About

Cricket Island Foundation’s (CIF) Leadership Transition Fund provides multi-year general operating support to youth-led social change organizations through the executive transition process, with a focus on resourcing directors who are not traditionally supported in their leadership (for this fund, “leadership” refers to the executive director or equivalent). Grantees receive $45,000 per year for three years, in addition to peer learning and coaching support alongside a small group of peer grantees. Through this fund, CIF hopes to stabilize organizations during executive transitions while learning best practices for supporting healthy organizational transitions and leadership development in the youth-led social change field. We expect to award six grants in this round of funding. 

This Fund is part of Cricket Island Foundation’s broader strategy to support small,  grassroots, youth-led organizations in their organizational development. Leadership  Transition Fund recipients are free to allocate funds as they choose. Previous grantees have used funds to support initiatives that enabled a more holistic ED transition process, such as overlapping salaries for outgoing and incoming EDs, leadership coaching, piloting different organizational leadership models, collaborating with consultants to lead hiring or strategic planning processes, and more. 

Criteria

We are seeking groups that meet the following criteria: 

• Transition stage: The organization is actively navigating an executive director transition. This includes:

  • Planning / Upcoming: Outgoing executive director(s) are planning to transition from their roles within the next two years.

  • Recent Transitions & Onboarding: The organization has completed a recent leadership transition, and resources are actively needed to support, stabilize, and build capacity for the new leader's onboarding and strategic vision.

    
    

• Commitment to shared decision-making, learning, and working through conflict: We are seeking organizations that are committed to including multiple stakeholders (including board, staff, constituency, or the equivalent based on your organization’s structure) in the leadership transition process, working through potential conflict that emerges through the transition process, and sharing learnings from that process with the field. 

  
  

• Youth and/or multi-generational: Prioritizes building leadership and power with community members closest to the challenges the organization addresses.  Community members served must be youth (in this case, youth is defined as people ages 13-24) and/or represent multiple generations, including youth, in their overall work. 

  
  

• Community leadership: Centers youth and leaders whose lived experiences align with the communities they serve and reflect this alignment across staff, board, and constituency. We are encouraging proposals from organizations whose staff and board reflect the communities they serve in terms of backgrounds, perspectives,  and lived experience. 

  
  

• Founders and/or long-term EDs: We prioritize organizations where the outgoing or recently departed leader is the founder(s) and/or served in their role for 5+ years.

  • For planning applicants: The long-term leader/founder is currently preparing to step down.

  • For recent transition applicants: The new ED took over following the recent departure of a founder or long-term leader.

    
    

• Budget: A maximum youth-led social change and/or organizational budget of $5M. 

  
  

To ensure this opportunity is the best fit for your organization's current journey, please note that we can only consider applications that align with these specific criteria. If your organization's profile falls outside these guidelines—for example, if your organizational budget exceeds $5.0M, or if your organization has not undergone a recent executive transition or is not actively planning for an upcoming transition—you will be ineligible for this grant. 

We want to be mindful of your team's time and capacity. To help you determine whether this fund is the right fit before investing in a full application, we ask all interested groups to complete our 30-minute screening form.

Application Instructions + Process

1. We ask all interested applicants to complete the screening form to ensure they meet our core criteria. We anticipate this form will take 30 minutes to complete.  Screening forms are due on a rolling basis between May 7 and September 1. We will let you know within 4 weeks of your submission if you have been invited to complete a full application. The final deadline to submit a screening form is September 1.

   
   

2. By September 15, we will invite eligible organizations to submit an application. To  provide flexibility, you may choose one of two formats (both utilize the same set of questions): 

   1. Written Narrative: A form submitted on or before October 16, 2026. 

   2. Application Call: A 75-minute interview with CIF’s Leadership Transition  Grants Advisory Committee, held between September 15 and October 16,  2026. 

   3. We ask that the outgoing director(s) and at least one key organizational stakeholder participate in the application process. 

3. The Grants Advisory Committee will share a list of recommended grantees with CIF’s Board of Directors following completion of application interviews. 

4. Grant decisions will be made at CIF’s fall board meeting in the first week of  November, and applicants will be notified shortly afterward. Grants will be disbursed starting December 1, 2026. 

About Cricket Island Foundation

Cricket Island Foundation’s mission is to develop the capacity and commitment of young people to improve their lives and communities, as well as the world around them. The Foundation's values include: 

• Connecting through building and growing relationships; 

• Collaborating through mutual sharing and learning; 

• Communicating honestly and openly; and 

• Integrating diverse perspectives. 

Questions about the Leadership Transition Fund? Email ciftransitions@gmail.com and we’ll get back to you as soon as possible.