A review of Mission-based management: Leading your nonprofit in the 21st century, by Brinckerhoff. Introduction

World-famous writer, consultant, and trainer Peter Brinckerhoff’s whole career has been focused on working around, for, and in nonprofit organizations. The University of Pennsylvania (graduation) and Tulane University (post-graduate degree in the Public Health Administration) alumnus swears by the principle that nonprofit firms are mission-based in nature; their business is: to carry out their mission. Ever since 1982, when he established his own consulting company, Corporate Alternatives, Brinckerhoff has aided innumerable firms in increasing their mission-capability (Brinckerhoff, 2009, xv-xiv). His award-winning works include Mission-Based Marketing, Second Edition; Mission-Based Management, Third Edition; Faith-Based Management; and Social Entrepreneurship.

Mission-based management: Leading your nonprofit in the 21st century is targeted at nonprofit charitable firms’ leaders. The author aims at offering a different perspective of the actual functioning of top-quality nonprofit companies and strategies that work and those that don’t, thereby ensuring such firms survive in the current business climate. In short, this book aims at aiding non-profit leaders in becoming mission-based leaders.

Summary of content

According to Brinckerhoff (2009), attainment of financial success necessitates engagement in mission-based organizational practices on the part of non-profits. The book puts forward a list of 10 such practices which may facilitate the integration of for-profit organizational practices into the non-profit climate....

These practices, in the author’s view, have the potential to result in a balanced corporate focus, with adequate emphasis given to both programs and performance. Brinckerhoff holds that a non-profit needs to integrate for-profit organizational practices into its own corporate plans (for instance, a sound marketing focus) for adapting to the fiscal reforms the sector is experiencing (Hasaj & Kruja, 2012).
The author has not founded his conclusions on the subject of mission-based business practices on any formal research. Instead, he has simply come up with his theory by banking on his own vast experience and his twenty-year-long interaction with non-profits. A reasonable quantity of works may be found on the subject but a literature gap is evident owing to the fact that though a majority of authors have realized the need for non-profit companies to adopt for-profit approaches, Brinckerhoff is the only one to have proposed a methodology to shift from a program-centric to a performance-centric approach (Brinckerhoff, 2000).

Analysis and evaluation of the book

Mission-Based Management (Third Edition) offers in-depth, practical guidance which deals with policymakers’ and non-profit executives’ unique concerns. The book:

· Delves into the impacts of corporate transparency, the Sarbanes-Oxley Act, technology planning, marketing and novel technologies in the current environment

· Has a summary and list of group discussion questions with every chapter.

· Is penned by a nationally renowned specialist whose illustrious career includes training several thousand nonprofit managers on nonprofit management…