When the personwho knows leaves.

Every organization has someone who knows. They know where the right invoice template lives. They know who fixes the door. They know why the old mailing list can’t be used. They know whose account holds the domain name.

Sometimes it’s the owner, sometimes it’s the volunteer who’s been showing up for twenty years, but they know how the place works because they’ve helped make it work. If every answer requires a call to that person, the organization has a problem.

A vacation brings it into view. A resignation makes it urgent. A death leaves people searching for answers while they’re grieving.

This matters here.

Indiana County had 1,774 employer establishments and another 5,131 businesses with no paid employees (such as freelancers and solo entrepreneurs) in 2023. TaxExemptWorld lists 1,089 nonprofit and tax-exempt organizations in the county. The 2020 U.S. Religion Census lists more than 200 congregations here. That’s a lot of places where someone has to know what happens next.

These counts don’t tell us who has a good handoff plan. They tell us how much of the county’s working life depends on organizations carrying on when their people can’t. The consequences can be ordinary and immediate: a customer waiting for an order, a volunteer unable to find the schedule, or a grant report sitting unfinished because the person who handled it is gone.

First, a message goes unanswered.

A small business can lose more than a secretary when someone retires. It can lose the person who orders supplies, keeps the appointments straight, and remembers what was promised to each customer. At a church, one volunteer might hold the building keys and handle the donation records. At a small nonprofit, one person might know how to file the grant report and which expenses belong in it.

At first, somebody misses a message. Then a payment. Then a program can’t open its doors. Work that looked simple last week suddenly takes three people and an afternoon.

• Money and deadlines: invoices don’t go out, nobody can find the payroll instructions, renewals slip by, or a funding deadline passes while someone searches an inbox.
• Service and safety: nobody can confirm a booking, reach the right volunteers, find an emergency contact, or tell whether the required checks were done.
• Control and privacy: records are stranded on a personal laptop. Login codes go to a phone nobody can reach. In the rush to keep going, someone sends private information through an account that wasn’t meant to hold it.
• Trust and relationships: donors, customers, and church members get different answers depending on whom they ask. The new person breaks a promise they didn’t know anyone had made.

The people who stay pay for it, too. A volunteer takes on work they never agreed to do. A retired employee keeps getting calls. Before long, the next dependable person is worn out.

The empty chair has a cost.

In the National Council of Nonprofits’ 2023 workforce survey, 84.9% of the 53 Pennsylvania respondents reported job vacancies, and 43.4% reported longer service waiting lists than before the pandemic.

That’s a small statewide sample, not a measure of how many Indiana County organizations lack a handoff plan. But it’s a reminder that finding a replacement can take time. A handoff won’t solve a staffing shortage. It can keep a vacancy from taking the instructions with it.

Ask what would stop tomorrow.

Try this: imagine a key person can’t answer a call, send a login code, or explain a file for a month. What has to happen tomorrow? What’s due next week? What happens once a year that everyone else might forget? Ask the same questions about every role you depend on, including the owner and outside contractors.

Start with 30 minutes and one essential job. Find the instructions, name who could cover it, and check what access they’d need. You don’t have to finish the whole plan today. The printable Practical Takeaway at the bottom of this page gives you space to work through three jobs and record what still needs fixing.

For each job, ask four questions:

• What happens if it stops? Who gets hurt or let down? Think about service, money, safety, privacy, and promises you’ve made.
• How long can it wait? Write down the next deadline and when a delay starts to cause trouble. Payroll week or a big fundraiser may leave you less room than an ordinary Tuesday.
• Who else can do it? They need to know how, have access and permission, and have enough time. Watching someone do a job isn’t the same as doing it yourself.
• What does it depend on? Follow the trail through files, accounts, devices, suppliers, and approvals. You might find that five different jobs all depend on one person’s inbox.

Keep the first assessment simple. Mark an essential job red if there’s no tested backup. Use amber where someone can cover part of it or the handoff hasn’t been tried. Use green where another person with the right permissions has done it successfully. If you don’t know, flag it and find out. The colors help you decide where to work first; they don’t prove you’re ready.

Start with the gaps that could do the most damage soonest. Give each one an owner and a deadline. Make sure the business owner or board knows what’s still unresolved. Ready.gov’s Business Impact Analysis Worksheet can help you think through what an interruption would cost and how quickly the trouble would start.

