February 12, 2009 | Read Time: 2 minutes
NEW BOOKS
Nonprofits and Business
edited by Joseph J. Cordes and C. Eugene Steuerle
The editors of this collection — Joseph J. Cordes, director of the School of Public Policy and Public Administration at George Washington University, and C. Eugene Steuerle, vice president of the Peter J. Peterson Foundation, in New York — seek to “consider new developments in the relationship between nonprofits and business ventures, and the adoption of business-like practices by nonprofits.”
The first section of the book examines economic, legal, and other factors that influence an organization’s identity as a “social enterprise.” The author of one chapter, Dennis R. Young, director of the Nonprofit Studies Program at Georgia State University, defines social enterprise and identifies six ways businesses and nonprofit groups engage in it, as when a nonprofit group undertakes a money-making project to increase net revenue or when a corporation, while seeking profits, devotes some of its resources to social programs as part of a competitive strategy.
The second section explores “institutional arrangements that mix and match for-profit and nonprofit elements in response to changes in the environment and organizational identity,” such as hybrid organizations involving cross-ownership between nonprofit and for-profit businesses, partnerships involving separate nonprofit and corporate organizations, and the “double bottom line” investment strategies of some foundations, wherein doing good is as important as earning money.
The final chapters consider how nonprofit groups have become more businesslike by strategically tracking results and becoming more competitive in attracting qualified employees. The author of the final chapter, Eric C. Twombly, director of organizational studies at KDH Research and Communication, a public-health research group in Atlanta, predicts that the jobs of nonprofit managers and frontline staff members will become more complex and similar to jobs in the for-profit world, and that as nonprofit groups become more businesslike, they may face higher salary expectations from prospective employees.
Publisher: Urban Institute, 2100 M Street, N.W., Washington, D.C. 20037; (202) 261-5790; fax (202) 833-6231; http://www.urbaninstitute.org; 296 pages; $29.50; ISBN 978-0-87766-741-4.
