Strategic 'Retire & Renew': A Charity Service Portfolio Review for Leaders

As a charity leader, you know the quiet burden: a service you keep running, not because it’s thriving, but because closing it feels harder. Outcomes may be slipping, demand might have shifted, and it's quietly consuming resources that could deliver greater impact elsewhere.

'Retire & Renew' is the essential strategic discipline designed to stop this drift. It’s about taking an honest look across your entire charity service portfolio, making people-centered decisions about which services to scale, redesign, or compassionately close.

Below are five proactive steps to support a transparent and impactful service portfolio review.

1. Embrace proactive stewardship: schedule your charity service portfolio review

What happens

Too often, reviews are emergency responses, triggered only when a crisis hits.

What to do instead

Implement regular, strategic portfolio reviews as a standard governance item. Define clear, agreed-upon criteria upfront, consider strategic fit, measurable impact, equity, cost-effectiveness, and lived-experience feedback. This shifts the conversation from crisis management to intentional, impact-focused leadership.

2. Align decisions with mission: use shared, evidence-based criteria for charity services

What happens

Without a common framework, portfolio discussions often devolve into subjective debates.

What to do instead

Elevate discussions by agreeing on 4-5 criteria before the meeting, such as strategic alignment, demonstrable outcomes, equity, sustainability, and risk. Score each service against these benchmarks. This moves the conversation from "I feel" to "the evidence indicates."

3. Prioritise people: plan transitions with compassion and clarity

What happens

Service changes or closures, can cause significant distress to beneficiaries and frontline teams.

What to do instead

Approach transitions as part of critical service design work. Involve the people who use and deliver the service in mapping out who’s affected, exploring options for onward support, providing transparent communication plans, and developing risk mitigation plans. Person-centered approaches preserves dignity and trust.

4. Maximise impact: shift from outputs to comparative outcomes for charity programmes

What happens

Teams can become focused on volume-based outputs rather than assessing total impact.

What to do instead

Ask: "What difference is this service making compared to other existing or potential services?" Embrace comparative thinking to uncover where redesign, scaling, or reallocation of resources could generate significantly greater impact for your beneficiaries.

5. Lead with courage: normalise 'retire & renew' decisions in your charity

What happens

The difficult decision to close or significantly redesign a service can sometimes be seen as failure.

What to do instead

Frame 'Retire & Renew' as a core act of responsible stewardship. Make these decisions transparent, openly documenting the evidence, the rationale, and the outcome. This helps builds a culture of continuous learning, accountability, and trust.

Remember you don’t have to fix the whole portfolio at once, just start with the next review.

Change doesn’t start with a workshop; it starts with one honest conversation.

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Note: These insights are general guidance based on practitioner experience and are not legal or regulatory advice. Make sure you review your specific funder contracts and data protection policies (e.g. GDPR) before making significant changes to data collection or retention schedules. Examples are for illustrative purposes only; no official affiliation with the organisations or tools mentioned is claimed.