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What have you read lately that you'd like to recommend to GEO members? Make a recommendation! |
Recently Recommended
The Starfish and the Spider: The Unstoppable Power of Leaderless Organizations.
Ori Brafman and Rod Beckstrom, Portfolio press, 2006.
The absence of traditional leadership and organizational structure can be an asset.
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The Nonprofit Mergers Workbook: The Leader’s Guide to Considering, Negotiating, and Executing a Merger. David La Piana. Amherst H. Wilder Foundation, Saint Paul, MN, 2000.
This workbook shows how mergers can be an important strategic tool for organizations focused on doing their best for their community. From assessing reasons and readiness, to finding a partner, to negotiating the best path, to budgeting and implementation, the author guides you through the maze of options. Full merger case studies, decision trees, 22 worksheets, checklists, tips, milestones, an extensive resource section and many samples—including the minutes of a completed merger negotiation—give you concrete assistance with your own merger plans and implementation. Be sure to also check out The Nonprofit Mergers Workbook, Part II: Unifying an Organization After a Merger.
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Strengthening Nonprofit Performance: A Funder's Guide to Capacity Building. Paul Connolly and Carol Lukas. GEO and Amherst H. Wilder Foundation, St. Paul, MN, 2002.
Funders who want to maximize their grantmaking are turning to capacity-building, funding core activities that help their grantees' organizations function well. Authors Connolly and Lukas synthesize the most recent capacity building practice and research into a collection of strategies, steps and examples funders can use to get started on or improve their funding to strengthen nonprofits. |
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Funding Effectiveness:
Lessons in Building Nonprofit Capacity.
Grantmakers for Effective Organizations; San Francisco 2004 John Wiley & Sons, Inc. / Jossey-Bass.
In today's uncertain environment, foundations and nonprofit organizations are under increasing pressure to focus on performance and results. In order to achieve their missions and effect lasting social change, nonprofits look for guidance and support from grantmakers dedicated to improving organizational effectivness. This book addresses such critical topics as relationship buiding, partner identification, the importance of research and analysis and evaluation. The book also describes the need to set clear goals and expectations, emphasizes the importance of creating a culture of measurement and contains numerous examples of valuable lessons learned. |
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Community Visions, Community Solutions:
Grantmaking for Commprehensive Impact
Joseph A. Connor and Stephanie Kadel-Taras
2003 Amherst Wilder Foundation
Fragmented problems and fractured resources. Power issues and turf protection. The appearance of collaboration without real substance. Small wonder so many funders get frustrated-- and so many community problems go unsolved. By focusing on solutions, helping communities uncover and explore their highest apsirations, and by supporting and sustaining sytematic, strategic efforts to reach them-- funders can be the lasting change they want to see. This book is for any funder to wants to encourage, enable and be a real part of community problem solving. Filled with fresh ideas, concrete strategies, wisdom from the field, compelling case studies, and contact information so you can find out more, this book provokes both thought and action, fosters new ideas, and leads to solutions. |
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Collaboration Handbook: Creating, Sustaining, and Enjoying the Journey. Michael Winer, Karen Ray. Amherst H. Wilder Foundation, Saint Paul, MN, 1994
This resource takes you step-by-step through the entire collaboration process. It shows you how to know if collaboration is the best way to accomplish your goals, how to get started and keep up the momentum, whether your collaboration has the necessary ingredients to succeed, how to manage the four stages of collaboration, and when it makes sense to test the waters with a pilot project. Included are a case study following one collaboration from start to finish; worksheets to help you solve problems, plan successful strategies, and document your progress; and helpful tip sidebars. |
Real Collaboration. David LaPiana. LaPianaAssociates, 2001. Web site: www.lapiana.org
This monograph, prepared for the Ford Foundation, is a guide for grantmakers on assisting with and evaluating collaborative efforts among grantees. It is being posted by permission of the Ford Foundation as a way to disseminate it more widely. |
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A Funder’s Guide to Evaluation: Leveraging Evaluation to Improve Nonprofit Effectiveness. Peter York. Fieldstone Alliance and Grantmakers for Effective Organizations. St. Paul, MN 2005.
Describes how forward=looking grantmakesr and grantees are leveraging their evaluations to improve effectiveness. Helps funders use evaluation to build the capacity of grantees. Inside you’ll learn:
- how “evaluative learning” facilitates ongoing improvement
- how to bridge the differences in what funders and nonprofits each need form evaluation
- how evaluation builds four critical capacities of organizational effectiveness—leadership, adaptive capacity, management and technical capacity. 13 specific evaluative learning strategies that funders can support.
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W. K. Kellogg Foundation Evaluation Handbook. W. K. Kellogg Foundation, Battle Creek, MI, 1998. Phone: 800-819-9997 Web site: www.wkkf.org
This handbook is guided by the belief that evaluation should be supportive and responsive to projects, rather than become an end in itself. It provides a framework for thinking about evaluation as a relevant and useful program tool. It is written primarily for project directors who have direct responsibility for the ongoing evaluation projects. However, it is also geared so that project directors will use this handbook as a resource for other project staff who have evaluation responsibilities, for external evaluators, and for board members. |
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Nonprofit Board Answer Book. Robert C. Andringa, Ted W. Engstrom. BoardSource, Washington, DC, 2001.
