Six Best Practices for Nonprofit Organizations

On March 14, 2008, the St. Louis Post-Dispatch published an article about a new book – “Forces of Good” by Leslie Crutchfield and Heather McLeod Grant – on the six best practices for nonprofit organizations.  Here is an excerpt from the text of the article:

• Advocate and serve. Crutchfield and Grant say the best in the world of nonprofits bridge the divide between service and advocacy. An example is the expansion of a North Carolina agency call Self-Help. It started as an agency assisting the needy in building houses and grew to become a powerful advocate for predatory-lending policy reforms across the country.

• Making markets work. Nonprofits succeed when they embrace an entrepreneurial spirit. Often disavowed by nonprofits, Environmental Defense partnered with fast-food giant McDonalds. The result was a dramatic reduction of the company’s solid wastes by encouraging the switch to environmentally friendly materials.

• Inspire evangelism. This is done when volunteers see their role beyond fundraising and advice to that of missionaries helping sustain the group’s mission. Habitat for Humanity exemplifies this through its meteoric rise from local Georgia roots to a global organization with a $1 billion budget that has successfully mobilized the public worldwide.

• Nurture nonprofit networks. Collaboration is not a common practice among nonprofits and yet the authors are emphatic that the best nonprofits thrive when they share their wealth, expertise and talents with their peers. The Exploratorium in San Francisco is cited for its collaborative success from its informal network.

• Master the art of adaptation. Demonstrating the willingness to make drastic changes to affect the overall goals of an organization is key to nonprofit success. Share Our Strength switched from direct mail to special events for fundraising, yielding extraordinary results for the organization.

• Share leadership. Recognized as one of the attributes that is paramount to becoming a force for good, sharing leadership is more about developing others and a team orientation within the organization and even the board.

For the entire article, see “Finally, the ‘Good to Great Book’ for non-profits” in the March 14, 2008, issue of the St. Louis Post-Dispatch.

DAB