Customer Reviews

The Complete Guide to Nonprofit Management (Wiley Nonprofit Law, Finance and Management Series)

5 star:		(2)
4 star:		(0)
3 star:		(2)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(2)

 

 

After reading several books and on-line articles on non-profit management, I have found this book to be one of the most helpful that you can find. It has everything from strategic planning, to board and staff relations. What a great book! Even with my years of experience in working with non-profit organizations I still found this book to be very helpful.

My sense is that this book is aimed at larger and more well funded non-profits than I have experienced. There are many references to "have the staff do it". The non profits that I have experienced and tried to help organize have had at most one staff person. Thus much of the advice is aimed at a different organization than these. For larger organizations (budget over $50,000) this book offers some helpful advice. I found the section on organizing meetings (or conventions) as being particularly helpful.

This was a text for a graduate class in non-profit management. It was far better than the other text, and some chapters were very helpful. It would be better served as a reference book for an executive library than to read cover to cover.

My book is missing pages 203-234. This is ridiculous! How the heck could this happen? Amazon, if you don't fix this I will never, I repeat, never use you again. I will remind everyone I know that you didn't take care of business. So fix it Amazon ! Stop accepting misprinted books from publishers. Don't you proof things before you sell them? Is this enough words yet?

I read this book for a class on nonprofit management, and I can safely say that I could not have finished it if I didn't have to! The material is horribly outdated to the point that about 20% of the books is irrelevant (it actually talks about 56k modems and typewriters if that gives you a hint). The grammar is surprising awful considering the audience it was written for. Paragraphs made of one run on sentence, unclear wording, unnecessary wordiness used to fill space and other low quality writing makes reading difficult. My final complaint is the price. Even at the Kindle's discounted price, the book is not worth what is being charged.

The book did include some relevant planning ideas and tax information, but it was nothing you would not learn in any basic management book. The worst part of all is the fact that a considerable chunk of the material applies to for-profit business just as much as nonprofit. Where is the value of people management? What about organizing events to keep volunteers volunteering? Those questions are answered in the book, in all of ten pages. The bottom line is that it simply does not jump out of the pack of mediocre business books, in terms of nonprofit or for-profit relevance.

I purchased the Complete Guide to Nonprofit Management as a used textbook. When it arrived it was in better condition than I expected it to be. Because of them promptly shipping the textbook I was able to begin reading it prior to my class starting.