Philanthropy News Digest (PND), a daily news service of the Foundation Center, is a compendium, in digest form, of philanthropy-related articles and features culled from print and electronic media outlets nationwide. In PND's Off the Shelf feature, you'll find reviews of books on a variety of topics ranging from international philanthropy to nonprofit management. Here are excerpts from five reviews published in the second half of 2012.
The Last Hunger Season: A Year in an African Farm Community on the Brink of Change
Roger Thurow
(New York, New York: PublicAffairs, 2012)
"As Thurow tells it, Andrew Youn, One Acre's co-founder and executive director, believes East Africa's food insecurity problem is primarily economic rather than agricultural, and he has come up with an innovative business model to address the high rates of malnutrition, depleted soils, lack of access to information, and crop price fluctuations that are characteristic of the region." Read more...
Changing Business From the Inside Out: A Treehugger's Guide to Working in Corporations
Timothy J. Mohin
(San Francisco, California:
Berrett-Koehler, 2012)
"...corporate responsibility programs aren't making the world any worse, and, at their best, they may be contributing to change within corporate cultures and doing some good. But whether multinational corporations can actually drive greater social change than the activists, nongovernmental organizations, and governments that have been pushing them to adopt a responsibility agenda for decades remains to be seen." Read more...
Charity Case: How the Nonprofit Community Can Stand Up for Itself and Change the World
Dan Pallotta
(San Francisco, California: Jossey-Bass, 2012)
"Pallotta argues that executive compensation and overhead expenses cannot be considered in isolation when gauging an organization's effectiveness or efficiency. On the contrary, embracing the tools of capitalism (competitive salaries, advertising, lobbying, etc.) may be the best way for charities to maximize their donations and ultimately deliver superior services and programs." Read more...
A Memoir of the Ford Foundation: The Early Years
Evelyn C. Walsh, Verne S. Atwater
(New York, NY: Vantage Press, 2012)
"Less a comprehensive history of the Ford Foundation than an impressionistic behind-the-scenes account of what it was like to work at the foundation as it rose to international prominence, 'A Memoir of the Ford Foundation: The Early Years' is a splendid addition to the growing literature about twentieth-century philanthropy and ably demonstrates that philanthropy, while an inherently personal endeavor, has the potential to exceed even our grandest expectations." Read more...
The Art of Being Unreasonable: Lessons in Unconventional Thinking
Eli Broad
(Hoboken, NJ: John Wiley & Sons,
2012)
You can read highlights of reviews from the first half of 2012 here. For all Off the Shelf reviews, click here.
--Rob Bruno
Catalog/Reference Librarian
The Foundation Center--NY