Peter Drucker on Nonprofit Organizations

I recently picked up Peter Drucker's 'Managing the Nonprofit Organization.' Halfway through the introduction, I knew that this book would be life changing. I would like to share several excerpts, as it is directly affecting what I am doing with our work in Haiti (cpihaiti.org, under construction still.)

Below are some selected sections from this powerful book:

"Business supplies, either goods or services. Government controls. A business has discharged its task when the customer buys the product, pays for it, and is satisfied with it. Government has discharged its function when its policies are effective. 

"The 'non-profit' institution neither supplies goods or services nor controls. It's 'product' is neither a pair of shoes nor an effective regulation. Its product is a changed human being. The non-profit institutions are human-change agents. Their 'product' is a cured patient, a child that learns, a young man or woman grown inot a self-respecting adult; a changed human life altogether."

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"We can no longer hope to get money from 'donors'; they have to become 'contributors'...It is much more than getting extra money to do vital work. 

"Giving is necessary above all so that the non-profits can discharge the one mission they all have in common: to satisfy the need of the American people for self-realization, for living out our ideals, our beliefs, our best opinion of ourselves."