Managing the Non-Profit Organization: Practices and Principles

The author of this book looks at the management of non-profit institutions, which have become the "growth industry" of America. The American Heart Association, the American Cancer Society, the Girl Scouts of the USA and the Boy Scouts of the USA, are the world's largest women's and men's organizations. They, are a few of the thousands of organizations that are a part of the non-profit sector, and have in the view of the author become America's "Civil Society". Drucker contends that if the health of a sector in the economy is judged by its share of the GNP, the non-profits do not look healthy at all. The share of GNP that goes to leisure has more than doubled in the last 40 years: the share that goes to medical care has gone up from two percent of the GNP to 11 percent; the share that goes to education, especially to colleges and universities, has tripled. Yet the share that is being given by the American people to the non-profit, human-change agents has not increased at all. In his view we can no longer hope to get money from "donors", they have to become "contributors". The non-profit are the American community. They increasingly give the individual the ability to perform and to achieve. Precisely because volunteers do not have the satisfaction of a pay-check, they have to get more satisfaction out of their contribution. They have to be managed as unpaid staff. But most non-profits still have to learn how to do this.

Table of Contents:
Part 1 The mission comes first and your role as a leader: the commitment; leadership is a foul-weather job; setting new goals - interview with Frances Hesselbein; what the leader owes - interview with Max De Pree. Part 2 From mission to performance effective strategies for marketing, innovation, and fund development: converting good intentions into results; winning strategies; defining the market - interview with Philip Kotler; building the donor constituency - interview with Dudley Hafner. Part 3 Managing for performance - how to define it, how to measure it: what is the bottom line when there is no "bottom line"?; don't's and do's - the basic rules; the effective decision; how to make the schools accountable - interview with Albert Shanker. Part 4 People and relationships - your staff, your board, your volunteers, your community: people decisions; the key relationships; from volunteers to unpaid staff - interview with Father Leo Bartel; the effective board - interview with Dr. David Hubbard. Part 5 Developing yourself - as a person, as an executive, as a leader: you are responsible; what do you want to be remembered for?; non-profits - the second career - interview with Robert Buford; the woman executive in the non-profit institution - interview with Roxanne Spitzer-Lehmann.