The author, a foundation director for almost thirty years, takes readers behind the scenes of the funding process — and does so with humor, generosity, and respect, while reminding us that "real change in the world comes not from grandiose granting guidelines, but from the perseverance and imagination of those trying to penetrate the granting process in order to do good for others"....

The Foundation Center's Jean Johnson reviews a profile of the McKnight Endowment Fund for Neuroscience which, for those interested in learning how one family foundation was able to leverage a relatively small investment into significant impact on a single field, is downright inspirational....

In his sixth book, Piasecki, founder and president of a management consulting firm that specializes in corporate environmental concerns, argues that corporations need to develop products that embody the growing social and environmental consciousness of their customers....

Few American businessmen in the first quarter of the 20th century had a higher profile than Julius Rosenwald, vice president and treasurer and then chief executive of Sears, Roebuck, and fewer still could match his passion for social change or his ability to harness the wealth of others to bring long-term philanthropic projects to fruition.... 

Karoff, who spent twenty-five years in the for-profit world, is now a self-proclaimed "salesman of philanthropy"; the founder and chairman of The Philanthropic Initiative has served on the boards of more than thirty nonprofits has gained a unique perspective on how private and corporate philanthropy can be harnessed to create a better world....

In Made to Stick, a book inspired by Malcolm Gladwell's The Tipping Point, Chip Heath, professor of Organizational Behavior at the Graduate School of Business at Stanford University, and Dan Heath, consultant at Duke Corporate Education, endeavor to identify the traits of stickiness and demonstrate how they can be used to generate unforgettable messages....

For Salesforce.com founder Benioff, corporate philanthropy starts with an involved, impassioned CEO committed to doing more than simply writing checks, and if he had his way all CEOs would follow his lead. In fact, many have, including the eighteen contributors to The Business of Changing the World, including the executives of businesses as diverse as GlaxoSmithKline, Cisco Systems, and Starbucks....

Algernon Austin reviews two books that show readers how to craft fundraising appeals that lead to real donations; in different ways, both authors provide advice designed to make your message stand out in an information-saturated world....

Acacia Graddy-Gamel reviews the assistant professor of sociology's analysis of the evolution of charitable giving in the workplace over the last eighty years and changing notions of community through the lens of the United Way, the largest and oldest federated giving vehicle in the country and an organization that has had a near monopoly on workplace giving for decades....

The biggest challenge in running a nonprofit organization in the first decade of the twenty-first century, says Wilcox, is that various "elephants in the room" make it almost impossible for nonprofits to question organizational norms and performance, which in turn makes it difficult for them to remain average, much less achieve greatness....

Ruth Dawson reviews the compelling memoir by Swanee Hunt — the daughter of oil magnate H. L. Hunt — about her family, her public life as an academic, advocate, philanthropist, and author, and a complex inner life....

The collection of essays provides a thorough analysis of the professional assets that drive nonprofit leadership, as well as an examination of the role of corporations in remedying global economic disparities at a time when for-profit organizations can no longer afford to promote the bottom line as their sole raison d'être....

Chait, Ryan, and Taylor explore three governance models — fiduciary, strategic, and generative — designed to help nonprofits build more satisfied and effective boards and strike a balance between opportunity and capacity....

Axelrod, a veteran fundraiser and trainer, shows how the fundraising process can be transformed from a necessary chore into an enjoyable experience....

The Foundation Center's Jalylah Burrell reviews veteran nonprofit leader Fine's first book, which explores how "connected activism" can transform NPOs into true facilitators of social change....