Nonprofit Management 101: A Complete and Practical Guide for Leaders and Professionals
Darian Rodriguez Heyman and Laila Brenner
576 pages, Wiley, 2019
So many of the bottlenecks and obstacles we face when seeking to meet mission are identical to those who toiled before us, yet until I created the first edition of Nonprofit Management 101, there was no front door to the Movement; no “Google for Good.” So, in pursuit of my life’s mission of “helping people help,” I created one. Initially it took the form of Craigslist Foundation’s Nonprofit Boot Camp, but even after 10,000 graduates in the Bay Area and New York City over five years during my tenure, it was clear we barely scratched the surface. Hence, the first edition of Nonprofit Management 101 was born almost a decade ago.
I mobilized more than 50 of the most renowned nonprofit experts, including Lynne Twist, Beth Kanter, Paul Hawken, Ami Dar, and many more, all of whom shared their hard-won, easy-to-implement tips, tools, and tactics in a format that focused less on what they had done, and more on what they learned and how it could benefit other leaders. Together, we boiled the ocean, covering all aspects of strategy and leadership, fundraising, marketing, board and volunteer management, operations, law and finance, and technology. Our collective goal was to create the bible of nonprofit management; the do’s and don’ts of social impact.
The new edition is now available and includes updates to every chapter, plus a few new chapters from some incredible leaders. That includes an inspiring introduction by CNN’s Van Jones—an excerpt of which follows—as well as a chapter on movement building from Fair Trade founder Paul Rice, a chapter on thriving as an ED from Joan Garry, technology planning from NTEN’s Amy Sample Ward, and more. I also added a select few partners to profile as key resources for nonprofit leaders, including the Stanford Social Innovation Review. Enjoy! — Darian Rodriguez Heyman
Lesson One: Steal
Steal! No, I don’t mean steal money. Steal ideas. Talk to other people who don’t work with you. If you go to New York to see your parents, look up the other groups working in a similar area. Go by, say hello. If you can’t meet with the executive director, that’s good, because if the nonprofit is more than five years old, the executive director likely has no idea what’s going on, anyway. So, don’t even try to meet with the ED. Talk to the program director. Talk to the deputy director. Talk to the receptionist. And steal ideas and brag on the people that you stole the ideas from.
If you go overseas, to Europe or Africa, make sure to go by some of the NGOs in other countries. It’s amazing how many problems have already been solved that you are sitting in, stewing in, and suffering through. Our first two years, 100% of all of the paperwork that we used—you know, to check people in and interview them—every single page we stole from a similar project in Los Angeles! And when I say stole, I mean, I went down there, I knocked on the door, I said hello, I told ‘em what we were trying to do. They were very friendly. They said, “This is our paperwork. Take it!” I said, “Thank you.” And I got a Bic pen, because we were poor— remember I told you we were broke. I got a Bic pen, and I wrote on the top of it, “Bay Area Police Watch,” and we photocopied that thing and used it for two years. We made sure to recognize their contribution, which left our new friends in LA feeling great, since they could say, “We’re now the thought leaders in the field; our model is being replicated.” Am I wrong? So, it’s good for them, and I’m not saying anything immoral here.
Lesson Two: Embrace Unlikely Allies
If you’re going to make a difference for the people who have the least human freedom and dignity—the ones who are trapped in poverty, addiction, and a broken criminal justice system—you’re going to have to work with people who don’t look like you, who don’t love like you, who don’t pray like you.
If you erase most of society from your list of allies, you’re left with you and your housemate, and that’s not going to work if you want to change the world! You need power, strength, and leverage, and that comes with numbers.
If you want to make true progress you have to work across all lines—class, gender, religion, race, politics, and more. And let it be known from the beginning that you will work with or against anybody to accomplish your vision and solve the problem you’re working on.
In my criminal justice and prison reform work, I said very clearly: I will work with or against any Democrat or Republican to get people out of prison, and that’s my stand.
The fight for human dignity and freedom for those at the very bottom of society is not a “progressive versus conservative” fight. It is not a “right versus left” fight. This is a right versus wrong fight. I’ve never seen a bird fly with only a left wing, and I’ve never seen a bird fly with only a right wing. The two sides will fight and disagree on many things. But to help the truly disadvantaged, both sides have a duty to come together.
