National Council of Nonprofit Associations

What if you could get 27 years of insight into nonprofit management over your lunch hour?  The Management Assistance Group has just released three free, easy-to-read booklets that help answer social justice nonprofit leaders’ most vexing questions about building effec

The Arkansas Diamond Standards™ provide the foundation for learning and for equipping nonprofit organizations to achieve their highest potential.

A resource of the Free Management Library, this checklist is a resource developed by staff and volunteers of the United Way of Minneapolis Area for internal use by nonprofit organizations. Management can use the checklist to identify their organization's administrative strengths and weaknesses. United Way staff and community volunteers intend this to strengthen their administrative capabilities. The checklist is not intended to be used as a tool for external evaluation, or by grantmakers in making funding decisions. This tool will be used to assist nonprofit organizations to gain a better understanding of their management needs and/or make improvements to management operations.

Effective Capacity Building in Nonprofit Organizations brings some common language to the discussion of capacity building and offers insights and examples of how nonprofits have pursued building up their organizational muscle.

Idealist.org/Action Without Borders has just launched two new, free online resources: the Nonprofit Human Resources Center and Volunteer Management Resources Center. They share a website called Common Ground that's full of helpful links and forums.

Donors tend to reward organizations with the "leanest" profiles. They also skew their funding towards programmatic activities. Nonprofit leaders, in turn, feel pressure to conform to funders' expectations by spending as little as possible on overhead-and by under-reporting overhead costs.

These behaviors describe a vicious cycle that has already been recognized in the nonprofit sector but which persists nonetheless. This article by William Bedsworth, Ann Goggins Gregory, and Don Howard offers steps towards breaking down the cycle, based largely on in-depth profiles of four youth-serving nonprofits that have managed to expand their capacities in critical ways despite the cycle's pressures.

StayExempt.org, which provides online IRS educational resources for tax-exempt organizations, now features five new mini-courses on the redesigned Form 990. These mini-courses provide information on preparing to file the new Form 990 as well as a walk-through of the entire form and frequently used schedules.

This tool, which provides a snapshot of organizational strengths and areas for improvement comes from Point K by way of the Innovation Network. It is free but requires registration.

An organization assessment is a data gathering and diagnostic process in which you step back from the day to day details of life in the organization and try to see the bigger picture, the trends, patterns and dynamics that have made the organization what it is today. The review can be broad, scanning all aspects of the organization (programs/services, structure, staffing, personnel, finances, internal systems, leadership, culture, etc.); or it can focus on selected areas, depending on the needs of the organization. In many cases, the organization assessment is the first step in a broader planning, change, or improvement process. Learn more about the process in an article from Carol Lukas, author of Consulting with Nonprofits.