Book Preview: “Forces for Good”

In the course of their research, Crutchfield and McLeod Grant dispel several ideas about what makes nonprofits effective. The authors tell us that early research on nonprofit effectiveness focused on three things: program replication — in the private sector this is the same as studying product development and distribution; building organizational capacity in order to increase a nonprofit’s impact; and seeking out management models in the private sector. These are all helpful ways to think about nonprofit management, Crutchfield and McLeod Grant argue, but focusing on them alone constitutes a failure to get the big picture.