organizations

Forces for Good, Revised and Updated: The Six Practices of High-Impact Nonprofits by Leslie R. Crutchfield and Heather McLeod Grant
In the first edition of Forces for Good, the authors studied 12 nonprofits that achieved extraordinary levels of impact and distilled six counter-intuitive practices that these organizations used to change the world. This revised and updated edition explores how the recent economic and social upheavals has impacted those noteworthy organizations.

Leading Change, With a New Preface by the Author by John P. Kotter
Millions worldwide have read and embraced John Kotter’s ideas on change management and leadership. From the ill-fated dot-com bubble to unprecedented M&A activity to scandal, greed, and ultimately, recession—we’ve learned that widespread and difficult change is no longer the exception. It’s the rule. Now with a new preface, this refreshed edition of the global bestseller Leading Change is more relevant than ever.

John Kotter’s now-legendary eight-step process for managing change with positive results has become the foundation for leaders and organizations across the globe. By outlining the process every organization must go through to achieve its goals, and by identifying where and how even top performers derail during the change process, Kotter provides a practical resource for leaders and managers charged with making change initiatives work.

Leveraging Good Will: Strengthening Nonprofits by Engaging Businesses by Alice Korngold
Leveraging Good Will shows how nonprofit organizations can access the extraordinary resources of businesses, and how for-profits can benefit from partnering with nonprofits. Written by Alice Korngold – an expert in matching business professionals with nonprofit organizations – this important resource clearly demonstrates how nonprofits can gain valuable experience, expertise, relationships, and funding that will elevate and advance their organizations while businesses can build stronger relationships with the community and develop the next generation of leaders. Filled with illustrative examples and real-life success stories, Leveraging Good Will is an insider’s guide to what it takes for nonprofits to transform their organizations through partnerships with businesses. Step by step, the book outlines how to create a solid plan based on proven-in-practice techniques.

Managing Transitions: Making the Most of Change by William Bridges and Susan Bridges
From the most trusted voice on transition, this is a thoroughly updated and expanded edition of the classic guide to dealing with the human side of organizational change. Directed at managers and employees alike in today’s business world where constant change is the norm and mergers, redundancy, bankruptcy and restructuring have become common phenomena, this work addresses the fact that it is people that have to embrace a new situation and carry out the corresponding changes. This is an expanded and revised third edition with new introduction and afterword.

Self-Renewal: The Individual and the Innovative Society by John W. Gardner
“This is the most exciting and significant book that I have read in years. The subject is the self-renewal of societies and of individuals—why do some atrophy and decay, while others remain innovative and creative? There is no more vital problem than this, especially for an era of constantly accelerating change such as the present.” (L. S. Stavrianos, Northwestern University – Chicago Daily News)

The Fifth Discipline: The Art & Practice of The Learning Organization by Peter Senge
This revised edition of Peter Senge’s bestselling classic, The Fifth Discipline, is based on fifteen years of experience in putting the book’s ideas into practice. As Senge makes clear, in the long run the only sustainable competitive advantage is your organization’s ability to learn faster than the competition. The leadership stories in the book demonstrate the many ways that the core ideas in The Fifth Discipline, many of which seemed radical when first published in 1990, have become deeply integrated into people’s ways of seeing the world and their managerial practices.

In The Fifth Discipline, Senge describes how companies can rid themselves of the learning “disabilities” that threaten their productivity and success by adopting the strategies of learning organizations—ones in which new and expansive patterns of thinking are nurtured, collective aspiration is set free, and people are continually learning how to create results they truly desire.

The Resilient Sector Revisited: The New Challenge to Nonprofit America by Lester M. Salamon
The Resilient Sector Revisited updates the state of health of America’s nonprofit organizations that Lester Salamon recently completed as part of the “state of nonprofit America” project undertook in cooperation with the Aspen Institute. Contrary to popular understanding, Salamon argues, America’s nonprofit organizations have shown remarkable resilience in recent years in the face of a variety of difficult challenges, significantly re-engineering themselves in the process. But this very resilience now poses risks for the sector’s continued ability to perform the tasks that we have long expected of it.

Trust Matters: Leadership for Successful Schools by Megan Tschannen-Moran
Trust Matters offers educators a practical, hands-on guide for establishing and maintaining trust within their schools as well as providing information on how to repair trust that has been damaged. It outlines the five key elements on which individuals base their trust judgments (benevolence, honesty, openness, reliability, and competency) and explores the factors that influence the development of trust. The book explores the leader’s role in fostering high quality relationships among teachers, students, and parents and examines examples of positive outcomes of trusting school environments.

Uncharitable: How Restraints on Nonprofits Undermine Their Potential (Civil Society: Historical and Contemporary Perspectives) by Dan Pallotta
Pallotta TeamWorks was the for-profit brainchild behind several campaigns to raise funds for breast cancer and AIDS research and awareness, creating several nationwide, marathonlike events that raised millions. But its founder came under attack for violating the sacred premises of charitable organizations: low profile, low budget, and little or no profit. Pallotta turns on its head the assumption that charity and capitalism should be forever divided.

Don’t charitable causes deserve the same kind of competitive forces that work to get results in the for-profit sector? Wouldn’t social causes be better served if charitable organizations were headed by the kind of bright, aggressive executives that work in the for-profit sector? Pallotta traces the history of nonprofit organizations to Puritan notions of charity and self-denial. He also offers a detailed case study of TeamWorks and other trends in the nonprofit sector that only tweak around the edges of a system that is sorely in need of change if it is to deliver on its mission to improve social inequities or cure diseases. A passionate, thought-provoking look at the nonprofit sector. –Vanessa Bush

Why Nonprofits Fail: Overcoming Founder’s Syndrome, Fundphobia and Other Obstacles to Success by Stephen R. Block
In Why Nonprofits Fail, Stephen Block explains that many well-intentioned leaders hold on to views of their nonprofit organizations that perpetuate problems rather than help fix them. According to Block, the first step to success is to challenge one’s own personal paradigms and ideas and be open to unique and alternative approaches to solving problems. This much-needed book helps nonprofits get back on track and offers advice about the seven most common stumbling blocks, including: founder’s syndrome, fundphobia, financial misfortune, Recruitment disorientation, cultural depression in nonprofit organizations, self-serving political performance and role confusion between the board and executive director.