Über die Autorin bzw. den Autor

BEN HECHT, JD, CPA, is an experienced nonprofit executive, author,and lecturer. In 2000, he and Rey Ramsey founded One EconomyCorporation, a national nonprofit dedicated to maximizing the powerof technology to expand opportunities for low-income people toimprove their standard of living. He currently serves as OneEconomy's President and Chief Operating Officer.
REY RAMSEY, JD, is a seasoned executive and social entrepreneur. Hecurrently serves as Chief Executive Officer and Board Chair of OneEconomy. From 1996 to 2000, the authors worked together applyingprinciples of dynamic management at The Enterprise Foundation andits network of 1,500 community-based organizations nationwide.

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Praise for ManagingNonprofits.org

"Hecht and Ramsey have hit a home run. ManagingNonprofits.org not only applies lessons learned from the dot.com world s use of technology and the Internet to the nonprofit sector but helps nonprofit managers to adapt the best new management and leadership practices to their efforts. It is an invaluable tool for helping nonprofits reshape their old ways of doing business."
Milton J. Little Jr.
Executive Vice President and Chief Operating Officer
National Urban League

"Ben Hecht and Rey Ramsey pull no punches in stating forcefully why non-profits have to modernize their approaches to management in the digital age. Lessons abound as to why this is so, and the authors new book presents them most effectively."
Lawrence M. Small
Former President and Chief Operating Officer
Fannie Mae

"This book is the only one on the market specifically designed to help nonprofit managers understand and harness the power of technology and the Internet to strengthen the organization and better serve customers. Start building your Digital Culture today by buying this book and giving it to your employees, your board, your funders."
Paul Shoemaker
Executive Director
Social Venture Partners

"This book is the road map to the 21st century that nonprofits so desperately need and have been waiting for. Any organization that aspires to a role in our changing economy will find in these pages the tools they need to embrace and leverage such change for positive growth. Ben Hecht and Rey Ramsey have combined vision along with practical experience to produce a book that will not only help organizations survive and get to scale, but will ultimately save lives through stronger communities."
Bill Shore
Founder and Executive Director
Share Our Strength

"The power of technology to help solve societal problems is awesome. But first, technology and the right applications must get into the culture and hands of our most committed and knowledgeable the not-for-profit sector and its legions of staff and volunteers. This exciting book shows the way."
Angela Glover Blackwell
Founder and President
PolicyLink

Aus dem Klappentext

Over the next few years, certain fundamentals about the way the nonprofit industry operates will change. The digital economy demands a new way of doing business for nonprofit and for-profit organizations alike. Only the organizations that understand and anticipate these fundamental changes will survive, and doing so means adapting. Utilizing new technologies, new sources of money, and new management techniques will be imperative to the nonprofit organization in the twenty-first century. ManagingNonprofits.org can help you make this transition.

This book shows any nonprofit how to thrive in these times of change. It enables nonprofits to harness the power of technology to strengthen the organization, to provide value-added products and services to an expanding customer base, and to adapt to new dynamic management practices.

Dynamic management is a continual process of organizational self-reflection and repositioning that enables organizations to embrace change, capture market opportunities, and serve customers. The precepts of dynamic management are designed for the everyday operation of nonprofit organizations, but are just as applicable to the biggest multinational corporations.

ManagingNonprofits.org is both a call to action and a road map for change. Each chapter defines and discusses an element of dynamic management and identifies situations in which digital issues will need to be addressed. In addition, the authors present core truths that they have found helpful in their day-to-day experience putting dynamic management techniques to work in nonprofits. Also included throughout the book are real-life examples of business leaders and nonprofit organizations that have successfully made elements of dynamic management a reality in their organizations.

ManagingNonprofits.org provides expert guidance and proven methods for bringing your nonprofit into the digital age and building an organization that doesn t fear change but thrives on it.

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ManagingNonprofits.org

Jossey-Bass

Chapter One

The 21st century will be a time of immense change for the nonprofit industry. In the coming years, the digital age will hit us in full force. Technology and the Internet will increasingly cause the same types of chaotic changes and market disruptions in the nonprofit industry that it continues to cause in the for-profit industry. Customers, who will become increasingly "wired," used to comparison shopping on Web sites, and accustomed to overnight delivery, will demand more products and services in more convenient ways. Dramatic infusions of new money from government devolution and philanthropy will foster unprecedented consolidation and competition in the industry.

