Picture a small nonprofit with $180,000 in the bank, losing $12,000 a month. The main funder has gone. Everyone on the board knows it.

January. The board agrees to give it one more quarter. Nobody wants to be the person who says the word.

March. A $50,000 grant for the youth literacy program quietly covers two payrolls. The plan is to put it back. That grant was restricted, and the restriction doesn't disappear because payroll is due.

June. The treasurer is looking at a $14,000 payroll tax deposit and a $9,000 invoice from a vendor who has been patient for months, and pays the vendor. It feels decent. It's the one decision in this story the IRS can collect from a volunteer personally, dollar for dollar, and it survives bankruptcy.

August. The chair emails supporters to say the organization is "exploring its options." Within a month, three monthly donors have stopped giving and two have called the state attorney general's office.

October. There's $72,000 left. The motion to dissolve passes, five votes to two. The minutes record the vote and nothing else: no financial projection, no dissent, no mention of the lawyer the board relied on.

Eighteen months later, the organization still exists on paper, penalties are accumulating, and one former director is still taking the phone calls.

A second board faced the same numbers and voted in January. It had $108,000 more to spend on its people, its donors, and an orderly ending. That difference wasn't the crisis. It was the delay.

This book is written for the volunteers who end up having to make that decision.

It starts with eight financial signals that separate a rough patch from a real ending, beginning with the one number every board should be able to state: how many days of unrestricted cash it has. It lays out the five paths honestly (turnaround, merger, program transfer, dormancy, and dissolution) with a matrix to score each one against mission, money, and liability, including when a recovery plan is realistic and when it's wishful thinking.

Then comes the part most boards learn too late. It covers how to raise the subject without a leak, and the order in which staff, clients, funders, volunteers, and the press should hear. It names the five decisions in the final months that create personal exposure for directors, and explains how to write minutes that document deliberation, dissent, and reliance on advisers, so they protect the board rather than incriminate it. It walks through the dissolution roadmap in sequence: the resolution, the plan of dissolution, attorney general notice, creditor notice and the claims window, and the state filing. Realistically, that takes three to twelve months, not one meeting.

On the money side, it covers creditors in priority order, the four lawful paths for every restricted fund, endowments, and how to vet the organization that receives your remaining assets. It explains the single checkbox that makes a final Form 990 actually final. For staff, it covers WARN thresholds, final pay, benefits, and retention pay for the people who stay to the end. It includes the donor letter and when to send it, and the ethics of one last appeal. It also covers the program transfer agreement, the records that must outlive the organization and who keeps them, and the chapter nobody else writes, on grief in the boardroom, the founder, and ending in a way that honors the work.

Grab the book, and before your next board meeting, work out one number: how many days of unrestricted cash you really have.