The Library

Lists & Awards

• The 2010 NPT Top 100, The 2010 NPT Power & Influence Top 50 - 2 special reports from The NonProfit Times
• Social Entrepreneur Of The Year - from Schwab Foundation for Social Entrepreneurship.
• Skoll Social Entrepreneurs

Directories - U.S.

• GuideStar (1 simultaneous user) - a directory of nonprofits in the U.S. Includes 990 filings.
• Foundation Finder - basic information on grantmakers in the U.S. including private foundations, community foundations, grantmaking public charities, and corporate giving programs. The site also includes a 990 Finder.
• GreatNonprofits.org - a tool that allows you to find, review, and talk about nonprofits. Founded in Nov. 2007 by Perla Ni, former publisher of the Stanford Social Innovation Review (a news story about the site).

Directories - worldwide

• Idealist.org - a directory of nonprofits worldwide.
• Social Entrepreneurs - search by name, organization, country, sector, and type of organization. From Schwab Foundation for Social Entrepreneurship.

Some Notable Social Entrepreneurs

1% For The Planet | Acumen Fund | Ashoka | EchoingGreen | Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation | Kiva | Riders for Health | Rubicon Bakery | Socialedge | A new breed of young Bay Area philanthropists redefines the meaning -- and methods -- of giving. SF Chronicle, Jan. 14, 2007. (The article reports 7 foundations in the Bay Area; among which, Silicon Valley Social Venture Fund was founded by a GSB lecturer, Laura Arrillaga.)

Find news articles about a nonprofit:

• Factiva 

Identifying Funding Sources: 

• Foundation Directory Online
• Check the 'Grants' section in the Reference Collection:
  • Corporate giving directory
  • Annual register of grant support
  • Giving USA - an annual report on philanthropy, from Giving USA Foundation

Writing a Proposal:

• Nonprofit guides: grant-writing tools for nonprofits
• The Foundation Center's short course on proposal writing
• Sample grant proposals - From ideabank.com
  

Barnes, R. 2000. The secrets behind the letter that pulled a 100 percent response. Fund Raising Management, 31(3): 6-7 

Bekkers, Renee & Olaf Crutzen. 2007. Just keep it simple: a field experiment on fundraising letters. International Journal of Nonprofit & Voluntary Sector Marketing, 12(4):371-378

Goering, Elizabeth, et. al. 2009. Persuasion in Fundraising Letters: An Interdisciplinary Study. Nonprofit and Voluntary Sector Quarterly, published online on July 7.

Ritzenhein, D.N. 1998. Content analysis of fundraising letters. New Directions for Philanthropic Fundraising, 22: 23-36 

Lewis, Herschell Gordon. 2006. 'We need help.' You certainly do. Direct, 18(13): 35-36

Warwick, Mal. 2001. Characteristics of an effective fund-raising letter. Fund Raising Management, April, 32(2): 46-48 

Fundraising Letter for Nonprofit Groups - sample letters and writing tips from Fundraiserhelp.com

Check the course syllabus for required and optional readings, as well as an extensive bibliography.

For additional readings on specific management issues, search business literature databases:

• ABI Inform - journal articles
• Business Source Complete - journal articles
• Factiva - news articles

There is a major research initiative on the transformation of nonprofits at the GSB's Center for Social Innovation:

• Stanford Project on the Evolution of Nonprofits - Developed a benchmark profile of the sector and documented how nonprofits are beset by capacity challenges and struggling to find new sources of funding.
  
  Its report, “Managing Through Challenges: A Profile of San Francisco Bay Area Nonprofits ” provides baseline information for decision making in the nonprofit field that will be useful for practitioners and stakeholders, including philanthropists, in the Bay Area and beyond.