If you work in a nonprofit organization or NGO, including health care, social services, advocacy, arts, education, or government, or if you volunteer for a nonprofit or serve on the Board of a nonprofit, I encourage you to look at my new book, Developing a Learning Culture in Nonprofit Organizations. The purpose of this book is to provide practical ideas and tools for continuous learning and organizational improvement.
Much like for-profit companies, nonprofits need to do a better job of learning and learning how to learn. The pressure on them to continuously improve performance has become enormous in recent years. They need more than occasional incremental improvements, they need a culture that supports continuous learning.
I write in the Preface of the book:
A learning culture exists when an organization makes reflection,
feedback, and sharing of knowledge part of the way it functions on
a day-to-day basis. A nonprofit or non-governmental organization
(NGO) that has a learning culture is continuously learning from its
own experience, which means it has the capacity for improvement
and success. In this way, a culture of learning contributes to the
overall capacity of the organization.
Nonprofits need a learning culture now more than ever. Aramand Lauffer, Professor Emeritus, University of Michigan,writes in the foreward to the book:
Adaptation has always been a key to organizational survival, but
never more so than today. That’s why this is a much-needed
book. Nonprofits are faced with funding uncertainty, altered expectations
from consumers, complex and often competing regulations,
and changing perceptions of how services should be provided and
to whom.
Developing a Learning Culture in Nonprofit Organizations gives you a framework and tools for helping nonprofits and NGOs become more effective at achieving their missions. I hope you will read the book and let me know what you think about the usefulness of the ideas and tools.
