butterfly shape with inkblot designs (Illustration by Vicki Turner) 

What happens when organizations and institutions need to die? And why is this part of the work often overlooked in systems change and social innovation practice? These two questions were at the heart of Stewarding Loss when it began in 2018.

Practices for Transitions in a Time Between Worlds

There is no manual for living through our wildly unpredictable times. How do we imagine, prepare for, and shape an unknown future? Who do we need to be or become? Instead of a road map, we offer this supplement to illuminate inquiries, capacities, and practices that we believe can open consequential new pathways to a better tomorrow. Sponsored by Joseph Rowntree Foundation

Stewarding Loss is a field-building initiative focused on the process of closure, ending, and dismantling as a journey to be designed. Over the course of several years, Stewarding Loss has engaged in a range of activities, from creating “loss circles” as spaces where people anticipating organizational closures can come to share stories and concerns; to conducting interviews with a range of practitioners involved in end-of-life care, including ritual and ceremonial hosts, grief therapists, and death doulas so we could learn how to translate practices across different contexts; to hosting roundtables with philanthropic foundations and speaking at numerous events to allow us to gather insight and feedback regarding ideas and needs for this work; to prototyping a Farewell Fund to learn what type of invitation and application might encourage organizations to become proactive about closing, and what supports might be needed by people on the journey to closure.

High-quality participation and engagement in these activities helped Stewarding Loss learn about how to prepare for closings in a compassionate and respectful way. We gathered insights on how to help people anticipate endings and even rehearse them, how to know what good preparation looks like, when might be the right time to close down an organization, and who gets to decide. We learned about language and framing, and which narratives help, prompt, and honor endings. We made linguistic shifts:

  • From “It’s a failure” to “It’s generous.”
  • From “It’s shameful” to “It’s courageous.”
  • From “It’s giving up” to “It’s creating new life.”
  • From “It’s such a waste” to “It’s an opportunity to distribute wisdom elsewhere.”

We also saw the unexpected consequences of endings and discussed how to mitigate the fallout to build a more constructive, hopeful, and creative process of change. This approach required us to consider what happens after closing and to design an intentional process of healing and restoration committed to helping people adjust to, cope with, and make sense of change. We identified how to do this work in ways that are responsible (considerate of all potential consequences), kind (people feel respected, cared for, and valued), and intelligent (drawing on our history, learning, wisdom, and assets).

We distilled this work, together with practical information about costs, legal matters, and how to establish an informal closure hotline, into several toolkits that are available online and used by many people in different contexts of organizational closure.

  • Sensing an Ending is a set of seven principles to steward better organizational endings, accompanied by the guidebook Considering Closure.
  • Staying Close to Loss is an introduction to the idea of continual inquiry in the life of an organization, whereby loss is considered part of an organizational strategy, just like growth. This idea is explored in a series of canvases.

Stewarding Loss continues to develop this work and play a role in supporting the emergence of a field of practice. The Community of Practice is a monthly space where members of an international community gather to spotlight and share practices that are being developed and used in the context of closure. There is an online space to join, and in fall 2024, we will publish new and updated tools and materials, while offering a program on how to lead and what to pay attention to in times of collapse and transition, beginning with wealth distribution and institutional philanthropy.

At Stewarding Loss, we continue to believe that as our ecosystems and human systems evolve, we must pay attention to endings, not only beginnings, and this practice starts upstream, not just in response to a crisis. Space must be created for new alternatives to emerge, which means accepting that some things will need to be abandoned, and others left to die. How exactly this process is achieved is what matters. Designing the end well makes better compost for new life and the shared futures that will emerge from it.

Read more stories by Camille Acey.