Managing the Nonprofit Organization | Notes & Review

Peter Drucker. Managing the Nonprofit Organization: Principles and Practices. HarperCollins, 1990. (235 pages)

“The ‘non-profit’ institution neither supplies goods or services nor controls. Its ‘product’ is neither a pair of shoes nor an effective regulation. Its product is a changed human being. The non-profit institutions are human-change agents. Their ‘product’ is a cured patient, a child that learns, a young man or woman grown into a self-respecting adult; a changed human life altogether.” (xiv)

“Non profits face very big and different challenges.” (xvi) “The first is to convert donors into contributors. … To make contributors out of donors means that the American people can see what they want to see — or should want to see — when each of us looks at himself or herself in the mirror in the morning: someone who as a citizen takes responsibility. Someone who as a neighbor cares.” (xvii) “Then there is the second major challenge for the non-profits: to give community and common purpose.” (xvii)

“The non-profits 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 paycheck, 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. And I hope to show them how — not by preaching, but by giving successful examples.” (xviii)

PART ONE: THE MISSION COMES FIRST and your role as a leader

1 – The Commitment

“The first job of the leader is to think through and define the mission of the institution.” (3) “A mission statement has to be operational, otherwise it’s just good intentions. A mission statement has to focus on what the institution really tries to do and then do it so that everybody in the organization can say, This is my contribution to the goal.” (4) “The task of the non-profit manager is to try to convert the organization’s mission statement into specifics.” (5) “But the goal can be short-lived, or it might change drastically because a mission is accomplished. … The mission is forever and may be divinely ordained; the goals are temporary.” (5)

“One of our most common mistakes is to make the mission statement into a kind of hero sandwich of good intentions. It has to be simple and clear.” (5)

…TO BE CONTINUED…MORE NOTES COMING…

~ by VIA on August 22, 2009.