Good Endings: Reimagining Success Beyond Organizations
Summary:
This isn’t a story about failure. It’s a story about what it looks like to lead with values, even when it means letting go. When The Full Frame Initiative (FFI) made the decision to wind down, they didn’t scramble to survive — they asked what would serve their mission most powerfully. And then they acted on it. In this piece, you’ll hear from FFI’s founder, Katya Smyth, about what it really means to “end well,” why success isn’t always about longevity, and how the work can (and should) live on beyond any one organization.
What’s in it for you:
You’re curious about big picture strategic planning that keeps mission at the heart
You’re navigating a tricky time in your organization and want to be thoughtful about your next steps
You’re open to inspiration from an impactful, proactive leader
Helia’s Perspective
After decades of successful systems change work, the Full Frame Initiative (FFI) is winding down. What I keep sitting with is that this wasn't a failure—it was a conscious choice that it was time for the work to look different. When funding became challenging, FFI could have fought to survive at all costs (as we're all taught to do!). Instead, they asked a more beautiful question: how might their mission continue most sustainably, even if that meant closing the organization itself?
I've been spending a lot of time thinking about how we can start creating the world we want, versus existing as we are or looking to others to fix it, thinking through what actually matters and the different possibilities for how it might exist. The shifting and centering of who gets the attention and the focus. The beauty in communities owning the work seeded and grounded in FFI - but now each becoming their own in North Flint and Cleveland, and on and on and on…
After sitting down and speaking with FFI’s Founder + CEO, Katya Smyth, who has had a career defined by thinking differently and a commitment to inquiry, her story of how FFI chose to wind down feels like a perfect example of this—reimagining what's possible even in ending. What if closing an organization—thoughtfully, intentionally, and with real generosity—can sometimes be the most successful thing we might ever do? What if it's the ultimate expression of putting mission over ego, community over institution, impact over accolades?
Katya, along with Ivy and Hope, two of her five rescued donkeys.
Katya’s Story
This is Katya’s story - co-written with Helia and told from her perspective!
I want to be clear: there wasn't a dramatic "thing" that happened. No scandal. No sudden crisis. That's important context for what I'm sharing.
The Full Frame Initiative was founded in 2009, though I'd been running it as a project for years before that. We've been remarkably successful at what truly matters—durably changing how governments and communities interact, and how people perceive and behave towards each other, to advance the idea that everyone deserves a fair shot at wellbeing.
My background is in evolutionary biology, which shapes how I think about change. I've always been suspicious of how we fetishize individual leaders or organizations, because I know how much context -and serendipity -and cumulative forces matter. Relationships matter. Real change happens through movements, not heroic organizations.
Over the years, our work developed deep theory on creating durable systems change, drawn from real success on the ground. We were largely foundation-funded, with some individual major donors and earned income balancing out the picture. When COVID hit, we were in the final stages of a major growth campaign. We, and our partners, were logging big wins.
At the same time, something was shifting in the funding landscape. Everyone talked about systems change, but they were trying to programitize it rather than addressing how systems themselves were broken.
By 2023, fundraising was increasingly difficult, particularly getting in front of prospective new foundation funders.
I’d been planning to take a sabbatical when COVID hit; I finally did in 2023, and when I returned, we learned a major funder was changing direction. We moved into 2024, which proved to be the worst fundraising year in terms of new donor acquisition I'd experienced in my nearly 30 years running nonprofits.
Post-sabbatical, I brought the executive team into more financial management as part of a commitment to increasing shared leadership. We weren’t out of money. We hadn't laid anyone off, but it was increasingly tight in a way it hadn’t been for a decade.. In retrospect, I should have better normalized the reality that nonprofits face tough times -especially for team members who had only experienced leadership at FFI and other organizations during periods of financial stability. That closure is a reality that needs to be okay to name, without it becoming a self-fulfilling prophecy. All of our planning was about moving forward, and that was what I was committed to, but I suspect that even naming it as a possibility in the summer made it seem like something being actively considered by other members of the Executive Team. That may have been scary.
