An innovative guide to how great nonprofits achieve extraordinary social impact. What makes great nonprofits great? Authors Crutchfield and McLeod Grant searched for the answer over several years, employing a rigorous research methodology which derived from books on for-profits like Built to Last. They studied 12 nonprofits that have achieved extraordinary levels of impact—from Habitat for Humanity to the Heritage Foundation—and distilled six counterintuitive practices that these organizations use to change the world. This book has lessons for all readers interested in creating significant social change, including nonprofit managers, donors and volunteers.

Leslie R. Crutchfield (Washington, D.C.) is a managing director of Ashoka and research grantee of the Aspen Institute. Heather McLeod Grant (Palo Alto, CA) is a nonprofit consultant and advisor to Duke University’s Center for the Advancement of Social Entrepreneurship and the Stanford Center for Social Innovation. Crutchfield and Grant were co-founding editors of Who Cares, a national magazine reaching 50,000 readers in circulation between 1993-2000.

Customer Rating:
Summary: Forces For Good
Comment: This book is one of the bet I have read re nonprofit organizations. Some eye opening observations by the authors. I especially liked the summaries at the end of each chapter as well as the chapters at the end that provide a checklist of "To Do" items. Well worth the read if you are just beginning a nonprofit or are an established organization.

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Customer Rating:
Summary: Work Smarter - Not Harder!
Comment: Forces for Good is an extremely readable book about what makes a great non-profit GREAT, and it is written by Leslie Crutchfield and Heather Grant, the two women who did the research and put their findings on paper so all involved in the non-profit sector might benefit from their conclusions.

Based on several years' research involving twelve of the most successful nonprofits in recent U.S. history, Forces for Good looks closely at the six practices that high-impact non-profits use to maximize social change.

What makes the book so engaging is that it is NOT about America's most well-managed non-profits, nor is it about America's best-marketed organizations with the most recognized brands. It's NOT even about the groups with the highest revenues or the lowest overhead ratios.

Rather, Forces for Good is about one dozen exemplary organizations that have created real social change - organizations that can be considered cousins to companies like Google or eBay in what they have accomplished. Very exciting stuff!

The best news is that the book is well-written and engaging - with several good stories and logical explanations, as well as authentic suggestions and even fantastical ideas (for those real dreamers out there who still like to read.) If you are a leader in the non-profit sector, I believe you will agree with me that Forces for Good not only makes sense, it opens up the mind to new ways of thinking and acting. It is a blueprint for turning your non-profit into a force for good.

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Customer Rating:
Summary: Beyond Mission and Vision
Comment: Proving that it takes more than a compelling vision to have great impact, the authors use persuasive stories gleaned from their research of 12 high-impact nonprofits to bring to life the six practice framework they identify as necessary to generate "Forces for Good" when creating societal change. As identified by authors, the six things that great social sector organizations do are:

1. Advocate and serve
2. Make markets work
3. Inspire evangelists
4. Nurture nonprofit networks
5. Master the art of adaptation
6. Share leadership

While these six practices, by name, are hardly specific enough to show the way for everyday application, the examples from the 12 organizations get beneath these generalizations, and the final chapter provides useful checklists for `How to Start' when putting the framework into practice. All-in-all, a well written, and thought provoking book that anyone involved with a nonprofit organization should take the time to read, as well as a book that offers thoughts for leadership of most `for profit' organizations.

Dennis DeWilde, Author of "The Performance Connection"

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Customer Rating:
Summary: A great asset for non profit leaders
Comment: Leaders of non profits are constantly asking themselves, how can we make our organization more effective and more secure. The authors set out to find commonality among disparate non profits, each of whom however is successful and highly effective. They succeed marvelously. From The Heritage Foundation to Environmental Defense (can you think of two more different non profits?), the six practices they outline can be models for each of us as we seek to make our organizations better, more effective, and more sustainable. It's an easy read. The concepts are clear and understandable. It's changed the way I look at my non profit leadership.

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Customer Rating:
Summary: Twelve High-Impact "Starfish"
Comment:
After completing five years of rigorous and extensive research on 1,435 "Fortune 500" companies during a 30-year period (1965-1995), Jim Collins and his associates selected only eleven that met their admittedly "very tough standards" for greatness. (Note: Collins also wrote Good to Great and the Social Sectors: A Monograph to Accompany Good to Great, published four years later.) Leslie Crutchfield and Heather McLeod Grant acknowledge that Collins' book was a "real inspiration to them" as they surveyed more than 2,000 CEOs of nonprofits before selecting only twelve for examination in their book, Forces for Good. As is true of several other outstanding business books, the work on this one was driven by a question: "What makes great nonprofits great?" What Crutchfield and McLeod learned is shared in this volume.

