Philip Greenspun
in a piece on Early Retirement neatly summarises my experience with a multitude of Not-for-Profits...
Non-profit organizations exist to provide their staff with great jobs and the fun of making decisions and spending money.
The folks who work at a non-profit organization are very interested in drawing a salary higher than their skills and working hours would command at a for-profit enterprise subject to competition.
They are not especially interested in efficiency or accomplishment.
If you've come from the commercial world, in which McDonald's must be ruthlessly efficient for fear of being destroyed by Burger King, working with or in the typical non-profit organization will likely drive you to insanity.
Funnily enough, this aspect, nor the consequential intense internal politiking, doesn't appear in the definitive book on the subject, The
The Complete Guide to Nonprofit Management by Smith, Bucklin & Associates.
The Complete Nuts-and-Bolts Guide to Managing Today's Bottom-Line Oriented Nonprofit Organizations
This significantly revised and expanded Second Edition of the highly popular how-to book identifies and addresses the unique concerns of nonprofit organizations. Cutting through the morass of mere theory, the experts at Smith, Bucklin & Associates, Inc., a leading nonprofit management firm, get right to actual practice with dozens of real-world examples and case studies, and up-to-date, vital, "combat-tested" strategies and techniques for dealing with virtually every nonprofit business management issue, including:
* The daily role of boards of directors
* Fund development and marketing
* Public and government relations
* Educational programs and certification
* Information services
* Human resources management
* Using the Internet