When a key team member announced their departure in October, I spent the next 72 hours in conversations with our board and executive team. It became clear that rebuilding the executive team while simultaneously shifting our fundraising strategy would prioritize organizational perpetuity, potentially at the expense of the mission.
I kept thinking about organizations that shuttered suddenly —like Benefits Data Trust, which closed with just three weeks' notice. All the attention went to lawsuits and employees—and almost none to the communities who depended on their work.
I kept coming back to the idea that how you leave matters. Leaving is what folks remember. We'd made promises to communities in Cleveland, in North Flint, in places where we worked. If we tried to keep going and the money really did run out, we too would shut suddenly. After just trying to keep the organization alive, we would hurt communities that had already experienced too much trauma.
That wasn't the organization I wanted to run. We've always been values-led and made hard decisions based on those values. Why throw them out now?
Over the course of about a week, we decided on an intentional wind-down with three clear goals: take care of our team, take care of our partners, and ensure our mission lives on.
In mid-October, we started talking to staff before we even had a complete plan -which goes against all conventional advice. We went back to our core donors and made a case for funding the winddown-- for releasing restrictions on existing funding and for adding more dollars to the pot so we could do this well. Beyond that, we stopped fundraising immediately. We started working with our allies and partners to figure out what it would mean for the work to live on. By December, we had clarity: we could continue our work well through May, with a path forward for everyone.
That we had funders we could go to who were so responsive is really unusual. I know. And it made me realize that part of our ending well has to be making the road so others could follow. Because without funding, ending well is much, much harder.
Something unexpected and really magical was happening.
A few of the MANY unsolicited comments that came in when FFI announced their plans to close last fall.
We started to feel an amazing energy shift. People reached out saying, "You can't unsee this work," and "What do I need to do to keep this going?" We invited those who had meaningfully supported our work to create a community of champions to keep the work moving forward, across the country-- today, there are over 100. Nineteen of these champions were invited to be stewards who agreed to shepherd the work for 18 months after we close.
We kicked off the “champions community” with events with powerful art and music, sharing in the community all the ways policy and culture are shifting to center wellbeing equity, and opportunities for people to connect. We're ending well with our partners, and it's been genuinely energizing to tap into people's desire to be part of something that continues beyond any single organization. I invited about a dozen staff to work with me to end well between October and May, and every single one of them has done so, completely locked in on supporting each other and the mission, and doing some of the best work we’ve done. I’m incredibly proud of them.
Creating the World We Want, Even in Ending
I think we need to completely rethink how we define success in the social sector. The dominant narrative—that organizations must endure forever, that founders should be on pedestals, that funders hold all the power—blocks the transformative change we need.
What we're doing isn't just winding down. At FFI, we're talking about a mission transition—a transformation of how the work continues through networks, champions, and communities. We're ultimately practicing what we've always preached: systems change happens through movements and relationships, not organizations.
In the nonprofit world, closing equals failure -if you're labeled a social entrepreneur and close, the narrative is that you didn't try hard enough. I was talking with someone at a business school about "business failure," and I pushed back hard. It's only failure if you believe keeping an organization open matters more than the mission it serves.
What's missing is the question: who gets hurt if we continue? The accounting in our sector focuses on benefit, not on cost. This is about net impact, not gross!
I have to deal with the fact that I—and FFI—will be seen as failures by many. I live with that by remembering none of our partners think that way. They see an alternative approach that's giving FFI the opportunity to do what we've always done best: figuring out a different way of doing things.
We're approaching this transition by asking "why the fuck not?" about everything. We're challenging every "best practice" that prioritizes neat, tidy endings over authentic, messy, but ultimately more honest ones.
For the first time in my adult life, I don't know what I'm doing next, and I'm learning that it's okay. Actually, it’s more than okay, because what’s emerging for me is the chance to apply 30 years of experience in systems change to cracking open a larger, important conversation about endings.
