Managing the Non-Profit Organization: Practices and Principles

The author of this book looks at the management of non-profit institutions, which have become the "growth industry" of America. The American Heart Association, the American Cancer Society, the Girl Scouts of the USA and the Boy Scouts of the USA, are the world's largest women's and men's organizations. They, are a few of the thousands of organizations that are a part of the non-profit sector, and have in the view of the author become America's "Civil Society". Drucker contends that if the health of a sector in the economy is judged by its share of the GNP, the non-profits do not look healthy at all. The share of GNP that goes to leisure has more than doubled in the last 40 years: the share that goes to medical care has gone up from two percent of the GNP to 11 percent; the share that goes to education, especially to colleges and universities, has tripled. Yet the share that is being given by the American people to the non-profit, human-change agents has not increased at all. In his view we can no longer hope to get money from "donors", they have to become "contributors". The non-profit are the American community. They increasingly give the individual the ability to perform and to achieve. Precisely because volunteers do not have the satisfaction of a pay-check, they have to get more satisfaction out of their contribution. They have to be managed as unpaid staff. But most non-profits still have to learn how to do this.