This book offers comprehensive coverage of the nuts-and-bolts information you need to build a quality board. Get answers to 60 of the most commonly asked questions about board operations, board structure, development, conducting meetings, board-staff relationships, financial oversight and more.
BoardSource Governance Series, various authors, BoardSource, Washington, DC, 2002. Web site: www.boardsource.org
These short books provide a solid base of information about nonprofit governance. The governance series includes Ten Basic Responsibilities of Nonprofit Boards, Financial Responsibilities of Nonprofit Boards, Structures and Practices of Nonprofit Boards, Fund-Raising Responsibilities of Nonprofit Boards, Legal Responsibilities of Nonproft Boards, The Nonprofit Board's Role in Setting and Advancing Mission, The Nonprofit Board's Role in Planning and Evaluation, How to Help Your Board Govern More and Manage Less and Leadership Roles in Nonprofit Governance. |
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Made to Stick: Why Some Ideas Survive and Some Die, by Chip Heath and Dan Heath, Random House, 2007.
Made to Stick is a book that will transform the way you communicate ideas. It’s a fast-paced tour of success stories (and failures). Provocative, eye-opening, and often surprisingly funny, Made to Stick shows us the vital principles of winning ideas–and tells us how we can apply these rules to making our own messages stick. |
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Weird Ideas that Work: 11 1/2 Practices for Promoting, Managing, and Sustaining Innovation, by Robert I. Sutton, Free Press, 2001. Seeking to make the case to colleagues for building a learning culture? A GEO member recommends this quirky business manual that advocates taking a nontraditional approach to innovation and management. Recommended practices include rewarding both success and failure and forgetting a company's past successes. |
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The Fifth Discipline: The Art & Practice of The Learning Organization. Peter M. Senge. Currency Doubleday, New York, 1994.
This ground breaking book introduced the disciplines of the learning organization, where people expand their capacity to create the results they truly desire, where new and expansive patterns of thinking are nurtured, where collective aspiration is set free, and where people are continually learning how to learn together. This book presents the case for organization-wide learning capabilities that are not possessed by traditional authoritarian, hierarchical organizations and challenges the reader that the changes required must be within ourselves, because organizations work the way they work because of how we think and how we interact. See also The Fifth Discipline Fieldbook: Strategies and Tools for Building a Learning Organization. Currency Doubleday, New York, 1994.
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The Starfish and the Spider: The Unstoppable Power of Leaderless Organizations.
Ori Brafman and Rod Beckstrom, Portfolio press, 2006.
The absence of traditional leadership and organizational structure can be an asset.
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Good to Great: Why Some Companies Make the Leap ... and Others Don't. James C. Collins. Harper Collins, New York, NY, 2001.
Collins and his team of researchers sort through a list of 1,435 companies, looking for those that made substantial improvements in their performance over time. They finally settled on 11 and discovered common traits that challenged many of the conventional notions of corporate success. At the heart of those rare and truly great companies was a corporate culture that rigorously found and promoted disciplined people to think and act in a disciplined manner. And don’t miss his more recent monograph, Good to Great in the Social Sectors. |
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Managing for Accountability: Preserving the Public Trust in Public and Nonprofit Organizations. Kevin P. Kearns. Jossey-Bass, Inc., San Francisco, 1996.
This book identifies the strategic issues related to accountability and outlines the effective tools and methods for implementing standards of responsibility and accountability. The author explains how to conduct an accountability audit that focuses on internal strengths and weaknesses and demonstrates how to use systems that will ensure that public and nonprofit organizations meet the expectations of the public. In addition, the book discusses ways that organizations can foster a culture of accountability using leadership strategies and employee empowerment. |
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Funder’s Guide to Organizational Assessment: Tools, Processes and their Use in Building Capacity Building, edited by [GEO’s own] Lori Bartczak, Fieldstone Alliance and Grantmakers for Effective Organizations, St. Paul, MN. 2005. In this book, funders, grantees and consultants will understand how organizational assessment can be used to:
- build the capacity of nonprofits
- enhance grantmaking
- improve organizational systems
- strengthen the nonprofit sector
- measure foundation effectiveness
Instructions are included for using four different grantee assessments from McKinsey, LISC, the Unity Foundation and the Babcock Foundation. Part Two of the guide describes tools for assessing foundation performance. A CD-ROM includes examples and adaptations of the tools. |
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Strategic Planning Workbook for Nonprofit Organizations, Revised and Updated. Bryan Barry. Amherst H. Wilder Foundation, Saint Paul, MN, 1997.
This classic workbook—now completely revised and updated—gives practical guidance through five planning steps. Reproducible worksheets help you develop the plan, involve others in the process, and measure results. Four planning methods show how to tailor the process to fit your organization's individual needs. Also included are: critical ingredients of a sound plan; a new, more detailed sample of one nonprofit’s strategic plan; and information on how multiple organizations, coalitions, and communities can use strategic planning. |
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Last updated: 14 August 2007
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