At the core of conservative movement is the belief in liberty and the fight for individual rights and limited government. At the core of the progressive movement is the belief in justice and the fight to ensure that the most vulnerable among us aren’t run over by the most powerful. These two beliefs are what make our nation so great. We cannot have a successful society without both. If you have justice without liberty, you have totalitarianism and a government that takes away your rights. If you have liberty in a free market without social justice, you end up with poverty, pollution and corporate domination. That is why our kids recite a pledge that ends with “Liberty and justice for all” each morning. That is the genius of the American experiment— those two opposite concepts, working together. As much as we work against each other, at the end of the day we still need each other.
That’s why—as a strong progressive—I went ahead and worked with the Trump administration on three things: the opioid crisis, the creation of Opportunity Zones, and prison reform. I fought Trump on 97 other issues, but on those three I was willing to set our differences aside. My decision to do that pissed some progressives off. Their dismay and outrage hurt my feelings, but I had to do what I thought was right.
Folks say you have to make friends, but don’t forget that you also have to be willing to lose friends, too. You have to believe in your calling enough to let go of people’s hands when those hands are holding you back from what’s right. There have been times where I had to break away from my pack, break away from the people I loved and cared about most. Like when I challenged both the mainstream environmental movement and the traditional racial justice movement to come together under new slogans— like “green jobs not jails” and “green for all.” People on both sides thought I was crazy. The urban activists couldn’t understand why I was talking about climate change and polar bears. The green crowd liked my environmental message but couldn’t understand why I kept talking about people in prison. I said, “We don’t have any throwaway resources or species. And we don’t have any throwaway neighborhoods or children. It’s all precious. Let’s work together to create urban jobs in green industries.” A lot of my urban friends didn’t get it, and they walked away. But my stand helped to catalyze and grow the movement for green jobs. That led to $80 billion moving to green and clean solutions under President Obama.
There was another time when the NAACP, 100 civil rights and civil liberties groups, and even civil rights hero U.S. Rep. John Lewis denounced the First Step Act, a criminal justice reform bill that I was pushing hard to pass. I had to tell them they were wrong and carry on with what I believed was right. I am proud to say that our bill passed both the U.S. House and Senate by a landslide, and Trump signed it. Now thousands of people are coming home from the federal prisons who would otherwise have been stuck there for years or decades.
The messy truth is that you don’t just need to love yourself. You need to love yourself enough to know when it is time to walk beyond the folks who have walked with you in the past. You have to know when to put your own calling first—which requires loving and trusting yourself on a really deep level.
Lesson Three: Do Less
When I first came into this movement, we named our nonprofit after Civil Rights heroine Ms. Ella Jo Baker, who once said: “Until the killing of black men, black mothers’ sons, becomes as important to the rest of the country as the killing of a white mother’s son, we who believe in freedom cannot rest until this happens.”
This mantra rang loud in my head all throughout my early career, “We who believe in freedom cannot rest. We cannot rest, we cannot rest…” Until I hurt myself. After years of burning the candle at both ends, working around the clock, never taking a break or vacation, never stopping to care for myself because I put the work ahead of everything else—I broke. Physically, emotionally, psychologically, and spiritually. I had completely burned out and didn’t recognize it. It took me a couple years of counseling, therapy, and self-care before I could return to doing this work at my full strength.
So, I want to say to you clearly now—don’t let this happen to you. You have emotional and physical needs that you need to put first. You have to find time to recharge and be your best self, because this work is a lifelong commitment. And if you don’t bring your best self to the table, you won’t be able to persist and stay the course for the long run. You simply cannot change the world if you don’t take care of yourself in the process. We who believe in freedom have to rest. We have to rest.
In Conclusion: We Need You
The words I’d like to leave you with are: we need you. We’re facing difficult days in our country and in the world. And we need you—fighting for what is right, devoting your career to making a difference in the nonprofit sector—to revive what is best about the United States and the world.
In our movement, we tend to forget who we are, the legacy that we are carrying out, the shoes that we’re standing in, the call that we’re answering. Dr. Martin Luther King never gave a speech called, “I Have A Complaint.” He had a dream, and you have dreams. You have big, beautiful dreams. You will not be able to meet them alone. You need friends, you need solidarity, you need partnership, you need a movement. But in difficult periods like the one we are living through, that’s when there are opportunities for sheroes and heroes to step forward. And I want you to be the people who in the difficult times stood up for this country, for the just and equitable world we all know is possible, and for the values you hold dear.
It is in that spirit that I encourage you to stay the course, to work across lines—past left and right, past black and white and everything else—to make progress and get back to the very basics of who we are as people. People who stand for something greater than themselves. People who understand that at the end of the day our love, our hope, our faith, our commitment, is stronger than anything standing in our way.
Peace and Love for One Another,
Van