Universities Agree to Guidelines for Nonprofit-Management Programs

An association of universities that offer courses on nonprofit management have released new guidelines devoted to shaping undergraduate study of the philanthropic world.

The guidelines, the first to focus on nonprofit-management studies at the undergraduate level, provide universities with advice both on how to educate students about the importance of nonprofit organizations and how to prepare them to be volunteers and employees at charities. Specific skills that future nonprofit employees need, according to the guidelines, include an understanding of how to set up a nonprofit organization, raise and manage money, lead staff members and volunteers, market one’s organization, evaluate success, and career advancement.

“Nonprofit management doesn’t have the same history as public administration or business management or sociology or any of the other disciplines,” said Russell Cargo, president of the Nonprofit Academic Centers Council, which has grown from 35 to 47 member universities in the past six years. “These guidelines begin to standardize and try to capture what this discipline really covers.”

The guidelines also suggest how professors of history, political science, and other fields might integrate discussions of nonprofit organizations into their classes.

“Nonprofits are playing such an important role in our society,” said Mr. Cargo, who is also the director of the nonprofit and civil society program at the Virginia Tech Institute for Policy and Governance. “But knowledge of how they relate to business and government and help sustain society is generally absent from undergraduate curricula.”

The Nonprofit Academic Centers Council also released an updated version of its 2003 guidelines for graduate study of nonprofit organizations.

The revised guidelines include expanded information on nonprofit finance and economic theory as it concerns charities. With nonprofit groups raising money from a wider array of income sources, charity leaders need to be more aware of how to balance private donations, government support, money from fees for services and other so-called earned income, along with other types of revenue, Mr. Cargo said.

The updated guidelines also advise graduate professors to provide students with comparative perspectives on philanthropy and civil society in different countries.

“This is not solely a U.S. phenomenon,” said Mr. Cargo.