In 1995, the Washington Council of Agencies (WCA) launched an annual award for excellence in nonprofit organization management, naming a winner and four runners-up each year. An umbrella organization of nonprofits in the Washington, D.C., metropolitan area, the WCA conceived the award not only as a vehicle for recognizing and rewarding outstanding organizations, but also as an educational opportunity. By going through a rigorous, three-stage application process, WCA leaders reasoned, nonprofit staff members would learn what makes an organization truly excellent, as opposed to merely competent. The Washington Post began sponsoring the awards program in 1999.

The program has been managed since its inception by Susan Sanow, WCA's deputy director and an experienced nonprofit manager. Over the years, Sanow listened to the deliberations of the selection committees, kept records, and noted which characteristics of contestants made them winners in the broadest sense —— not only award recipients, but also exemplary organizations from which others might learn. (Full disclosure: the reviewer was a member of the selection committee in 2001 and 2002).

One result of Sanow's work is Winning Ways: Great Nonprofit Management Ideas from the Washington Post Award for Excellence in Nonprofit Management. Sanow's co-author is Kelly Sweeney McShane, who currently chairs the WCA's Board of Directors, and who was executive director of the organization that received the award the first year it was offered.

The book is divided into eleven chapters. The first is an introduction and the last is a useful collection of sample documents, including a board member agreement, a development planning calendar, and a dozen others. Each of the chapters in between is devoted to a single management area such as planning, fiscal management, board development, and resource development.

It is the organization of material within chapters that is the genius of this book. The authors begin each chapter by outlining "The Basics —— Building for Excellence." The basics cover the systems that nonprofit organizations need to have in place in order to serve their constituents in a responsible manner, and in order to be taken seriously in their communities. The authors then proceed to a section called "Rising to Excellence," in which best practices of winning organizations are outlined in bullet points. These are followed by a chart or charts with columns headed "Challenge/Opportunity," "The Winning Way," "Case Studies," and "Cost."

In the chapter on human resources, for example, the chart lists the "Challenge/Opportunity" of rewarding staff in times when salaries cannot be increased. Under "The Winning Way," several ideas are listed, including providing time off, providing free services, and giving staff gift certificates, theater tickets, etc. In the column headed, "Cost," we can see how much each solution is likely to cost, with rows of dollar signs such as might appear in restaurant reviews. Many are free. The point, clearly, is that excellence is not reserved for organizations with large budgets.

The authors then use the charts as bases for case studies, in which they expand upon each of the "Winning Ways" in a paragraph or two, providing the rationale for the idea and describing how it worked. In the financial management chapter, a case study on investment policy is tied to the sample investment policy in the final chapter. It is all very orderly, very methodical, and stunningly simple.

Comprehensive as it is, Winning Ways does not pretend to be a textbook on nonprofit management. There is, for example, no discussion of mission. What we have here is a "best practices" handbook, chock-full of practical information and written in a style that is clear, accessible, and sometimes downright folksy. There is no biz-speak. Anyone with a junior high school vocabulary will be able to understand this book, which will make it particularly helpful to small, community-based organizations, including those serving immigrants.

The book is self-published by the Washington Council of Agencies, which unfortunately will limit its distribution. There are literally millions of groups around the country for whom Winning Ways could be a lifeline, and we must hope that it finds its way outside the national capital region. It may be purchased from WCA's Web site at http://www.wcanonprofits.org. A "best practices" book with a difference, Winning Ways is a winner.

For citations to additional literature on this topic, refer to Literature of the Nonprofit Sector Online, using the subject term "Nonprofit organizations—management."