Growing Pains, 5th Edition

Chapter 11Building Sustainably Successful Nonprofits

In the late 1990s, one of the authors (Yvonne Randle) made a presentation to the California Association for the Education of Young Children (CAEYC) titled, “Business is NOT a bad word.” This title was chosen because our experience suggested that some nonprofit leadership teams believed (and some actually said), “We are not a business. We are a nonprofit, and that is different.” While it is true that nonprofits are somewhat different from their for-profit “cousins,” they are, in fact, “businesses” that compete for people and resources (dollars) and face similar challenges as they grow. They come in many forms—including membership-based organizations (such as the National Association of Women ...