Managing the Nonprofit Organization: Principles and Practices by Peter F. Drucker

“Managing the Nonprofit Organization: Principles and Practices” is a book by world renowned management guru Peter F. Drucker.  Hailed by BusinessWeek as “the man who invented management,” Drucker directly influenced a huge number of leaders from a wide range of organizations across all sectors of society.

In 1990, there was a “management boom” going on among the non-profit institutions, large and small in the US.  The non-profit institutions themselves knew they needed management so that they could concentrate on their mission.  Yet little that was so far available to the non-profit institutions to help them with their leadership and management had been specifically designed for them.  Drucker saw there was a real need among the non-profits for materials that were specifically development out of their experience and focused on their realities and concerns.

Drucker saw in nonprofit groups a distinctively American innovation that could build community while providing valuable services and fostering innovation. Indeed, Drucker viewed nonprofit groups as leaders in the knowledge-driven enterprises that would characterize all economic activity in the future.*  Drucker also noticed that after forty years of successful development, the non-profit sector faced very big and different challenges.  The first was to convert donors into contributors.  The second was to give community and common purpose.  In this book, he showed how to manage the challenges by citing successful examples.  This book consists of five parts:

I)  The Mission Comes First – and your role as a leader
II)  From Mission to Performance – effective strategies for marketing, innovation, and fund development
III)  Managing for Performance – how to define it; how to measure it
IV)  People and Relationships – your staff, your board, your volunteers, your community
V)  Developing Yourself – as a person, as an executive, as a leader

In each part Drucker addresses the topic, followed by one or two interviews with a distinguished performer in the non-profit field.  Each part then concludes with a short, action-focused summary.  Leadership and innovation is heavily emphasized in arts management courses and programmes today.  Drucker starts the book with this topic and I have found his sharing is practical and thought-provoking.  I highly recommend this book to everyone on leadership role.  This book is easy to read and the principle are very practical which can apply in our day-to-day operation. 

Happy reading!

* Drucker's Contributions to Nonprofit Management, Leslie Lenkowsky, Bloomberg BusinessWeek, November 17, 2005.