It is worth noting that, until recent years, most of the books and articles about nonprofits (at least those with which I am familiar) suggested that they had much to learn from exemplary for-profit organizations. It may have been Peter Drucker who first recognized that the business world could learn much of value from studying the best-managed nonprofits. He wrote an article published in Harvard Business Review in July of 1989, "What Business Can Learn from Nonprofits," that was later reprinted in Peter Drucker on the Profession of Management, in 1998. Drucker suggests that The Salvation Army is characteristic of the best nonprofit organizations, especially in terms of motivating knowledge workers and increasing their productivity. In successful nonprofit enterprises, "amateurs are being replaced with unpaid staff members, many of whom are managers and professionals in their for-pay jobs. They volunteer because they believe in the mission; they stay because they are given responsibility for meaningful tasks, held accountable for their performance and rewarded with training and the chance to take on more demanding assignments."

According to Crutchfield and Grant, high-impact nonprofits (i.e. those who have "created real social change...have come up with innovative solutions to social problems, and have spread these ideas nationally or internationally") demonstrate all or most of six practices:

1. They both advocate what is urgently needed and commit resources in response to that need

2. Are "pragmatic idealists" who combine social values with business "smarts" to "make markets work"

3. Build a community of evangelists as a powerful force for social change by communicating their mission, vision, and values as well as creating meaningful experiences

4. Adopt and maintain a network mind-set to share resources and empower other organizations

5. Constantly adapt and modify their tactics and initiatives while maintaining "the balance between stifling bureaucracy and unbridled creativity"

6. Support growth by developing high-impact leadership internally, widely distributing authority as well as responsibility among those involved in the given enterprise

Crutchfield and Grant devote a separate chapter to each of these six, then suggest in Chapter Nine how to put them in action. By now they have answered the original question. Great nonprofits are great because they are "working with and through others, as counterintuitive as that might seem. It's about leveraging every sector of society to become a force for good....[moreover] high-impact organizations bridge boundaries and work with others to achieve greater levels of change than they could accomplish alone."

What about all the other nonprofits? How can they make what Collins characterizes as a "leap" from being only mediocre or good to great? Stated another way, how can these other nonprofits also become effective agents of change and have high-impact? Those who lead them "need to bridge boundaries and understand how to influence without authority. They will need to see the larger system and their role in it - not just their own interests...[They must] be influential enough to convince the CEOs of global corporations to change their ways, and to make the business case, as well as the moral case, for doing so...Above all else, nonprofit leaders must learn how to share power an empower others - if they aren't already doing so." The six practices can help to guide and inform their efforts while leading the change initiatives that are needed. What to do and where to start? For specific and practical advice, please see Figures 9.1-9.6 inserted sequentially throughout pages 214-220. That advice is best revealed within the narrative so I shall say no more about it.

Because the nature of philanthropy is changing as donors seek more evidence of impact from their donations, even the high-impact nonprofits must make adjustments to sustain their effectiveness and thereby their appeal to benefactors. "Rather than just providing services or a basic charity, they're doing much more. In the process, they are redefining what it means to be an effective nonprofit." Keep in mind that in this context, Crutchfield and Grant are talking about the twelve exemplary nonprofits. Even they must complete the transition from the old paradigm to the new paradigm. (Please see Exhibit 9.8 on page 223.) "Non profits operate at the intersection of society's major sectors. The best of these organizations take advantage of their unique role and their unprecedented opportunity to create greater impact. To win at the social change game, it's not about being the biggest or the fastest or even the best-managed, nonprofit. The most powerful, influential, and strategic organizations [begin italics] transform others [end italics] to become forces for good."

The importance of adaptability cannot be exaggerated. At one point in their narrative, they refer to The Starfish and the Spider: The Unstoppable Power of Leaderless Organizations in which Ori Brafman and Rod Beckstrom examine the impact of decentralized networks. "Spider organizations have rigid hierarchies, top-down leadership, and centralized decision-making" whereas "Starfish [organizations] are highly decentralized, relying on peer-to-peer relationships, widely distributed leadership, and collaborative communities united by shared values. Decapitate a spider and it will die; with the headless starfish, cut off an arm and it will regenerate into a new arm while the old arm grows into a new starfish. That is why Crutchfield and Grant view the starfish model as a perfect metaphor for nonprofits. Hence the title of this review.

Those who share my high regard for Leslie Crutchfield and Heather McLeod Grant's brilliant book are urged to check out the aforementioned Drucker article as well as Braufman and Beckstrom's book. Also, Drucker's Managing the Nonprofit Organization: Principles and Practices, Tom Ralser's ROI For Nonprofits: The New Key to Sustainability, a Dean Spitzer's Transforming Performance Measurement, and Enterprise Architecture As Strategy co-authored by Jeanne W. Ross, Peter Weill, and David Robertson.

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