A former COO of an international NGO reached out to me after reading my post on when to close a nonprofit (Should You Shutter Your Organization? ). That’s where her story begins—but it’s not where it ends.

What she shared also reinforces something I’ve been seeing across organizations: when conflict surfaces, the most effective leaders don’t rely on process or distance—they show up. It’s the same theme I wrote about recently in Being Effective on a Board Requires Personal Connections.

What We Built — And Why We Walked Away

As told by a nonprofit leader somewhere in the US.

I started working at the U.S. headquarters of an international NGO as a consultant. The organization had a common structure for an international NGO. The U.S. office raised funds, convened affiliates, and set direction.

When I arrived, the organization was drowning in its own infrastructure. The affiliates were technically independent but almost entirely dependent on headquarters for funding. There were no sustainability plans, no business development, just an exhausting annual reporting process that consumed enormous energy and produced very little. The culture was broken. Trust was low. The model wasn’t working. The CEO asked me to recommend changes.

About nine months in, the CEO announced she was resigning. The Deputy Director, who ran programs and was my closest collaborator, became CEO. I became COO.

Don’t Be Afraid to Reimagine — Everything

The new CEO and I sat down and made some decisions that, at the time, felt both obvious and radical.

First, we merged with another similar organization, dramatically expanding our network. Then we held over 200 listening sessions, asking direct and sometimes uncomfortable questions. And then we did something leaders often talk about, but seldom actually do: We gutted the organization. Took it down to the studs.

We reimagined the traditional affiliate model and rebuilt the grant-making process to reward performance rather than legacy relationships. Instead of automatically funding affiliates, we opened competitive grants.

We invested in our affiliates’ websites and business development plans. We nurtured direct donor relationships, making introductions, then gradually stepping back. We developed programmatic tools and shared them freely across the network. Some affiliates used them. Some did not. Those that did saw huge savings.

The strongest affiliates thrived. They found peers, triangulated across countries, and learned from each other. The weaker ones had to reckon with hard questions about their own relevance and sustainability.

Over three years, the network became extraordinary. The affiliates went from needing heavy guidance to operating both programs and fundraising on their own. They were ready.

And we had to be honest with ourselves: two white women sitting in U.S. didn’t need to be running this anymore.

So, we made a decision that still surprises people when I say it out loud. We announced we were sunsetting the headquarters—not because we had failed, but because we had done what we set out to do. We had built the capacity for sustained, locally led work.

Expect Shifting Power to Be a Challenge

But shifting power is never clean.

The legacy affiliates—the ones that had been with the organization from the beginning and expected a certain kind of relationship—didn’t all take it well. Some had already been cut off for poor performance, compliance issues, or, in one case, fraud and sexual harassment. Others were simply doing less impactful work at a higher cost. Those relationships were harder to manage than I anticipated.

Address Staff Issues Directly

At the same time, we made what looked like a smart internal move. One of the strongest affiliate leaders—a woman who had built one of the most successful organizations in the network—joined the U.S. headquarters as Deputy Director during the transition. On paper, it made perfect sense: who better to support affiliate independence than someone who had lived it? In practice, it never worked. Everyone defaulted to turning to the CEO for every decision, regardless of what the Deputy Director said or decided. I saw it happening and brought in a coach.

In hindsight, when I saw what was happening with the Deputy Director, I should have done more than bring in a coach. I should have intervened directly — named the dynamic explicitly, addressed it head-on, and insisted it change.

Have Real, In-Person Conversations

The Deputy Director eventually resigned. Her frustration didn’t dissipate—it led her to organize. She connected with other disaffected legacy affiliates, and together they took their grievances to the board. Letters were written. Claims were made that we didn’t have the right to make the changes we were making.

When the tension with the legacy affiliates escalated, we addressed the issues through formal channels. We sent out a lot of emails.  We held online town halls. We told everyone we were available to talk – even held online office hours – though no one came. I should have gotten on several planes to have real conversations with the people who were feeling scared and under pressure. I knew that relationships like these don’t get repaired through formal channels.

Don’t Settle for a Quiet Board

The board was with us — mostly. Three members were genuinely engaged. They challenged assumptions, asked hard questions, and made me smarter at exactly the moments I needed it. As a full body, though, the board tended to rubber-stamp rather than push back, and we let that happen. When you’re moving fast and the work is going well, a quiet board feels like a gift. I’ve come to believe it’s really a risk. The decisions we were making — restructuring grants, expanding the network — deserved more rigorous challenge than we invited. We paid for that later.

Once the former Deputy Director and legacy affiliates started organizing and reaching out to the board, the board members who had been less engaged stepped down. They did not have an appetite for conflict. A fourth left later, disagreeing fundamentally with our premise that international development work should be led by people inside the communities it serves, not by organizations headquartered in the U.S.

Ask Why You Are Making Decisions

The CEO, my partner in all of this change, was not okay during the final stretch. She was dealing with serious health challenges, and as the pressure from the affiliates and the board turbulence intensified, she began to unravel. Over a span of six months, I got in an Uber in the middle of the night multiple times because I was afraid she was going to hurt herself. I showed up. I’m not sorry about that.

But somewhere in that period, the decisions I was making — or getting behind — shifted from protecting the mission to protecting the CEO. For the first time in my career, those two things were in conflict, and I didn’t see it clearly enough to name it. The line between the personal and the professional dissolved.

I made the wrong call. I pushed to close quickly to protect her health.

We closed about 60 days after making the announcement. Sixty days were not enough.

We needed closer to a year to support affiliates still finding their footing. We could have taken a year. I believe that a more engaged board—one in a stronger relationship with us—would have pushed back on my decision.

Lessons Learned

Looking back, the things I learned are not unique to our situation. I’ve seen versions of them in nearly every organization I’ve worked with or consulted for since.

Here is what I know: The U.S. Headquarters closed because we did our job. We built the capacity for sustained organizing from within communities. The U.S. office was a vehicle. When the vehicle had served its purpose, we chose to close it down rather than prop it up. If I were in the same situation, I would decide to close down again – though hopefully avoiding the mistakes.

Transparency is necessary but not sufficient. We communicated constantly—listening sessions, town halls, one-on-ones, and office hours. We assumed that enough information would bring people along. It doesn’t. When people are hurt or afraid, they need a person across the table, not a process. No amount of structured communication can replace presence in the hardest moments.

Naming a problem is not the same as solving it. When I saw a colleague being undermined, I responded with a systemic solution — a coach, a process. What was needed was a direct, uncomfortable conversation with the people involved. Under pressure, leaders often choose the intervention that feels most manageable. That is rarely the most effective one.

A quiet board is not a supportive board. Boards that ask hard questions and push back on leadership are doing their job. When boards defer too readily, they deprive leaders of the challenge that sharpens decision-making and catches blind spots. If your board isn’t making you a little uncomfortable, it is worth asking why.

The mission and the organization are not the same thing. Nonprofits exist to accomplish something—not to perpetuate themselves. The structure, the staff, the brand—these are tools. When they are no longer the right tools, the responsible move is to change them, combine them, or let them go.

Knowing when you’re done is a form of leadership. Closure is not failure. Sometimes it’s the clearest expression of mission fidelity. The real question isn’t just are we doing good work? It’s are we still the right vehicle for this work? Those are different questions. We don’t ask the second one nearly often enough.