If there’s nobody else on staff, decide what outside help you’d need, what permission they’d require, and what can pause. Confirm that someone has agreed to help before naming them as your backup. A workable plan may mean keeping three essential jobs going while the rest waits.

Know what you have. And who holds it.

Put the inventory somewhere the right people can find it, and limit who can open or change it. A shared spreadsheet may be enough. It should tell you what you have, where it is, who controls it, and how you’d get it back.

• Accounts and services: email, the domain name, website, social pages, phone service, accounting, banking, payment processing, donor systems, and subscriptions.
• Records and deadlines: contracts, policies, meeting minutes, customer or member records, grant agreements, licenses, insurance, renewal dates, and recurring work.
• Physical property: computers, backup drives, paper files, keys, alarm instructions, equipment, and anything a volunteer keeps at home.
• People and unfinished work: suppliers, advisers, funders, repair contacts, open applications, pending orders, promises, and what needs to happen next.

For each item, write down what it’s for, where it lives, who owns the account, who looks after it, and who can step in. Include how it’s paid for and when it renews. Note where the backup or recovery instructions are, when someone last checked access, and any question about ownership. Point to the password’s secure location. Don’t put the password in the spreadsheet.

Build the list with the person who does the work. Walk through a normal week, then the calendar for the whole year. Look through the organization’s bills and records. That annual charge nobody recognizes may be paying for something you still need.

Give people time to help. The employee or volunteer who’s held things together deserves more than another assignment to finish after hours. Twenty years of knowledge won’t fit into a rushed conversation on someone’s last day.

Write down the next action.

Start with the biggest gaps and write instructions someone can follow. What starts the job? Where’s the information? Who can do it? How will they know it worked?

“Renew insurance” is a reminder. It doesn’t tell the next person enough. Name the policy, renewal month, and broker. Show where the paperwork lives and who can approve the payment. Give them somewhere to start.

Keep passwords in a suitable password manager. Decide who can use it and how the organization would regain access if something went wrong. The instructions can point to the right entry without putting a password in an email, shared document, or binder.

Make sure the accounts belong to the organization.

A file shared from a volunteer’s personal account works beautifully until they remove it. The website might be paid for with a credit card nobody recognizes. The only person who can manage the social page might have moved away five years ago.

Go through the accounts in your inventory. Check who’s allowed to use them and how you’d recover access. Confirm ownership with the provider. A password gets you through the door. It doesn’t prove the place belongs to you.

Give people the access their work requires, and review it when their role changes. “Everybody knows the password” tells you very little about who should be doing what.

Where the service allows it, put ownership and billing in the organization’s name. Give people their own accounts or assigned permissions, and appoint a second administrator who should have that access. Check the extra sign-in steps, too. If a login still needs a code from an absent person’s phone, the handoff isn’t finished.

Store recovery codes and device recovery keys securely, and write down how the right person can reach them in an emergency. Don’t keep the only instructions for recovering email inside the email account you’re trying to recover. CISA’s small-business guidance explains password managers and multifactor authentication, which adds another check when someone signs in.

Being able to log in doesn’t mean someone’s allowed to approve a payment, sign a contract, or share a private record. Decide who can act during an absence, what they can approve, and who handles exceptions. Check those arrangements with the bank, provider, or adviser while the person who normally handles them is still available.

Keep the checks that protect the organization. Someone who prepares a payment shouldn’t automatically get to approve it, too. Private donor, staff, and pastoral records should stay with the people whose work requires them.

A local deadline doesn’t leave with the person.

United Way of Indiana County’s published 2025 summer-grant guidelines required a final report within 30 days of a project’s end. The report had to show that the funds were used for their intended purpose. That’s a real local obligation with a clock attached.

A useful handoff would name that deadline, show where the spending records and project results live, and identify who prepares and submits the report. This is an example of what to document, not a claim that any recipient missed a deadline. The person can leave. The obligation stays.

Can you actually get the files back?

The Library of Congress offers a straightforward approach to saving digital records: find them, decide what matters, organize them, make copies, and look after those copies. Organizations need that discipline, along with rules for keeping information secure and retaining the records they’re required to keep.

Try recovering a small file that doesn’t contain private information. Can another person with permission find the backup, tell how old it is, open the file, and spot anything missing? Write down what happened and keep it with the instructions.

Look inside the backup. Are the attachments there? What about records kept in an online service, or the files you need to make sense of an export? A synced folder can copy a deletion just as easily as a new file. Keep recoverable copies or earlier versions that suit the records, and protect them from the same account or device failure that could take out the originals.

