"You can't run our operation like a business!" I have heard this refrain more than once from earnest directors and pouting staff members of nonprofit organizations. The speakers are precisely right. nonprofits cannot be run as businesses, and because they cannot, it is essential that they be managed well if they are to be effective. Businesses are automatically disciplined. If they don't seek out, attract, hold, and serve customers properly over time, the customers drift away and the businesses wither. nonprofits aren't so lucky. If they falter, and it happens every day, both the supporters and the "customers" of the organizations suffer, usually in silence. The nonprofit just didn't make it. And more often than not, the customers have no other source for the lost service, be it for health, housing, advice, pleasure, or guidance. Any particular nonprofit is typically a one-of-a-kind in a given community. There is no competitor to which community members can drift, no handy substitute. This section contains some ideas on managing nonprofits, starting with where the buck theoretically stops, namely, the board of directors. I hope the material proves useful to you and your community.

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