Nonprofit Management

Managers of nonprofits are frequent readers of business books. I often find colleagues at the bookstore browsing through the latest Jim Collins, or a classic by Peter Drucker. Unfortunately, there aren’t many Canadian how-to-manage-nonprofit books. There are several in the US but even there the pickings are slim.

Which is why I was stoked to recently find these blogs, www.leadingbydesign.blogspot.com, and www.advancingthenonprofit.blogspot.com. Neither are Canadian but they do meet a real gap I’ve been experiencing of late, a daily dose of thinking about management specific to the nonprofit sector.

These nuggets of wisdom I found particularly compelling. In a post labeled “Seismic Shift: The Changing Nonprofit Landscape” the Karen Eber Davis talks about some important dynamics we’re seeing in New Brunswick.

A Dual Focus on Outcomes and Savvy Communications. The outcome focus is not new, what is new is the understanding that outcomes alone are inadequate. If a tree falls in the forest and there is no one there, it doesn’t help your cause. Those who thrive will provide outcomes plus have the public relations savvy to successfully communicate why these outcomes are important in the noisy market.

Absolutely. You can’t have one without the other. The relationship between outcomes and communications is something we’ve been thinking about for a while. But I’m not sure we, as an organization (on individual levels we’ve had strong voices on both sides) ever fully acknowledged just how much of our focus should be shared between these two elements.

Over at Leading by Design, Anne Ackerson puts words on what all nonprofit people know to be true. That we live and die by the meeting,

Given the fact that nonprofits are all about people means that there's a ton of communication that must take place in order to nurture and maintain them, and service the constituents who need them.

Given that there isn’t a “nonprofit chamber of commerce” (we’re members in an actual Chamber of Commerce), these sites are an important way people in the sector stay connected, informed and motivated.