How much recent work could you afford to redo? How quickly would you need the records back? Let those answers guide how often you back up and test recovery. A file nobody can open hasn’t solved anything.

Don’t keep everything forever just because storage is cheap. Decide what you need, what you’re required to keep, and what should go. Saving useful knowledge shouldn’t leave you with a growing pile of personal information nobody’s looking after.

Explain the decisions, too.

Tell the next person why, too. If you ruled out a supplier because its system couldn’t export all your records, write that down. If a grant report uses an unusual definition, explain it and link to the requirement.

Otherwise, someone can spend weeks answering a question you’ve already settled. Or keep doing something that was only ever meant to get you through Friday.

Give each important set of instructions an owner and a date showing when it was last tested. Have someone else follow it. Fix the confusing parts while you still remember what went wrong.

Sometimes you get notice. Sometimes you don’t.

“Every nonprofit needs a plan to deal with an unexpected event, such as the unexpected departure of key leaders.”

National Council of Nonprofits

A retirement, move, or volunteer’s final term gives you time to practice. Let the next person do the job while the person leaving watches. Transfer the organization’s records, introduce important contacts, test access, and go through unfinished work. Agree on when the role ends and any follow-up help. Retirement shouldn’t come with a lifetime support contract.

For a sudden absence, keep a short emergency handoff ready. Who puts the plan into action? Who takes charge for now? Where are the instructions, and what’s due first? Choose who’ll keep staff, volunteers, customers, or members informed. Decide what can safely wait while you keep the essential work going.

An emergency handoff keeps the work moving. Choosing a permanent leader or transferring a business takes a separate succession plan. Record who can make those decisions and where the governing documents are kept.

If someone dies or becomes too ill to help, use the access you’ve arranged and the provider’s recovery process. Don’t make a grieving family your password recovery plan. They shouldn’t have to hand over a personal phone or private correspondence to keep the organization running. Save the organization’s records before closing accounts, and get advice if ownership or permission is unclear. Have one person handle necessary contact with the family, respecting their privacy and grief.

When someone leaves for good, record what’s been handed over, collect the organization’s property, and end their access when their role ends. Update recovery contacts and permissions, and change passwords or other credentials they knew where needed. Get the order right. Removing your only administrator before a replacement can get in may lock everyone out.

Keep the plan alive.

Make keeping the plan current part of someone’s role, with a backup, and have the owner or board review the remaining gaps. Make handoffs part of joining and leaving. Update the inventory when a service, payment method, device, or responsible person changes. Set a regular review so you catch what slips through.

Test one small job at a time. Can the backup find the insurance paperwork, restore a file, or prepare a routine task using only the instructions? Practice somewhere safe or stop before a real transaction. Note what failed, fix it, and try again. Include jobs that happen once a year. Getting through an ordinary week doesn’t prove you’re ready for year-end.

Begin with the three gaps that worry you most. Aim to finish that first pass with a list of priorities, an inventory, an emergency handoff, and tested instructions for those three jobs. Then keep going. The National Council of Nonprofits recommends preparing for unexpected leadership changes and training staff to cover one another’s work. That habit matters just as much for the quieter jobs that keep the doors open.

Keep what your people have built.

You can’t put twenty years of judgment and relationships into a manual. You can give the next person a place to start. And you can let someone take a vacation, retire, or step away without wondering whether the place will hold together.

Found a job nobody else can cover? Tell us where you got stuck. Fifth & Crowe helps Indiana County businesses, nonprofits, and churches find the gaps, organize essential records and accounts, and build handoffs their people can use. Start with the job or account that worries you most.

Let’s Make a Plan →

Sources & further reading

• U.S. Census Bureau — Indiana County business figures, 2023
• ARDA / U.S. Religion Census — Indiana County congregations, 2020
• TaxExemptWorld: Indiana County nonprofit directory (updated October 5, 2025). Includes religious groups, clubs, and foundations; listing does not confirm current activity.
• National Council of Nonprofits — Pennsylvania workforce survey, 2023
• United Way of Indiana County — 2025 summer-grant reporting requirements
• Library of Congress: Personal digital records
• Ready.gov: Business Impact Analysis Worksheet
• CISA: Small and medium-sized business resources
• CISA: StopRansomware Guide
• National Council of Nonprofits: Succession planning and leadership transitions