Benchmarking for Nonprofits
By Jason Saul; 112 pages; published by Amherst H. Wilder Foundation
Once upon a time there was a charitable organization with a mission to help the needy, educate children, protect battered women, (insert your cause here). Then there were two, and then ten, and today North America is home to more than one million nonprofit organizations, more than 160,000 of which are in Canada. Somewhere along the way, organizations realized that, in order to stay relevant and competitive, they needed to start employing practices already common in the business world; practices such as creating logic models, strategic planning, and more recently, benchmarking. Benchmarking is the process of measuring an organization's business processes against leaders in any industry to gain insights to improve performance. In other words, it involves studying the best solutions to common problems.
The good news is that if your organization has a strategic plan you are probably already engaged in benchmarking on an informal level. More formal benchmarking steps things up a notch and helps bring your strategic plan to life. That's where this book comes in. It offers a thorough explanation of benchmarking, followed by step-by-step instructions on how nonprofit managers can conduct benchmarking at the organizational, departmental, or program level. Examples, exercises and worksheets are provided to help get things started. Plus the book includes suggestions on how to conduct benchmarking with little or no budget, maintaining that all nonprofit organization - no matter what size or type - can and should be benchmarking on a continual basis.
The author makes a convincing case for why all organizations should be benchmarking. Lucky for readers, he supports his conviction by offering a clear and well thought out plan for how to make benchmarking an integral part of nonprofit operations. Although this isn't a new concept, it is relatively new to the charitable sector, and Benchmarking for Nonprofits is a valuable guide that will provide you with a better understanding of this fundamental business practice.
Buy the book:
Canada: buy through Amazon.ca: CDN$40.93
International: buy through Amazon.com: US$34.95
