Mission: Resources

Process Guide by Gary Stern is published by Jossey-Bass for The Drucker Foundation for Nonprofit Management. It is part of a self-assessment process that is more general than this organization effectiveness analysis. The assessment deals with Drucker's five most important questions:

• What is our mission?
• Who is our customer?
• What does the customer value?
• What are our results?
• What is our plan?

Financial Management: Resources

Internet Nonprofit Center (INC)
www.nonprofits.org
How to Read a Nonprofit Financial Statement
Advises reader to pay attention to three numbers:

• from the balance sheet — total assets
• from the income and expense statement — salaries
• from the income and expense statement — percent spent on fundraising

Article gives The National Charities Information Bureau's requirements for percent of funds spent on program activities (60%) and fundraising (25%). There are other important funding relations than should prove useful to an organization. This site also contains news, programs for nonprofit organizations, a nonprofit locator, nonprofit FAQ, INC Bulletins, and a Nonprofit Library.

Evaluation and Performance Management: Resources

Outcome Measurement Resource Network
national.unitedway.org
This is the site of the United Way of America's outcome measurement initiative to measure the impact of United Ways. In November of 1999, nearly 400 United Ways had or required or were planning to require agencies they fund to implement program outcome measurement. In 1996, United Way published Measuring Program Outcomes: A Practical Approach, which is described on their web page as "...a step-by-step manual for health, human service, and youth- and family-serving agencies." They have also produced Measuring Program Outcomes Training Kit, which is used to deliver hands-on training for agency staff and volunteers.

Organizational Structure: Resources

RACI
Organizations have structural deficits that result in personal ill feelings among and between staff, management, the board and volunteers. Many times the confusion is caused by misunderstandings about who is responsible for what.

Bolman and Deal, in their 1987 book, Modern Approaches to Understanding and Managing Organizations, present the concept of RACI when writing about responsibility charting. The R in RACI stands for responsibility; the A for who approves; the C for who gets consulted; and the I for who gets informed. Organizations run ineffectively if they have not clarified the responsibilities of their staff and leadership. It doesn't take much to imagine what happens when two people each believe that they have the responsibility for the same thing or when each believes that the other has the responsibility. A similar problem occurs when someone who expected to be consulted is, in fact, informed.

External Environment: Resources

McCambridge, Ruth, Mary F. Weis, "The Rush to Merge," The New England Nonprofit Quarterly, Spring 1998.

Anon, "The Bend in the Road: Merger, Transfer of Assets, Dissolution," Center for Nonprofit Management, No. 22, May, 1998

Resources: General

Nonprofit Online News
www.gilbert.org
News of the Online Nonprofit Community
This site gives the news on nonprofit organizations and provides an opportunity to submit news articles to be published. Articles and announcements are published by day but not every day.

The Management Center
www.tmcenter.org
The mission of the Management Center is to be a resource for nonprofit management support in Northern California. Because of the Internet, nonprofits in areas outside of the Bay Area can become associate members and benefit from their services. They are a nonprofit organization founded in 1977, helping nonprofits manage better for over 20 years.

The Management Center has an on-line Nonprofit Assessment Tool. It is a free 8 part, 80-item questionnaire, by which organizations can measure their capacity and performance in the following areas:

• Administration and Leadership
• Board of Directors
• Community Relations and Marketing
• Finance
• Human Resources
• Planning
• Program
• Plant and Equipment

The Tool will generate an individual report for each user, based on her or his answers to the questions. This customized report specifically interprets the user's answers to every one of the 80 questions.

Innovation Network, Inc.
www.innonet.org
KIDS COUNT Network Self-Assessment Tool is a voluntary planning and assessment tool for any KIDS COUNT project. It contains five sections that represent the five components of the program. They are:

• Data collection and analysis
• Communication and dissemination
• Policy analysis
• Community and constituency mobilization
• Fund Development/sustainability

The Foundation Center
www.foundationcenter.org
"The mission of the Foundation Center is to foster public understanding of the foundation field by collecting, organizing, analyzing, and disseminating information on foundations, corporate giving, and related subjects. Our audiences include grantseekers, grantmakers, researchers, policymakers, the media, and the general public."

The Foundation Center has information on grantmakers, an online library and online training, e.g. proposal writing course, guide to funding research, and orientation to grantseeking. There is also a marketplace for ordering electronic resources, training courses, publications and seminars.

Also useful on this site is the abridged text of Philip Bernstein's Best Practices of Effective Nonprofit Organizations. This can be found in the Foundations' Online Bookshelf section.

The Michigan Nonprofit Association
www.mna.msu.edu
The Michigan Nonprofit Association has a training resource catalog that lists the address, telephone number, website address and a short description of sources of assistance for organizations with training needs. The organizations are local (MI) and national.

GuideStar
www.guidestar.org
Guide star is "the donor's guide to the charitable universe." It is a searchable database of more than 640,000 nonprofit organizations in the United States. Charities can be found by subject, state, zip code, etc.

Resources: Bibliography

Bernstein, Philip. Best Practices of Effective Nonprofit Organizations: A Practitioners' Guide. This book is out of print and not available from the publisher but organizations, such as the Foundation Center, may still have copies.

Bolman, Lee, Terrence Deal. Modern Approaches to Understanding and Managing Organizations. San Francisco: Jossey-Bass, 1987.

Knauft, E. G., Renee A Berger, Sandra T. Gray. Profiles of Excellence: Achieving Success in the Nonprofit Sector. San Francisco: Jossey-Bass, 1991.

Gray, Sandra Trice, Associates. Evaluation with Power. San Francisco: Jossey-Bass, 1998.