There are moments in life that force you to see things clearly.
Not eventually. Not after a strategic planning retreat, a quarterly review, or a carefully facilitated conversation about organizational capacity. Sometimes clarity arrives while you’re dialing 911 from the bathroom floor, in the back of an ambulance, somewhere between one hospital and the next, when the calendar is still full, the deadlines are still real, and you are suddenly very aware that you are not the one who will be answering the next email.
That has been my reality since the first of this month.
I experienced a serious medical emergency that took me unexpectedly out of the office and into a ten-day tour of three hospitals, an ambulance ride, a helicopter flight, and a recovery process that is going to take longer than I would prefer. I am grateful to be here. I am grateful for the medical teams who got me through it. I am grateful for my family.
And I am overwhelmingly grateful for my team.
For years, I have referred to KFA as “The Best Team on Earth.” It is the kind of phrase that sounds like branding until the moment you discover it is not branding at all. It is the absolute truth.
I sent my team a single message that morning, “I think I’m going to have to go to the emergency room. More soon.” They didn’t hear from me again for 6 days. My team did not panic. The team did not wait for perfect instructions. They did not ask me to make every decision from a hospital bed. They took the reins. A couple of days later, my husband did exactly what I’ve always asked him to do in an emergency; he called Carla, my second-in-command.
The team checked deadlines. They communicated with clients. They sorted through priorities. They protected my privacy while still being honest enough to let people know that something serious had happened. They made judgment calls. They kept work moving. They reassured clients. They reassured each other. And when additional support was needed, people who have been part of KFA’s story over the years showed up almost immediately asking what they could do to help.
That is not an accident. KFA was founded for these kinds of moments.
It is tempting, especially for founders, consultants, executive directors, and small business owners, to believe that our organizations are strongest when we personally hold all the threads. We know the history. We know the clients. We know the funders. We know the weird little details that never quite make it into the project management system.
But holding all the threads is not strength. It is risk wearing the costume of commitment.
I have been medically complicated my whole life. I have never had the luxury of believing myself invincible. So I have always planned my business around knowing that I or anyone else can be sidelined at any time, without notice.
Longtime KFA clients know that I have written grants from hospital beds before. I did it days after my son was born. I did it again about a year later after a major reconstruction. I understand dedication. But I am also keenly aware that some of those decisions almost a decade ago are exactly what landed me in the bathroom floor at the start of this month.
I would like to urge you to take a moment and think, really imagine what would happen if you found yourself in the situation I’ve been in. If there is any panic or chaos in that scenario, now is the time to think about how you change it.
There’s no good time for a life threatening emergency, but I have to admit I have been pretty fortunate. Carla returned from extended leave earlier this year and stepped back into operations with the kind of calm, steady leadership that makes everyone else breathe a little easier. In May, we added an extraordinarily talented grant writer who was already proving to be one of the strongest writers we have encountered in more than a decade. We had already been planning to expand administrative support. And behind the scenes, former and current members of the KFA orbit began raising their hands to help.
By the time I was forced to stop, the team was already becoming stronger around me.
That is the part I cannot stop thinking about.
So much of nonprofit and small business leadership is built around personality, persistence, and sheer force of will. We celebrate the founder who never quits, the executive director who answers emails at midnight, the consultant who can somehow pull a proposal together under impossible circumstances. I understand why. Many organizations survive because someone was willing to do whatever it took.
But long-term sustainability requires something different.
It requires trust. It requires systems. It requires people who know the work well enough to make decisions. It requires enough humility to admit that excellence cannot depend entirely on one person being available every minute of every day.
That is true for KFA, and it is true for many of the nonprofits we serve.
A strong organization is not one where the founder, executive director, or senior leader carries everything alone. A strong organization is one where values, standards, relationships, and responsibilities are shared deeply enough that the work can continue when life interrupts the plan.
And life does interrupt the plan.
A family emergency. A medical crisis. A staff transition. A funding delay. A personal loss. A sudden opportunity. A deadline that arrives at the worst possible time. None of us can build organizations that are immune to disruption. What we can build are organizations capable of responding to disruption with steadiness, care, and integrity.
Over the past few weeks, I have watched my team do exactly that.
They have protected client relationships that matter deeply to me. They have been thoughtful about keeping clients connected with project managers who already understand their organizations, priorities, and funding strategies. They have stepped into conversations, deadlines, and decisions without losing the heart of how KFA works. They have reminded me that the company I built is not fragile simply because I am a fragile human.
That last sentence is harder for me to write than it should be.
Founders are not always good at admitting our own limits. We can confuse being needed with being effective. We can mistake exhaustion for evidence that we are doing important work. We can tell ourselves that stepping back, even briefly, means letting people down.
But what I have seen in this season is the opposite.
Letting the team lead is not letting people down. It is honoring the talent, judgment, and commitment that have been here all along.
KFA Nonprofit has never been just me. It may have started with my laptop, my stubbornness, and a deep belief that nonprofits deserved better grant support, but it did not stay that way. It became a team. It became a shared standard. It became a group of people who care about the quality of the work, the missions of our clients, and each other.
I am proud of that.
I am proud of the grants we have written, the strategies we have helped build, the organizations we have supported, and the funding we have helped bring into communities. But right now, I am most proud of the people who stepped forward when I had no choice but to step back.
To our clients: thank you for your patience, grace, and trust. Many of you have sent kind messages, offered prayers, extended understanding, and continued working with our team exactly as I hoped you would. That means more than I can say.
To our prospective clients: thank you for allowing us to continue conversations during an imperfect moment. In some ways, this season may give you the clearest picture of who KFA really is. We are small, but we are steady. We are personal, but we are not dependent on one person alone. We care deeply about the organizations we serve, and we have built a team capable of carrying that care forward.
And to my team: thank you.
Thank you for taking the reins before I could even ask. Thank you for protecting what we have built. Thank you for telling me, in your own ways, to sit down and be quiet. Thank you for proving that The Best Team on Earth was never just a phrase we used because it sounded good.
It is who you are.
I have a long recovery ahead of me, and I will assuredly be an imperfect patient. But I am also entering this season with a level of peace I would not have expected. Not because the road ahead is easy, but because I know KFA is in capable hands.
For a founder, there may be no greater gift than discovering that the thing you built can keep standing while you rest.
And for that, I am profoundly grateful.