Resources about Management of Nonprofit Organizations

Summary:

An annotated list of some online services that are focused on the challenges of running nonprofits (mostly in the US)

Many parts of the job of running a nonprofit organization are little different from the things managers of any sort of organization do every day. There are some links to online resources about management in general at http://www.idealist.org/npofaq/0/1556.html. The list below links to online resources that are focused on the management of nonprofit organizations in particular.

Comprehensive Nonprofit Management Sites

Carter McNamara's Free Management Library includes explanations of scores of management issues for both nonprofit and for-profit organizations. (Search the index for "nonprofit" to locate items that concentrate on the nonprofit side of the question.)

http://www.managementhelp.org

• The "Free Nonprofit Micro-eMBA" (sm) presents materials from this site as an organized course the support organizational development. See http://www.managementhelp.org/np_progs/org_dev.htm

The Nonprofit Good Practice Guide is a comprehensive online resource directory and capacity building tool. Tips, articles and profiled links lead nonprofit managers to sources that contain information which can be applied to improving their organizations' performance.

http://www.npgoodpractice.org/

Idealist.Org's Nonprofit FAQ includes discussions of many management topics arranged in categories.

http://www.idealist.org/npofaq/management

McKnight Foundation toolkit
http://www.mcknight.org/resources/toolkit.aspx

Nonprofit.About.com is a commercial site with a lot of useful information, and a lot of advertising

http://nonprofit.about.com/od/nonprofitmanagement/

Guides for nonprofits in Canada are available from Charity Village.

http://www.charityvillage.com/cv/guides/guide2.asp

The online version of the Guardian newspaper in the United Kingdom has a special section on nonprofit and charity management.

http://society.guardian.co.uk/charitymanagement/

Similar resources for many other countries can be found in the list of Support Organizations published by Action Without Borders // Idealist.Org.

http://www.idealist.org/npofaq/12/8.html

Associations and Management Support Organizations

The membership of the Alliance for Nonprofit Management includes management support organizations (MSOs), consulting firms and individual consultants who work with nonprofits to build capacity.

http://www.allianceonline.org/

CompassPoint is a San Francisco based MSO that offers many online services useful to organizations anywhere. The Nonprofit Genie assists with searching CompassPoint's database for specific advice.

http://www.compasspoint.org/askgenie/index.php

The Society for Nonprofit Management is another MSO. On its website, there is a collection of links to materials addressing management issues; also the publisher of Nonprofit World, a bi-monthly magazine.

http://www.snpo.org/resources/links.php

In many US states, an association of nonprofits supports the field with advocacy and a menu of services. The National Council of Nonprofit Associations has online resources drawn from these organizations and a list with links their own websites.

http://www.ncna.org

Universities and Libraries

There are a large number of university programs in nonprofit leadership in the US (and increasingly in other countries as well). Graduate degree programs often publish online resources by faculty and students and the libraries at these institutions may offer online directories of useful materials as well. The Nonprofit FAQ has a list of links to US programs.

http://www.idealist.org/npofaq/0/1492.html

Some examples:

The Nancy Bell Evans Center at the University of Washington.

https://evans.washington.edu/research/nbec/web-resources.php

Western Connecticut University Library.

http://library.wcsu.edu/web/assistance/research/nonprofit/

The Utica (NY) Public Library.

http://www.uticapubliclibrary.org/non-profit/directory.html

Government Sites

FirstGov provides a gateway to the United States Government sites of interest to nonprofits (which include many management resources)

http://www.firstgov.gov/Business/Nonprofit.shtml

A large part of the framework within which US nonprofits operate is based on the regulations of the Internal Revenue Service. The IRS website offers links to relevant publications and forms.

http://www.irs.gov/charities/index.html

The National Association of State Charity Officials provides some guidance about the specifics of state regulations in the US and links to state government websites.

http://www.nasconet.org

Specific Management Topics

• Finances

Carter McNamara's "Basic Guide to Non-Profit Financial Management".

http://www.managementhelp.org/finance/np_fnce/np_fnce.htm

The Nonprofit Financial Center provides loans to Illinois nonprofits for capital projects. It has a good deal of useful information about nonprofit finances on its website.

http://www.nfconline.org/main/info/guides.htm

• Risk Management

Nonprofit Risk Management Center

http://www.nonprofitrisk.org/

Interactive Management Tools

The Innovation Network offers free (registration required) interactive tools for organizational self-assessment, planning, and evaluation.

http://www.innonet.org (use the Tools link in the left margin)

SmartChart from Spitfire Strategies is a planning tool for communications campaigns.

http://www.smartchart.org/

Newspapers, Magazines and Journals

Management ideas (and fads) change all the time. There are several periodicals that publish information that can help nonprofit leaders stay current with new developments and assess new techniques. They often also post content online alongside encouragement to sign up to receive the publication regularly (through the mail or via the internet). The Nonprofit FAQ includes links to many of these sites.

http://www.idealist.org/en/faqcat/90-3