All Business: Nonprofit Organizations

Lester M. Salamon, a leading authority on the nonprofit sector, has joined forces with more than a dozen other experts and the Aspen Institute to produce this volume, an integrated, authoritative assessment of the state of nonprofit America and the key trends affecting its evolution.

Nonprofit America is one of the least understood segments of national life, yet also one of the most crucial. Author Lester Salamon, who pioneered the empirical study of the nonprofit sector in the United States, provides a wealth of new data to paint a compelling picture of a set of institutions being buffeted by a withering set of challenges, yet still finding ways to survive and prosper. These challenges, however, are posing enormous risks to the historic character and role of nonprofits. Operating in an increasingly competitive environment in which traditional sources of government and philanthropic support are difficult to maintain, nonprofits have turned decisively to the market. In the process, however, they may be losing their raison d'#65533;tre, sacrificing their most crucial missions, and risking loss of public understanding and support. To remedy this situation, Salamon recommends a "renewal strategy" for the nation's nonprofit sector that begins with a wider articulation and application of the sector's "value proposition"--the attributes that continue to make it deserving of the special privileges and benefits it enjoys. Salamon's pithy and accessible book is perfect for nonprofit boards, leaders of charitable foundations, government officials, and students of the nonprofit sector and of public policy, as well as anyone looking for guidance on how we go about dealing with public problems in America's increasingly collaborative system of governance.

The Nonprofit Almanac, Ninth Edition, completely updated to include the most recent data available, assembles into one compact and well-organized volume an accessible and reader-friendly bible of data on America's extraordinary and rapidly growing civic sector.

Peter Frumkin focuses on four important functions that have come to define nonprofit organizations. The author clarifies the debate over the underlying rationale for the nonprofit and voluntary sector's privileged position in America by examining how nonprofits deliver needed services, promote civic engagement, express values and faith, and channel entrepreneurial impulses.