When is the Right Time to Leave the Charity You Founded?

“I start with the premise that the function of leadership is to produce more leaders, not more followers.” - Ralph Nader

I’ve been involved with founding five charities and social enterprises. Yes, for someone highly critical of charities, I’ve started quite a few. As much as anyone else, I understand the attachment that comes with your organisation. Leaving is hard, especially if your story is at the centre of the charity.

People love a good story, and for a charity, the founder’s story is often easier to discuss than real questions about the effectiveness of the organisation.

This story is vital to the life of the charity. It brings in donations. The staff literally rely on one person for their livelihoods.

As long as the charity relies on the founder, and vice versa, neither the charity nor the founder can make themselves redundant.

This is a dilemma that all founders of charities need to grapple with.

When I started OIC Cambodia in 2013, I had two non-negotiable principles in mind. Firstly, the organisation had to have an exit point and a strategy to get there. Secondly, the organisation had to be led by Cambodian people.

The latter principle was both moral and pragmatic. I don’t believe it is the right of foreigners to solve problems for Cambodian people. And even though I had lived in Cambodia for five years and gotten to a decent level of spoken Cambodian language, ultimately I didn’t understand how to navigate Cambodia as much as someone who had spent their whole life there.

Regardless of how much I tried to fade into the background, I realised that in my position in Cambodia I would always be a dominant personality. Here’s why:

1. I’m the founder

2. I’m extroverted

3. I’m male

4. I’m tall (by Cambodian standards)

Not one of these factors indicate that my opinion is worth more than anyone else’s. But all of these factors make others listen to my opinion over others.

And so, to avoid groupthink or being led down the wrong path, the only solution for me was to leave.

I made many mistakes with OIC Cambodia, too many for one email. But one thing that I am proud of was successfully handing over leadership of the organisation to a Cambodian woman, Chenda Net, in 2017.

Supported by OIC Cambodia’s team of Cambodian and international volunteers and staff, there is every chance of decisions being made that are relevant to the local context.

These days, when someone asks me for my advice on when the right time is for a founder to leave, I usually give the same stock standard answer:

“There is no one right time, but it’s better to leave too early, than to leave too late.”

A charity has to learn to walk without a founder, and making themselves redundant needs to be front and centre in their mind from the beginning.

Postscript: Six years after making myself redundant, Chenda has now managed to make herself redundant, and is moving on after leading the team in Cambodia. In this time, OIC Cambodia has established the foundations of a speech therapy profession in Cambodia with partnerships with local universities, hospitals and schools. Without her dedication, diplomacy and intelligence, we would be no where near as close as we are to exiting Cambodia.

Congratulations to Chenda and the team on everything you have been able to achieve.

Want to learn more about how founders can make themselves redundant?

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