Pathways to Nonprofit Excellence - by Paul C Light (Paperback)

About the Book

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Fourth in a series of reports on the changing nature of public service in government and the nonprofit sector, Pathways to Excellence focuses on a unique survey of contemporary thinking about creating effective nonprofit organizations. Based on interviews with 250 l...

Book Synopsis

Fourth in a series of reports on the changing nature of public service in government and the nonprofit sector, Pathways to Excellence focuses on a unique survey of contemporary thinking about creating effective nonprofit organizations. Based on interviews with 250 leading thinkers from the worlds of philanthropy, scholarship, and consulting, as well as 250 executive directors of some of the nation's most effective nonprofits, the book argues that there is no one best way to higher performance. Although higher performance clearly requires a commitment to excellence, it can be achieved along more than one pathway using one of several different strategies. Pathways to Excellence shows that every nonprofit organization can improve--no matter how well or poorly it is currently performing--often by taking simple first steps up a development spiral to high performance.

Review Quotes

"If you have considered what distinguishes some nonprofits as excellent or how some nonprofits becmae excellent, then Paul C. Light's more recent research, reported in Pathways to Nonprofit Excellence, is important reading" --Lynn K. Jones, DSW, CSWM, "Administration in Social Work", 1/1/2003

"Pathways to Nonprofit Excellence is written in an engaging manner, and the interviews with thought leaders are worth a read on their own....Nonprofit trustees, managers, donors, and anyone else with more than a passing interest in organizational effectiveness are likely to find it useful. The book would also be an interesting addition to any graduate course in which performance or capacity are addressed, and perhaps as an indtroductory reading assignment for a nonprofit management class to set the context for discussions about organizational effectiveness." --Beth Gazley, School of Public and Environmental Affairs at Indiana University, "Unspecified Book Review"

About the Author

Paul C. Light is the Paulette Goddard Professor of Public Service at New York University. He is also Douglas Dillon Senior Fellow at the Brookings Institution, where he founded the Center for Public Service. Light is the author of numerous books on public service and management, among them Pathways to Nonprofit Excellence (2002), Government's Greatest Achievements (2002), Making Nonprofits Work (2000), and The New Public Service (1999).