Want to Achieve Impact in the Nonprofit Sector? Here's Why and How

Holiday travel—navigating aging airports, over rusting and pot-holed bridges—reminds us all of a national infrastructure desperate for repair. But an inspiring new book, "Engine of Impact: Essentials of Leadership in the Nonprofit Sector" (Stanford University Press), points to a more intangible infrastructure also needing renewal: the historical culture of America’s community associations and volunteer networks, people solving problems together, helping one another and addressing physical and spiritual needs of fellow citizens.

Authors William F. Meehan and Kim Starkey Jonker offer a call-to-action and a prescription for how to make a difference in rebuilding that: go serve the nonprofit sector—as a leader, board member or philanthropic contributor—and dedicate yourself to achieving change that really matters.

But why, I asked Bill Meehan in a recent conversation, should any talented leader on the rise do that? Why now?