Build Your RAFT
This has been a season of transition in the Donovan household. We are in the middle of a move. My oldest just walked across a graduation stage. And somewhere in between packing boxes, celebrating milestones, and continuing my working with clients, I found myself reviewing notes from a parent meeting at school that I had missed (the kind designed to help families prepare their kids for the changes ahead) and furiously scribbling thoughts in the margin.
Why the scribbling? Because I am a concerned parent thinking about my first child to graduate and also because I kept thinking about my clients.
The presenter introduced an acronym developed by cross-cultural experts David Pollock and Ruth Van Reken, originally designed to help third culture kids. These are children who grow up between cultures, countries, and communities, navigating the unique grief and disorientation of transition. I missed the meeting itself, but as I reviewed the notes afterward, I could not stop thinking about every Executive Director, Board Chair, and nonprofit leader I have ever worked with who was leaving a role, closing a chapter, or navigating a major organizational shift.
Because here is what I have learned in years of consulting and leadership (and parenting): transition is transition. The feelings do not change much whether you are a twelve-year-old leaving the only country you have ever called home or a twenty-year Executive Director handing over the keys to an organization you built from nothing. The grief is real. The disorientation is real. And without a plan, without a raft, people tend to drift.
So let me introduce you to this RAFT I just learned about.
R: REPAIR
Repair means making things right before you leave. It means choosing forgiveness- both offering it and seeking it- rather than repression. Because here is what happens when we don't: we carry it. We carry the unresolved conflict with a board member into our next role. We carry the grudge against a colleague into our retirement. We carry the guilt of a decision we never fully addressed into the next chapter, and it becomes dead weight on the raft before we have even pushed off from shore.
Transition has a way of surfacing everything we have been quietly avoiding. The relationship that has been strained for two years. The conversation we kept meaning to have but never did. The apology we owe someone or that we are still waiting to receive.
Repair before you go. Not because it is comfortable. Because it is the only way to leave well.
A: AFFIRM
Affirmation means telling the colleagues, board members, staff, volunteers, mentors in your life that you care about them and appreciate them before the transition happens. Don’t do this in a generic farewell email. Be real, be specific, be personal.
The temptation in transition, especially when it has been difficult, is to move forward in anger. To focus on what went wrong, what was left unfinished, who let you down. Anger is understandable. It is also a thief. It steals the opportunity to leave people with something they will carry forward. It rips away the knowledge that their work mattered, that they mattered, that the years were not wasted. Anger will do the same to you.
I think about the leaders I have watched leave organizations well. Every single one of them took time to affirm the people around them. And every single one of them was remembered differently better because of it.
Who in your life needs to hear from you before you go?
F: FAREWELL
Farewell means planning enough time and space for a proper goodbye. This goodbye requires intentionality to make a list of people, of partners, but also of places, of possessions, and to the rhythms and routines that have structured your days. This is the step most nonprofit leaders skip entirely. There is always too much to do, too much to hand off, too much to wrap up. The farewell gets squeezed into a thirty-minute reception with sheet cake and a card everyone signed in the parking lot.
That is not a farewell. That is an escape. Be intentional about the goodbye.
A proper farewell acknowledges that something real is ending. It makes space for grief alongside gratitude. It allows the people who loved working with you to say so and allows you to receive it. It is not self-indulgent. It may feel awkward but it is necessary. Organizations that skip the farewell often find that the grief resurfaces anyway, sideways, in the form of resentment toward the new leader or a romanticization of the past that makes moving forward nearly impossible.
Plan the farewell. Give it the time it deserves. Let it be real.
T: THINK TRANSITION
Think Transition means looking ahead. It means learning about and preparing for what comes next instead of staying focused on what is ending. It means acknowledging grief and also having curiosity. Let’s not deny the loss, but can we consider refusing to let it have the final word?
This is the hardest step for most leaders. Identity is deeply tied to role, especially in the nonprofit world where the work is so personal, so mission-driven, so much a part of who you are. When the role ends, it can feel like you end. This deeply resonates with me because after leaving the organization I led for 8 years as an Executive Director, I found myself with a bit of an identity crisis. I did not end but sorting through identity requires intention. It requires asking: What is next? What am I curious about? What have I always wanted to learn or do or become that this role never left room for? Where are my gifts? Who can help me discern what is next?
Preparation for transition takes time. Succession planning is necessary even before someone plans to leave. It leaves your organization in a better place. It provides clarity in the unexpected circumstances - the sudden resignation, the health crisis, the moment when life moves faster than any of us anticipated. The RAFT is not just for the person leaving. It is for the organization they leave behind.
Think transition. Plan ahead. The river does not end at the bend but maybe it just turns.
For my friends of faith — I want to share something personal.
For the last 16 months, I have kept a print of Rembrandt's The Storm on the Sea of Galilee directly above my desk. Every single day, in the middle of my own season of transition, I have looked up at that painting and asked myself the same question: Where am I right now?
If you know the painting, you know it captures the moment from Mark 4 when the disciples are on the boat in the middle of a violent storm, terrified, while Jesus sleeps in the stern. Rembrandt painted fourteen figures on that boat including thirteen disciples and, many believe, himself. Every figure is in a different posture. Some are frantically working the sails. Some are frozen in fear. Some are clinging to each other. One is looking directly out of the painting and at you as if to ask: what would you do?
That painting has been my companion through transition because it tells the truth about what transition actually feels like. It is not a calm crossing. It is not a gentle float downstream. It is a storm, and everyone on the boat responds differently. This painting reminds me to ask myself daily: where are my eyes in the storm? Am I intentional on working through my own personal RAFT?
Repair. Affirm. Farewell. Think Transition.
Build your RAFT before the storm hits. And when it does, and it will, remember who is on the boat with you.
Erin
PS. If your organization is navigating a leadership transition or succession and you are not sure how to do it well, I would love to come alongside you. Leaving well is one of the greatest gifts a leader can give to the organization they love.