I like to lean on Michael Watkins’ book “The First 90 Days” when I onboard into a new organization. I have found his STARS model helpful, but the more I have used it, the more I have realized it isn’t the perfect fit for a non-profit situation. Watkins built the STARS model to help new leaders diagnose the situation they are stepping into: startup, turnaround, accelerated growth, realignment, or sustaining success. The model assumes for-profit authority structures. Move into a non-profit, particularly an association, and two of the categories do not translate cleanly. There is also a unique situation in the non-profit space.

Start with startup. While non-profits start all of the time, the majority of them start small and grow through volunteer labor, so the first time they hire a CEO or ED, that person will often be fractional. For a full-time CEO, if startup dynamics appear at all, they show up inside a single program or initiative, not at the level of the organization you were hired to run. Watkins wrote for founders and division heads standing something up from nothing. That is rarely the job on day one in this sector.

Turnaround is where the model gets interesting. Non-profits do land in genuine trouble: falling membership or donors, a financial crisis, a governance breakdown serious enough that the board wants decisive action. What does not carry over is the execution Watkins prescribes. A corporate turnaround leader typically has authority a new non-profit CEO does not have. You answer to a volunteer board that must approve major changes, and often to stakeholders or members that expect to be consulted. Move fast and unilaterally in that structure and you do not get a turnaround. You get a fight with your board, and you lose the credibility you need to make change. Unless a board has given you an explicit, unusual mandate to move fast on your own, true turnaround is the rare exception in this sector.

Realignment absorbs most of what would otherwise get labeled turnaround. Even when the diagnosis is that something needs to change quickly, the tactics still need to look like realignment: build the case publicly, bring the board and key stakeholders along, spend the political capital on buy-in before you spend it on the decision itself. Realignment is the default mode for association CEOs, including in a lot of situations that look like turnarounds on the surface.

Accelerated growth is also rare right now in the association space. Most dues-funded, membership-based organizations are managing flat or declining membership, not a growth curve that requires new hires and scaled systems every quarter. The category still belongs in the model for organizations that are genuinely growing. It is just not the situation most association CEOs are walking into this year.

Sustaining success holds up as written. If you inherit a strong organization and your job is to protect what works while finding the next level, that looks the same in an association as it does in a company.

Then there is the situation Watkins does not name: following a founder, or a long-tenured CEO. This is not an organizational-trajectory category like the other four. It is about who came before you. It still belongs in the conversation, because it changes how you diagnose everything else. Even in an organization that is successful on paper, a long predecessor tenure often hardens decisions into “how things are done here,” whether or not they still work. You inherit systems and habits that look, on the surface, like a turnaround situation: outdated processes, inertia, a staff that has not been asked to change in years, but the political risk is great. This situation almost always calls for realignment tactics: name what needs to change, then spend real time building the case and the buy-in before you act.

That leaves association CEOs with something closer to four situations, not five, plus a modifier that can attach to any of them. Startup: rare, and mostly irrelevant at the organizational level. Turnaround: real, but narrow, and nearly always better executed as realignment. Realignment and Sustaining success: unchanged. Following a founder or a long-tenured predecessor sits underneath all four and pushes most situations toward realignment execution, regardless of what they looked like from the outside on day one.

I tried to find a new cute acronym, but failed. It is not five parallel categories. It is four, with an overlay. It is a diagnostic: what is the actual state of the organization, and how long did the last person hold this job.

Watkins built STARS for leaders who inherit authority. Nonprofit CEOs inherit permission and have to keep earning more of it. That significantly changes how the model applies.