Another in a series of articles related to association management selected from our reading list by:
Robert O. Patterson, JD
CEO/ Principal
The Center for Association Resources, Inc.
From Nonprofit and Voluntary Sector Quarterly
All organizations benefit from committing themselves to a strategy that describes the value that an organization intends to produce, the means it will rely on to produce that value, and how it will sustain itself in the future. The most well-developed and commonly relied upon models for developing organizational strategies come from the private sector. Yet, these models fail to take account of two crucially important features of the strategic problem faced by nonprofit organizations and governmental bureaucracies: first, that the value that these organizations produce lies in the achievement of social purposes for which no revenue stream is readily apparent rather than in creating wealth for shareholders or satisfaction to customers, and second, that nonprofit and governmental organizations receive revenues from sources other than customer purchases of products and services. Read more
