By Suzette Davis, Vice President of Consulting | AQORD Consulting

Is your organization facing an executive transition?

The answer is yes. You just don’t know when or under what circumstances.

That is not a pessimistic statement. It is a governance reality. Every organization in our sector will face a leadership transition whether planned or unplanned, gradual or sudden, welcomed or forced. The question is not whether it will happen. The question is whether your board will be prepared by building that certainty into your annual strategic plan or is waiting until the moment arrives to figure it out.

Succession planning should be a continuous governance discipline that lives alongside your strategic priorities every year. It’s a strategic priority because, the health of your leadership pipeline directly determines the health of your mission, your culture, and your financial future.

What the Data Tells Us About Our Sector

The numbers from within our own sector are informative. The 2023 Ziegler CFO Hotline℠ survey, which surveyed more than 230 not-for-profit senior living CFOs and financial professionals, revealed that one-third to one-half of nonprofit senior living CEOs are expected to retire within the next five to seven years. Two thirds will retire within the next decade. That means the overwhelming majority of organizations in this sector are facing a leadership transition, yet only 38% have a formal, written succession plan in place (Ziegler, 2023).

2024 LeadingAge survey data reinforces the urgency: 26% of nonprofit aging services CEOs have already reached retirement age, and another 47% will join them within five years. Industry analysts project that as many as 80% of all healthcare system CEOs will retire or transition out of their current roles in the near term which is a wave that will touch senior living, behavioral health, IDD services, and the broader faith-based health and human services sector alike (TriscendNP, 2025).

And when those transitions arrive without adequate planning, the costs are real. Recruiting, onboarding, and productivity losses associated with replacing a nonprofit CEO can range from 50% to over 200% of annual salary. These costs do not include the harder-to-quantify losses in donor relationships, staff stability, and strategic momentum. Ziegler’s research notes another troubling pattern: waves of affiliation activity among nonprofit senior living organizations have frequently followed the unplanned departure of a long-tenured CEO, often because the organization was simply not positioned to stand alone through the transition (Ziegler, 2022).

Why Boards Delay — And Why That Has to Change

Succession planning conversations can feel premature when a strong CEO is in place, uncomfortable for boards when they risk signaling a lack of confidence, or when a sitting leader fears being seen as a lame duck before they are ready to leave. And yet, the organizations that navigate leadership transitions most successfully are those that start the work long before a transition is on the horizon. Succession planning is not a short-term exercise, it is an ongoing investment in organizational resilience, and one that requires sustained board commitment to do well.

For faith-based organizations in particular, the stakes extend beyond leadership continuity. Boards of directors, who serve as stewards of a founding community’s vision, carry a responsibility that is both fiduciary and missional. An unplanned transition does not just create an operational gap, it can put decades of relational trust, cultural identity, and mission alignment at risk.

What Well-Designed Succession Planning Delivers

When succession planning is embedded in annual board governance and not treated as a one-time event, it delivers measurable returns across every dimension that matters:

• Mission continuity: A culture-aligned leadership transition carries institutional values forward, protecting what took decades to build.
• Financial stability: Planned transitions dramatically reduce recruitment costs, operational disruption, and the risk of affiliation under duress.
• Staff and donor confidence: A visible, intentional leadership pipeline signals organizational strength to the people who matter most.
• Strategic momentum: Succession planning forces the board to regularly examine where the organization is going and what leadership it will need to get there, which is exactly the kind of forward-looking governance that strengthens mission-driven organizations.

A Question Worth Sitting With

Succession planning belongs on your board agenda every year, not just when a departure is imminent. It belongs in your strategic plan as a standing discipline, because the pipeline you build today determines the options you have tomorrow. This is true whether your organization serves older adults in a life plan community, individuals with intellectual and developmental disabilities, or neighbors in crisis through behavioral health services. Though missions may differ, the governance imperative is the same.

The boards that get this right share a common trait: they stopped thinking of succession planning as something uncomfortable that they would get to eventually and started treating it as something important that they could not afford to postpone. They began asking hard questions about their leadership pipeline in the same breath as they asked hard questions about their strategic plan because they understood that those two conversations are, at their core, the same conversation.

Before your next board meeting, consider this: If your CEO called you tomorrow and said they were stepping down in the next thirty to ninety days, what would your board do? Who would you call? What would you tell your staff, your residents, your donors, your families? How long would it take to find the right person: someone who not only has the competencies for the role, but who genuinely fits the culture and carries the mission forward?

If the honest answer gives you pause, that is not a failure. It is an invitation. And perhaps, one of the most important governance conversations your board can have this year