The most recommended books about nonprofits

While governance is a key aspect of any board member's responsibilities, often nonprofit board members are surprised or even disheartened by the requirement to fundraise on behalf of the organization. Some people are afraid that they can’t ask for money or are uncomfortable asking certain people and decide they don’t want to serve on the board. While there are a lot of books on fundraising, Asking Styles helps board members identify their asking style and what would be the most effective fundraising methods for them. It also helps understand how others feel about fundraising and how to work as a team to bring the most success to the organization. The book is a short read but full of great examples and practical guidance. 

This book builds on the information provided by The Little Book of Boards by going into more details into the nitty gritty. This book addresses the legal responsibilities of the board risk management and ethics. It also has a chapter on financial statements and internal controls. Each chapter provides just enough details that the reader can start to get a great understanding of the big picture of a board member’s responsibilities. The book closes with a focus on change management and useful case studies to get the reader thinking about their responsibilities for the nonprofit organization. I’d definitely recommend reading this after the Little Book of Boards to continue to grow the knowledge base without getting overwhelmed.

Did you know that women excel when it comes to embezzlement?

It’s the one type of fraud that is more likely to be committed by a woman than a man. That’s why embezzlement is often referred to as pink-collar crime. But, as Paxton points out, the crime has more to do with position rather than gender as most embezzlement is committed by lower-level employees, such as the bookkeeper who runs the accounting and finance side of an office.

This is especially true in smaller businesses. Packed with numerous real-life stories, Paxton shares tips every organization should use to ensure this type of crime does not happen on their watch. She also is known for creating fraud-related hashtags, my favorite being #trustisnotaninternalcontrol.

This book posits that the most important function of an organizational leader is to create other leaders throughout the organization. That’s right…not problem-solving, not clever strategy, not vision but leadership development. That’s because those other aspects are “table stakes” for the game of leadership in today’s complex business world. What I like about this book is that it is based on a huge pool of data about what makes leaders effective in the 21st-century and many of the insights are drawn from leaders themselves….from the feedback they give when they evaluate other leaders using the Leadership Circle Profile 360° assessment. It’s a nice marriage of relatable info “from the horse’s mouth” and decades of leadership theory borne out by insights from the assessment of hundreds of thousands of leaders. If you want to very specifically know what it takes to be a 21st-century leader, this book is a… show more.

The Nonprofit Board Answer Book is a question-and-answer style book that takes the learnings from The Best of Boards one step further. It addresses board functions and structure with a section on board member selection and development. Oftentimes nonprofit boards aren’t intentional about these items. The Q&A addresses all the common questions that persons new to a board would ask or need to know. Board Source is a phenomenal organization whose aim is to help boards succeed. When I was researching governance for chapter 1 of my book, I cited several Board Source tools as they really do have the experience with nonprofit governance through their research. I love that each chapter of the text closes with suggested action steps to make the book more hands-on and practical. 

The Little Book of Boards provides a concise and easy-to-read overview of what are the responsibilities of a board member. It provides an excellent overview of the fiduciary responsibilities of the board and then the further responsibilities of someone who takes a leadership position. The appendices provide helpful guidance. When I was researching the nonprofit books out there for board members in preparation for writing mine, I found this one to be practical and well-written. Some books were too detailed but this one provided enough context for someone new to a board position. 

Money Well Spent may be the single best summary of principles for practical leadership for social change.

It is focused on one dimension of social change – philanthropy – but also serves as a general primer on disciplined and ethical social change strategy. Money Well Spent includes sophisticated discussions of goal-setting, issue analysis, evaluation, and investment. 

Brest and Harvey are two of the leading philanthropic strategists of our young century and Money Well Spent captures their experience with both depth and clarity. 

In Uncharitable Dan Pallotta challenges the way most people think about charity. 

Many people have been told that the less charities spend on overhead, fundraising, and salaries, the better the charities are. But this is not a healthy way to understand a charity’s impact, and Uncharitable refutes this myth. 

Pallotta describes what he calls an “economic apartheid,” a mindset that denies charities the critical tools that the for-profit sector is allowed to use without restraint: incentives to take risks, counterproductive limits on compensation, and moral objections to the use of donated dollars for anything other than program expenditures. 

I like this book not because Pallotta has a fully fleshed-out roadmap to energize the nonprofit sector, but because he is one of the few to articulate important problems facing the sector.

If there’s anyone who cares about effective graphic design, it’s direct-mail experts and fundraisers like Brooks. Brooks devotes about one-quarter of his book to the “design of fundraising”—how to use graphics to improve response rates. If folks can’t read your pitch because of poor design, all the words you write won’t make a difference. “It doesn’t matter how great a piece looks if it’s hard to read,” he says. He deflates designs that make the designer feel good, but make the reader toss the communication because it’s just too much work to figure out.

This is a wonderful and diverse cross-section of stories from a variety of African countries representing a thematic focus on a world facing Disruption, whether via climate change, global pandemics, or a plethora of crises, that challenges us all with the necessity to find ways to join with each other if we are to survive. Stand-out stories for me were Zambian author Mbozi Haimbe's "Shelter" (shortlisted for a NOMMO Award this year—best in African Speculative Fiction 2022) and Kenyan Idza Luhumyo’s "Five Years Next Sunday," winner of the 2022 Caine Prize for African Writing. I loved the vibrancy and range of these stories, all bristling with energy and providing novel ways of seeing and learning to confront our global challenges.