Legacy isn't about me or FFI—it's about whether people have a fair shot at wellbeing. That's the only metric that matters.
Reimagining success: what could our world look like?
An organization and a mission are not the same: Organizations are temporary vehicles, not the end goal. What if your organization isn't the hero of this story?
Measure net impact, not gross success: Honestly assess who might be harmed by continuing your current path. Who bears the costs of your success?
Distribute power beyond your walls: Create structures where your work can thrive without your organization at the center. How might your impact grow when you let go of control?
Be transparent and human: Bring your team and communities into uncertain conversations. What might emerge when you share vulnerability?
Make endings as intentional as beginnings: Apply the same creativity and values to endings that you bring to launches. How would you want to be remembered?
Ask "why the fuck not?": Reject harmful "best practices" that prioritize neat endings over honest ones. What rules can you break to serve your mission better?
Questions to Ask Yourself
In your scenario planning, how honestly do you consider whether your organization should exist in its current form?
Where are you prioritizing organizational survival over mission impact? Is that short-term?
How might your organization be unintentionally holding (or hoarding!) power, resources, or knowledge?
What would your community say is your most valuable contribution? Is that aligned with where you're investing your energy?
What conversations about organizational endings or transitions have you been avoiding? Who would benefit from having them now?
Katya keeps her feet and fingers in the ground, growing and selling over two dozen varieties of artisanal garlic (which we didn’t know was even a thing and now want to try!).
Want to Try This?
Templates & Guides:
The Wind Down’s Resources are incredible tools and services self-described to help “ending with dignity is a process of acceptance, compassion, and care for our communities and ourselves.”
Katya is writing an article making the case for good endings; in Summer 2025, we will provide a link to this article and to highlights of what this looked like for FFI (e.g. emails sent, talking points, wind-down plans used, etc.). In the meantime, here is her BEAUTIFUL email shared with their community about 10 days before their official close along with the official FFI’s Closure Announcement
Recommended Reads:
Katya found - and we loved - this Considering Closure article by Kate Harris and Kate Piatt-Eckert
The Full Frame Initiative’s legacy website including information about champions and stewards.
For the more “academic” of us, The Concept of Net Harm vs. Gross Benefit to help understand both sides of the impact equation
Being in relationship with your own feelings leading others through transition is foundations - to give endings the care and attention they needs, read Good Bye: Leading change better by attending to endings
Connections:
Reach out to Katya at katya@fullframeinitiative.org or through LinkedIn; she’s focusing on field building around endings, particularly around how power and endings intersect, and how systems change has to include endings. She’s eager to speak, workshop, and write about these issues!
The Wind Down (the resources referenced above!) offers brilliant and human support (learn more about their approach in this brilliant piece Leading at the End: Supporting Your Team in an Organizational Wind Down in the NonProfit Quarterly by their founder Camille Acey
About the Library Contributor
I was introduced to Katya through a mutual colleague who's part of FFI's wind-down process, and I was immediately struck by her courage to challenge our sector's assumptions about success. Her willingness to share this journey openly - with all its complexity and wisdom - reflects the same clarity and integrity she's brought to decades of systems change work.
Katya Fels Smyth founded the Full Frame Initiative after previously founding On The Rise, bringing her background in evolutionary biology to how she approaches change at the systems level. She has been an Echoing Green Fellow, Research Affiliate at MIT, and Research Fellow at Harvard's Kennedy School of Government. She’s also an artisanal garlic farmer who is the human to rescued farm animals. To learn more, email Katya at katya@fullframeinitiative.org.
This article comes from a coffee chat with Katya Smith in April 2025 - and then lots of hours of her pulling resources and examples together! We've learned the most from doing and from talking with other doers willing to share their wisdom. We share these stories in the Helia Library because we don't need to start from blank pages or do it all alone.
As always, take what's helpful, leave what's not, and make it your own.
