Non-profit management

2003, 336 pages, Jossey-Bass/Pfeiffer, 989 Market Street, San Francisco, CA 94103

Background

As a nonprofit publisher, I sometimes scan databases for foundations who might support what we do. Often, I’ll find myself reading about a foundation whose values and scale seem totally compatible with our programs. Ah, an ally against the forces of ignorance! My heart warms, my hopes rise. Then, under “restrictions,” the red light flashes: “We do not fund publications.”

At the GIA conference in fall, 2002, we hosted a round table discussion with the euphemistic title "Adapting in a Time of Constraints." Essentially its burden was to ask: what should we, as funders, be doing for the cultural institutions with whom we work in the context of these extraordinarily difficult times?

November 2002, 72 pages. Human Interaction Research Institute, 5435 Balboa Boulevard, Suite 115, Encino, CA 91316, 818-386-9137, HIRILA@aol.com

Partnership as an Art Form: What Works and What Doesn't in Nonprofit Arts Partnerships should be required reading for funders who are encouraging their grantees to work more closely together in these difficult economic times.

2003, 130 pages.

2001, 139 pages including a bibliography. Stagewise Enterprises, Inc., 1160 Tonkawa Road, Suite 15, Long Lake, MN 55356.

Have you ever been frustrated by the way in which the abstract terms "capacity" and "capacity building" get tossed around in the nonprofit conversational world, wondering what exactly the speaker means? Then this book is for you.

2002, 60 pages, including appendices and bibliography. Commissioned by the New York State Council on the Arts and published in cooperation with Bright Hill Press.

July 2002, 48 pages. The Canadian Conference of the Arts, in collaboration with the Cultural Human Resources Council. CCA, 804-130 Albert St., Ottawa, Ontario K1P 5G4 Canada, 613-238-3561.

It has been almost two years since I first put fingers to keyboard to write about the rising tide of nonprofit reform. Hardly a day went by without hearing some new idea for improvement, whether embedded in new management standards, bounties for mergers and strategic alliances, or calls for greater "transparency." The problem facing individual nonprofits was not too little reform, but too much.