Beyond the Bottom Line How to Do More with Less in Nonprofit and Public Organizations

This book brings to the management of nonprofit organizations and public sector organizations the kind of concepts that have long been applied to commercial firms. Management thinking has long been concentrated on the problems of managing commercial organizations. Authors Sandler and Hudson set out to study the best managed nonprofit and government organizations and to determine what they did to achieve their success. The authors found that there is a close similarity between the management thinking of these organizations and that of profit-making firms. Each type of firm defined who their customers were and how to best serve them. They looked for ways of selling their particular product. They formed partnerships with other organizations in pursuit of their ultimate goals. They encouraged innovation among their workers. They diffused power down through the organizations to the lowest level possible. They created an atmosphere that made their workers feel valued. And they had extensive systems for communicating within and outside the organizations. The book develops these concepts in separate chapters and describes the organizations the authors study as examples. Sandler and Hudson are experienced writers who have produced a straightforward, non-technical work that analyzes the special problems and concerns that these organizations share and offers a set of effective organizing principles to improve their management.

Martin W. Sandler is the author of twenty-six books on a variety of subjects. An award-winning television producer as well, he was the writer and executive producer of the highly-acclaimed PBS television program Excellence in the Public Sector.
Deborah A. Hudson has worked on several projects for the Tom Peters Group. As a writer and producer of documentary television series, she has traveled widely in search of good stories. In researching Beyond the Bottom Line, she wandered behind the scenes at the San Diego Zoo, spent a day in a Federal prison, and interviewed the captain of the U.S.S. Enterprise (the aircraft carrier, not the starship).