For all those reading lovers out there, we present you the Nonprofit Leadership Alliance’s Summer Reading List in celebration of National Book Lovers Day this August 9, 2022. This collection includes a list of favorite novels provided by the Alliance staff. Each of these reads below are perfect for any nonprofit leader seeking to generate positive change in themselves and their organization.
Latinx in Social Work
Latinx in Social Work is a book is about space. The space we take up, the spaces we create and nurture, and the spaces that have yet to exist, but are so crucial to the growth and development of Latinx social workers, mental health practitioners, executives, and professionals in all industries in this country, and beyond. This book is a revolutionary step in creating a movement that is committed to owning our own narratives, naming common but unspoken struggles and challenges, and driving our own healing from the past while highlighting our successes and creating a space for hope for the future.
Getting to YES
Since its original publication nearly thirty years ago, Getting to Yes has helped millions of people learn a better way to negotiate. One of the primary business texts of the modern era, it is based on the work of the Harvard Negotiation Project, a group that deals with all levels of negotiation and conflict resolution. Getting to Yes offers a proven, step-by-step strategy for coming to mutually acceptable agreements in every sort of conflict
Encountering Development
How did the industrialized nations of North America and Europe come to be seen as the appropriate models for post-World War II societies in Asia, Africa, and Latin America? How did the postwar discourse on development actually create the so-called Third World? And what will happen when development ideology collapses? To answer these questions, Arturo Escobar shows how development policies became mechanisms of control that were just as pervasive and effective as their colonial counterparts. The development apparatus generated categories powerful enough to shape the thinking even of its occasional critics while poverty and hunger became widespread. “Development” was not even partially “deconstructed” until the 1980s, when new tools for analyzing the representation of social reality were applied to specific “Third World” cases. Here Escobar deploys these new techniques in a provocative analysis of development discourse and practice in general, concluding with a discussion of alternative visions for a post-development era.
Who Moved My Cheese?
Most people are fearful of change, both personal and professional because they don’t have any control over how or when it happens to them. Since change happens either to the individual or by the individual, Dr. Spencer Johnson uses a deceptively simple story to show that when it comes to living in a rapidly changing world, what matters most is your attitude. Exploring a simple way to take the fear and anxiety out of managing the future, Who Moved My Cheese? can help you discover how to anticipate, acknowledge, and accept change in order to have a positive impact on your job, your relationships, and every aspect of your life.
The No Club
The No Club started when four women, crushed by endless to-do lists, banded together over $10 bottles of wine to get their work lives under control. Running faster than ever, they still trailed behind their male colleagues. And so, they vowed to say no to requests that pulled them away from the work that mattered most to their careers. This book reveals how their subsequent groundbreaking research uncovered that women everywhere are unfairly burdened with “non-promotable work,” a tremendous problem we can—and must—solve. In study upon study, professors Linda Babcock, Brenda Peyser, Lise Vesterlund, and Laurie Weingart—the original “No Club”—document that women are disproportionately asked and expected to take on these tasks that inevitably go unrewarded, leaving women overcommitted and underutilized as companies forfeit revenue, productivity, and top talent.
But it doesn’t have to be this way. The No Club walks you through how to make small, yet significant, changes and empowers women to make savvy decisions about the work they take on. At the same time, the authors illuminate how lasting change calls for organizations to reassess how they assign and reward work.
Joan Garry’s Guide to Nonprofit Leadership: Because Nonprofits are messy
Nonprofits leaders are optimistic by nature. They believe with time, energy, smarts, strategy and sheer will, they can change the world. But as staff or board leader, you know nonprofits present unique challenges. Too many cooks, not enough money, an abundance of passion. It’s enough to make you feel overwhelmed and alone. The people you help need you to be successful. But there are so many obstacles: a micromanaging board that doesn’t understand its true role; insufficient fundraising and donors who make unreasonable demands; unclear and inconsistent messaging and marketing; a leader who’s a star in her sector but a difficult boss…
And yet, many nonprofits do thrive. Joan Garry’s Guide to Nonprofit Leadership will show you how to do just that. Funny, honest, intensely actionable, and based on her decades of experience, this is the book Joan Garry wishes she had when she led GLAAD out of a financial crisis in 1997.
Love Does: Discover a Secretly Incredible Life in an Ordinary World
Can a simple concept shift your entire world? Bob Goff certainty thinks so. When it comes to loving your neighbors, rather than focusing on having the “right answers” or checking the “right boxes,” what if you decide to simply DO love? To shamelessly show love and grace to those around you? What would that look like? It might look like spending sixteen days in the Pacific Ocean with five guys and a crate of canned meat. It might look like taking your kids on a world tour to eat ice cream with heads of state. It might look like taking a road trip with a stressed-out college student–even though you just got married a few days before. In Love Does, Bob shows you how to live a fully engaged life; how to stop putting things off until “next time” and instead find your place of imagination, whimsy, and wonder today; and that God usually chooses ordinary people to get things done. When love does, life gets interesting. Light and fun, unique and profound, the lessons drawn from Bob’s life and attitude in this collection of stories just might inspire you to be secretly incredible, too.
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