Peter Frumkin‘s On Being Nonprofit: A Conceptual and Policy Primer (Harvard University Press, 2005) is, as its title states, a primer on the nonprofit sector. It explores what Frumkin describes as the four important functions that define nonprofits—delivering needed services, promoting civic engagement, expressing values and/or faith, and channeling entrepreneurial activities. The book also looks at the interconnectedness of the nonprofit, business,…
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Thomas Wolf’s book, Managing a Nonprofit Organization in the Twenty-first Century (Third Edition, Simon and Schuster, 1999), is an encyclopedic primer on nonprofit management that explains how to deal with organizational growth and change and that describes the challenges of working with volunteers, staff, and trustees. This book also deals with the emergence of profit-oriented ventures, changes in accounting…
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Edward Glaeser’s book, The Governance of Not-for-Profit Organizations: National Bureau of Economic Research Conference Report (University of Chicago Press, 2006), explores the pressures and challenges affecting nonprofit governance. Glaeser starts his book by asking, “What makes nonprofits different?” He answers that nonprofits have (1) tax privileges, (2) nondistribution constraints (i.e., they cannot distribute profits), and (3) no owners. He observes that these…
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