New Books

The Budget-Building Book for Nonprofits: A Step- by-Step Guide for Managers and Boards

By Murray Dropkin and Bill La Touche

Mr. Dropkin and Mr. La Touche, co-editors of the newsletter Nonprofit Report, claim that most non-profit organizations are subject to a greater degree of regulation and oversight than are businesses and that many managers of non-profit groups are puzzled by the complex accounting systems that are often needed to operate a charity.

The authors begin with a section on the basics of budgeting that includes definitions of operating, capital, cash-flow, and “opportunity” budgets. They explore the roles of board and staff members in establishing guidelines and priorities, explain how types of income affect a charity’s finances, and offer four strategies for crafting a comprehensive operating budget.

The book’s second section takes a nuts-and-bolts approach to implementing a budget. Worksheets outline the steps necessary to setting deadlines, making projections and revisions, and submitting the budget for board review.

Mr. Dropkin and Mr. La Touche stress that the best budgets are collaborative and somewhat fluid in design. “If it becomes clear as the year unfolds that the budget is not fulfilling its objectives, do not hesitate to modify it,” they advise.

The book concludes with budgets from hypothetical charities, and sundry checklists. Publisher: Jossey-Bass, 350 Sansome Street, San Francisco 94104-1310; (415) 433-1767; fax (800) 605-2665; World-Wide Web http://www.josseybass.com; 157 pages; $25; I.S.B.N. 0-7879-4036-4.

Fundraising and Friend-Raising on the Web

By Adam Corson-Finnerty and Laura Blanchard

Though “virtual” fund raising seems unlikely to supplant donations won from face-to-face encounters, the ease of using the Internet for commerce is likely to attract more and more donors to cyberspace, say the authors of this book.

“As personal banking, personal shopping, corporate purchasing, and entertainment all move to the Internet, so will charitable giving,” write Mr. Corson-Finnerty and Ms. Blanchard.

The authors, development officers at the University of Pennsylvania Library, worked for the last three years on methods to incorporate the World-Wide Web into their fund raising; this book delineates what they found to be effective. Though the authors gear their advice specifically to libraries, they write that their experiences should be germane to other non-profit organizations looking to solicit funds on line.

The book’s first section explores how to reap major gifts through World-Wide Web sites, from engaging donors’ interests in expensive projects — through virtual guided tours of planned capital improvements, for example — to thanking them with “electronic plaques.” The authors also cover on-line pledges and credit-card donations, and then try to brace the reader for the eventual arrival of “digital-cash” transactions.

Subsequent chapters offer examples of existing sites — such as those of the American Red Cross and of several public libraries — to which the authors give high marks for electronic fund raising.

The book’s final chapters focus on how to develop one’s own site and make it interactive and capable of accepting donations. The authors also detail the steps needed to create a “Web-enabled” CD-ROM — one that contains information from many sites but does not require Internet access to use.

The book itself includes a CD-ROM that provides links to the fund-raising sites described within. It is for use with the operating systems Windows 3.1, 3.1x, Windows 95 or Windows NT, Macintosh OS 7.1 (or later versions), and requires a World-Wide Web browser. Publisher: American Library Association, 50 East Huron Street, Chicago 60611; (800) 545-2433, ext. 7; fax (312) 836-9958; World-Wide Web http://www.ala.org/editions; 122 pages; $50 plus $7 postage and handling; I.S.B.N. 0-8389-0727-x.

1999 Corporate Giving Directory, 20th Edition

Edited by Lori Schoenenberger and Deborah Morad

This directory contains more than 1,000 profiles of U.S. corporate foundations and corporate-giving programs that contribute at least $200,000 annually, including in-kind support and donations.

The directory’s compilers report that such contributions totaled roughly $3.4-billion during the companies’ last reporting period.

Entries include the name of a contact person, how much the company gave away in recent years, its foundation’s assets, its giving priorities and lists of recent grants, corporate sponsorships, the geographical focus of the company’s giving, grant-making restrictions, and advice on how to approach the company with a grant proposal.

Data on companies are arranged seven ways, including by location and recipient type. Six indexes arrange officers and directors by such categories as birthplace and club affiliations. The publisher offers a complete data base of the directory or selected profiles on magnetic tape or diskette.

New to this edition are 43 profiles not listed in last year’s directory, an index to companies by application deadline, sample recent grants awarded by approximately half of the entries, and an essay on corporate giving by Jon Thorsen, director of development research at Princeton University. Publisher: The Taft Group, P.O. Box 33477, Detroit 48232-5477; (800) 877-8238; fax (800) 414-5043; e-mail galeord@gale.com; World-Wide Web http://www.taftgroup.com; 1,875 pages; $440; I.S.B.N. 1-56995-259-0; I.S.S.N. 1055-4998.