Simply put, business will not continue as usual. At times like this, certain fundamentals about the way the nonprofit industry has operated will change. At a strategic inflection point, Intel chairman Andy Grove argues, the forces of change are so great that they can be fatal if not attended to. At those times, organizations that understand and anticipate these fundamental changes and learn how to operate in new ways will thrive. Those who maintain the status quo are unlikely to survive intact. This book is designed to provide a framework to help you navigate through the strategic inflection point when it hits your part of the industry and to build an organization that thrives on change.

UNDERSTANDING THE FORCES OF CHANGE

The fundamental forces of change facing the nonprofit industry fall into five related but distinct categories: technology, customers, money, competition, and choice. Although these factors have all been at work over the past decade to various degrees, most sectors of the industry have not had to face or have chosen not to face the consequences of these forces to date.

Technology

Leading nonprofits in the 21st century will require applying lessons learned from the dot.com world's use of technology and the Internet as a communications tool that efficiently moves information to fundamentally reshape old ways of doing business. What is this likely to look like? Nonprofits will scale their operations in ways never seen before. They will use their organization's information assets, often as the first-mover in their sector, to get to a lot of customers-both old and new-fast. They will be able to be both a "high-tech" and "high-touch" organization by combining physical qualities and information/digital assets. This approach will give them both a distinct competitive advantage and the capacity to act as a broker with traditional and new customers.

Nonprofits will embrace strategic alliances with value-added partners. Working with former competitors, friends, and even new for-profit and nonprofit organizations, they will build mechanisms to share information and knowledge with each other to enhance their collective competitive advantages. From these relationships, some existing organizations will likely become obsolete and replaced with new infomediaries who are able to play an enormous role in a particular sector by mining customer data and making customization of that data possible.

Technology and the Internet will enable organizations to redesign themselves from the inside out by creating new business processes and systems. With the Internet as their communications backbone, the knowledge required for innovation will flow freely from one employee to the next regardless of position within the organization.

Customers

Customer-led applications of technology and the Internet will force nonprofits to change if they want to attract, interact with, and retain their customers. Simply put, customers are fast becoming part of the Internet culture. Results from the U.S. Department of Commerce's most recent report on the digital divide show that computers and the Internet are rapidly becoming a part of every American's way of life. The data show that the overall level of U.S. digital inclusion is rapidly increasing. The share of households with Internet access soared by 58 percent, rising from 26.2 percent in December 1998 to 41.5 percent in August 2000. More than half of all households (51.0 percent) have computers, up from 42.1 percent in December 1998. There were 116.5 million Americans online at some location in August 2000, 31.9 million more than there were only 20 months earlier. The share of individuals using the Internet rose by 35.8 percent, from 32.7 percent in December 1998 to 44.4 percent in August 2000. If growth continues at that rate, more than half of all Americans will be using the Internet by the middle of 2001.

The rapid uptake of new technologies is occurring among most groups of Americans, regardless of income, education, race or ethnicity, location, age, or gender. Groups that have traditionally been digital "have nots" are now making dramatic gains. The gap between households in rural areas and households nationwide that access the Internet narrowed from 4.0 percentage points in 1998 to 2.6 percentage points in 2000. In rural areas in 2000, 38.9 percent of the households had Internet access, a 75 percent increase from 22.2 percent in December 1998. African-Americans and Hispanics, while still lagging behind other groups, showed impressive gains in Internet access. In 2000, African-American households were more than twice as likely to have home access than they were 20 months before, rising from 11.2 percent to 23.5 percent. Hispanic households also experienced a tremendous growth rate during this period, rising from 12.6 percent to 23.6 percent.

This Internet culture is about more than just access, however; it's about putting that access into action. More Americans are going online to conduct such day-to-day activities as business transactions, personal correspondence, research and information gathering, and shopping. Eighty percent of Internet users report that they regularly use e-mail. Low-income Americans are more likely than higher-income Americans to use the Internet for online coursework and local job searching. In fact, 45 percent of Americans who use the Internet at home and earn $10,000 to $15,000 use it to take online courses; 25 percent use it for local job searching.

What does all of this mean for nonprofits? It means that they will have to build new and different customer-centered relationships with their customers. These relationships will have to reflect where their customers are now, not where they have been in the past. The quantity and quality of communications will have to increase through creative and compelling applications of e-mail, instant messaging services, list serves, and Web sites. Products and services will have to be available where and when customers want them. Customers will want their interactions customized to fit their unique circumstances.

Money

An unprecedented amount of money has become available for investment in the nonprofit industry over the past decade. The devolution of power from centralized government at the federal and state level to local communities has literally flooded some sectors of the nonprofit industry with new money. Billions of dollars annually are being delegated to the local level to implement reforms of education, health care, energy conservation, affordable housing, and transportation. More often than not, government units are ill-prepared or too thinly staffed to do this...