How do we steward organisational loss?
Channel: States of Change
Date: 2020-06-05

... and support organisations to close?

* this was a workshop so we have edited to only include Cassie Robinson's opening presentation*

“We will be asked to decide what we want to preserve about our world and ourselves, and what we want to discard.” - Nick Cave

It’s not enough to just keep increasing the supply of promising ideas, this needs to be matched by just as sophisticated an approach to dismantling things and closing them down. 

The Stewarding Loss project was set up through an Ideas & Pioneers award from the Paul Hamlyn Foundation to scope out what a ‘Farewell Fund’ could look like, specifically for civil society organisations to apply to as a way of closing down.  We originally framed the work as a need to (and quite urgently) shift resources out of the old, no longer fit-for-purpose system to fuel the growth of an alternative system.

When is the right time to close something down? And who gets to decide? What gives people a sense of permission and a willingness to hold up their hand and say “this is no longer working”?

In the context of Covid-19 this is no longer going to be a choice for many organisations in civil society but the topic is more necessary to confront than ever. This can still be done with compassion, and the whole process would benefit from being designed.

In this session Cassie Robinson will share what they’ve learned so far from Stewarding Loss  - interviews they’ve done, insights that have come from the Organisational Loss Circles and how they plan on expanding the work as the crisis unfolds and we look to the future. 

You will be invited to shape that work going forward, sharing the organisational loss you see happening around you and that you anticipate as you look ahead. How can support for this loss, finding acceptance and crafting organisational legacies be better designed?