8 Books for Nonprofit Professionals to Read This Year
People who work in the nonprofit sector are passionate about helping others, so it’s no surprise that many are eager to share knowledge with their peers in the form of books. These insights can help elevate the industry and inspire even greater change.
No matter what you’re looking to achieve at your nonprofit or in your own career, there’s no shortage of excellent books that can help. Here are eight of the best nonprofit books you can read this year.
1. How to Start a Nonprofit That Will Change the World: A Comprehensive Guide to Assist Founders in Navigating the Hidden Obstacles of Building & Leading a New Nonprofit Organization
Authored by May L. Harris, an attorney specializing in nonprofit law, How to Start a Nonprofit That Will Change the World offers a step-by-step walkthrough of creating and managing a nonprofit organization. If you’re working at a newly founded nonprofit or are in the early stages of starting your own, this guide provides tips on everything from formulating a mission statement to creating a business plan and establishing a strong board of directors.
2. Big Bets: How Large-Scale Change Really Happens
In Big Bets: How Large-Scale Change Really Happens, Dr. Rajiv Shah, President of the Rockefeller Foundation, argues that in the nonprofit world, bold plans for creating large-scale change have an advantage over less-ambitious plans. Described as “part career-sweeping memoir, part inspirational playbook,” Dr. Shah’s book can teach you how to make and win these “big bets” at your own nonprofit.
3. How to Save the World in Six (Not So Easy) Steps: Bringing Out the Best in Nonprofits
Backed by the author’s 25 years of nonprofit experience, David M. Schizer’s How to Save the World in Six (Not So Easy) Steps outlines how nonprofits can build support for their mission using “the six Ps:” Plan, Persevere, Prioritize, Pivot, Publicize, and Partner. Incorporating Schizer’s six Ps into your nonprofit’s approach can help you better understand, approach, and achieve your goals.
4. Room at the Table: A Leader's Guide to Advancing Health Equity and Justice
Room at the Table by Dr. Renée Branch Canady draws upon years of research to make the case that viewing diversity, equity, and inclusion through the lens of equity is essential to creating real change. Even if your organization doesn’t operate in the healthcare space, the book’s exploration of leading with authenticity, acting courageously in the face of institutional racism, and moving equity forward can inform and inspire.
5. Innovation for Social Change: How Wildly Successful Nonprofits Inspire and Deliver Results
In Innovation for Social Change, Leah Kral breaks down hands-on design thinking strategies and techniques for helping nonprofit professionals unlock innovative potential within their own organizations. The book includes six principles for increasing innovation, nonprofit case studies on innovation in action, and a guide to focusing your efforts.
6. Choose Abundance: Powerful Fundraising for Nonprofits — A Culture of Philanthropy
Choose Abundance opens with the claim that the one thing holding most nonprofit’s fundraising initiatives back is a scarcity mindset. Author Laurie Herrick seeks to help nonprofit leaders break out of this mindset with skill-building exercises, examples, and actionable tips on how to identify abundance and use it to shift your organization’s fundraising strategy from transactional to transformational.
7. Chasing Success – The Challenge for Nonprofits
As she transitioned away from leading Every Child Succeeds, the nonprofit where she’d served as President for over 20 years, Judith B. Van Ginkel began to take a broader look at the organization’s successes and shortcomings. These reflections led to Chasing Success, which serves as both a candid case study of the challenges faced by one regional nonprofit and a fascinating lesson in nonprofit administration and best practices.
8. The Slow Lane: Why Quick Fixes Fail and How to Achieve Real Change
Social entrepreneur and Ashoka Fellow Sascha Haselmayer encourages readers to “avoid the speed trap” in The Slow Lane, which offers a five-step process for creating lasting change. Never shying away from admitting how difficult real change is to achieve, the book is packed with real-world examples and cautionary tales.
If you enjoy these nonprofit books, be sure to suggest them to your team members and peers. And if you want to take your team’s learning and development efforts to the next level this year, explore discounted LinkedIn Learning Solutions for nonprofits.
