Books: 'Nonprofit Management 101'

In the introduction to his new book, "Nonprofit Management 101," Darian Rodriguez Heyman, managing partner at the CODE Green Agency and former executive director of the Craigslist Foundation, shares a story about Bill Cosby.

Apparently, at one point while pursuing his master's degree, Cosby and his master- and doctorate-level classmates spent a frustrating afternoon debating the age-old quagmire, "Is the glass half full or half empty?" Afterward, he shared his frustration with his grandmother.

"Without missing a beat," Heyman writes, "his grandmother, with all of a third-grade education, hit him with a zinger he'd never forget: 'Well, that's easy. It depends on whether you're pouring or drinking.'

"They say that perception defines reality. I share this story with current and would-be fundraisers because I think all too often in nonprofit work, we think of ourselves as the drinkers, begging for alms so that we can go on about our work," he continues. "When in fact, we are the pourers, the nurturers of society — we do our supporters a great favor by providing them with a worthy philanthropic 
outlet for their positive intentions."

Here, Heyman talks more about the book.

FundRaising Success: Give us the "elevator speech" for this book.

Darian Rodriguez Heyman: "Nonprofit Management 101" offers practical tips and tools from 50 leading experts across 35 topics. It covers all aspects of nonprofit management and provides actionable, easy-to-implement solutions by practitioners, for practitioners. Instead of heady concepts and theory, it's full of clear, concise ideas intended for actual use.

FS: What was the impetus for compiling the book?

DRH: It's based on my time as executive director of Craigslist Foundation, where I helped start Nonprofit Boot Camp, a one-day conference that covered all aspects of starting and running a nonprofit. It became clear to me that there was a huge need to provide the 1.5 million-plus registered nonprofits in the country with practical tips and tools that would help them be more effective and efficient at building stronger communities, and perhaps more importantly that there was a huge network of capacity-building players out there that emerging leaders were unaware of.