Clues to the Future 
... November 2011

Graceful Exits

It’s a whole lot easier to start things than to end them. Beginnings conjure feelings of excitement, anticipation and hope. Endings often involve loss and goodbyes. However, in a context changing ever more rapidly, leaders of health and human service organizations need to get better and better at graceful exits. Wise and forward-looking organizations are finding ways to celebrate transitions, to create expectations that things will change, and to build exit strategies into their planning for the future.

The Auxiliary at Lyngblomsten, a Lutheran aging services organization in St. Paul, Minnesota, used the occasion of its 50th anniversary to end its work, to celebrate a rich history of contributions and to provide a final bequest by raising money for a legacy fund. A thoughtful two-year process involved Auxiliary members in planning for the transition. Many other Lutheran auxiliary organizations may find this model one worth exploring.

As board and staff members of Lutheran Metropolitan Ministry in Cleveland, Ohio, recently engaged in a planning session, they agreed that creating social enterprise earned revenue ventures is an important strategy for their future. However, from the outset, they created the realistic expectation that likely there would be a number of failed experiments for every success.

Lutheran Services for the Elderly Endowment, a foundation that provides grants to stimulate new services to support people who are aging, was created when a courageous board made a difficult decision. Faced with an aging physical plant and lots of credible competition in a Florida aging services market, the board decided to sell the nursing home while it still had value, and to fulfill the mission by becoming a grant-making organization.

In the same way that many Lutheran organizations closed orphanages and transitioned to community-based children’s services, health and human service organizations will need to make graceful exits of many kinds. The challenge is to make those decisions in a timely way, to pay attention to communication and to step out in faith with bold courage.

Jill Schumann, President and CEO