs.
The future KEES has been discussing with Boards, CEOs, and sector leaders for the past several years has arrived.
The challenge facing nonprofits today is not simply CEO burnout, retirement, or turnover. It is the convergence of all three at a time when organizations are also confronting increased demand, financial uncertainty, workforce challenges, and a leadership pipeline that may not be prepared, or even interested, in assuming the roles being vacated.
For organizations led by long-tenured founders and Founder-like leaders, the transition can be even more consequential. These leaders may carry decades of institutional knowledge, relationships, culture, and organizational history that are deeply intertwined with the organization itself.
This is becoming an existential leadership challenge for the nonprofit sector.
The pressure on today’s leaders is real
The Center for Effective Philanthropy’s State of Nonprofits 2026 provides perhaps the clearest warning.
In 2025, 29% of nonprofit CEOs reported that their own burnout was “very much” a concern. In 2026, that number jumped to 46%, an astonishing 17-percentage-point increase in a single year. Twenty-five percent now say burnout is significantly affecting their staff as well. (The Center for Effective Philanthropy)
The conditions surrounding that burnout are equally concerning. Nearly three-quarters of leaders surveyed by CEP reported increased demand for their organizations’ services since January 2025, while almost 60% said foundation grants had become harder to secure. (Benzinga). To add to this, KEES has observed an enormous transition in Board leadership, so governing bodies are operating without the history or knowledge that once guided significant change. This loss of institutional memory can be particularly significant in organizations navigating a Founder or Founder-like leadership transition, where history, relationships, and culture may be concentrated in one individual.
Nonprofit leaders have always operated in environments where resources are constrained, and expectations are high. What’s different today is the accumulation of pressures—and how long leaders and their teams have been carrying them.
And leaders are leaving
The leadership turnover numbers reinforce the concern.
A 2026 analysis of nearly 30,000 nonprofit organizations using IRS Form 990 data found CEO turnover increased from 13.3% in 2020–21 to 16.4% in 2023–24, a 23% increase in four years. Healthcare nonprofits experienced an even higher turnover rate of approximately 18%.
Then there is the longer-term demographic reality. Research estimates that up to 75% of nonprofit executives expect to leave their roles within a five-to-ten-year period, reflecting retirement, career changes, burnout, and long executive tenures. (Building Movement)
No projection should be treated as destiny. But taken together, these indicators point in the same direction: nonprofit organizations should expect substantial leadership movement.
The pipeline behind them may be the bigger problem
If experienced leaders were departing into a deep and eager pipeline of successors, this would primarily be a succession-management challenge.
But many nonprofits face a more complicated reality.
Becoming a CEO is fundamentally different from becoming a better functional leader. As executives advance, they must move from experts and individual contributors to coaches, organizational leaders, strategists, and Board partners. They need financial acumen, fundraising capability, people leadership, external presence, political awareness, and the ability to manage increasingly complex organizations.
Yet too often, nonprofits have invested heavily in programs and services while investing comparatively little in developing the people who will eventually lead them.
And not every talented next-generation leader wants the CEO job. For organizations moving from a Founder or Founder-like leader to their next executive, the challenge can be even more nuanced: the successor must honor what has made the organization successful while also having the ability to lead what comes next. The demands of Board management, fundraising, public visibility, financial accountability, and an often relentless workload can make the top position considerably less attractive.
That should concern every nonprofit Board.
Succession planning isn’t enough
The traditional response is to tell organizations they need a succession plan.
They do. But that is no longer sufficient.
Boards need to think about leadership transition planning, not merely CEO replacement.
That means continually asking: What will this organization need from its leadership three to five years from now? How strong is our executive team? Who is being developed? What knowledge and relationships reside disproportionately with one individual? What happens if our CEO leaves unexpectedly? And are we creating executive roles that talented people actually want?
When a departure becomes foreseeable, those conversations need to become more concrete. An intentional transition ideally gives the Board sufficient time to examine strategy, leadership structure, internal talent, compensation, organizational readiness, and even whether replacing the CEO with an identical role is truly the right answer.
The question should not simply be, “Who will replace our current CEO?”
It should be, “What leadership does our organization need for its next chapter?”
The Board’s responsibility starts now
CEO succession is ultimately a governance responsibility. But the best transitions are built collaboratively long before a search committee convenes.
CEOs, whether founders, founder-like leaders who have shaped an organization for a decade or more, or successors carrying a mission forward, can strengthen their organizations by developing other leaders, distributing relationships and institutional knowledge, engaging their Boards in candid conversations, and being willing to envision an organization that will thrive beyond their own tenure.
Boards can normalize those conversations through annual CEO reviews, emergency succession plans, ongoing leadership-development discussions, and regular examination of the organization’s future leadership needs. This is especially critical when a founder or founder-like leader’s personal relationships and institutional memory have become deeply intertwined with the organization itself.
There is an opportunity hidden within today’s leadership challenge.
Every transition gives an organization a moment to reassess where it is going, what its community needs, and what kind of leadership will take it there.
The existential risk isn’t that nonprofit leaders will leave. They always will.
The risk is failing to prepare the organization—and the next generation of leaders—before they do.
Sources:
The Center for Effective Philanthropy