I never cease to be amazed by the potential for thinking up new ideas for income-generation among the nonprofit organizations I work with, like the hostel for young homeless people that also runs a budget funeral business, or the learning disability charity that runs an insurance company specializing in covering nonprofit risks.

Charities and other nonprofit organizations should be run on business-like lines, because they are actually businesses — they provide services or products, they employ people, they use resources, they need money to run.

However, many nonprofits do not think of themselves this way, and there are obviously important differences in motivation between a for-profit entrepreneur and a social entrepreneur.

Equally, there are dangers in getting carried away with the ideas of business and applying them indiscriminately, so the authors of this book set out to "produce a down-to-earth toolkit to help social sector leaders hone their entrepreneurial skills and, thereby serve their social missions more effectively." They have succeeded well in their task.

Essentially, the authors put a nonprofit spin on the methods of the private sector — devising strategies; identifying markets; setting up an organization to service "customers"; calculating risks; working out where the resources are coming from; setting prices. The latter topic is debated in a section on how to price a service for maximum social impact. Many people make an uncritical assumption that charitable activities should be free at the pointy of delivery, but there are compelling arguments that people place more value in what they pay for, however little, as well as issues involving the dignity of poor people forced to accept handouts. Nonprofits are good at working out the cost of a service, but what is it actually worth?

There is a particularly good section on accountability. The private sector is accountable to stockholders and banks, but social entrepreneurs may have many more stakeholders — the beneficiaries of a charity, staff, funders, the people who live in a community, those who are concerned with the common goals of assessing an actual social issue or a common need. The authors provide useful advice on defining who your stakeholders are and how to create an accountability strategy, but are realistic enough to give useful pointers on how to combat the downside of satisfying the aspirations of a diverse stakeholder group.

This is a book to refer to again and again, to consult when you're despairing of turning your hare-brained ideas into reality, or determined to clarify what your organization is trying to do, or wondering how you can build that elusive income stream to make it all happen. It even tackles the awkward question of what to do if your organization starts to generate taxable profits! (I can tell you, this is a real problem for one of my clients.) The answer, of course, is to pay up: the tax people like it, the accountants are relieved, and you have still generated more for your beneficiaries than if you had done nothing in the first place.

Although written by different experts and ranging widely over a number of topics, the book adds up to a coherent whole. In addition, there are practical examples scattered throughout the text and an accompanying Web site — www.enterprisingnonprofits.org — provides a variety of useful extra resources.