New charity management book from Mike Hudson
Howard Lake | 15 October 2003 | News
Mike Hudson’s new book ‘Managing at the Leading Edge’ argues that the US non-profit sector could learn alot from the UK voluntary sector.
Hudson argues that UK voluntary organisations’ experience of involving users
in service delivery and policy making, and the development of sector infrastructure in the UK should be of considerable interest to the US non-profit sector.
“While we can learn a lot from the US nonprofit sector, which is proportionally much larger and better funded than ours, there’s no doubt they would benefit from initiatives similar to the UK’s Compact and
Infrastructure Review” said Mike Hudson, following his study of the two nation’s non-profit sectors.
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He found the US sector was much stronger in terms of capacity building, performance management and their understanding of the social capital market.
His research confirmed that Americans gave more to charity than the British. The
average American gives annually over five times that of the average British person. American companies are also more generous, giving 1.2% of pre-tax profits compared to British corporate giving of 0.2% per annum.
Hudson found the scale of the US sector meant that the efforts of leading organisations to build their capacity and monitor their performance have been able to be more rigorous, more systematic and better funded.
Director of management consultancy Compass Partnership and a Visiting Fellow
at London School of Economics, Mike Hudson studied the non-profit sector in the US over two years.
The results are published in a new book ‘Managing at the Leading Edge’ published this month by the Directory of Social Change.
The book will be launched by voluntary sector Minister Fiona Mactaggart at
the Kings Fund today at an event attended by over 50 leading figures from the sector.
The proofs of the book have already attracted acclaim. Stuart Etherington, Chief Executive of the National Council for Voluntary Organisations, said the book was a “must read” that drew appropriate lessons
from the US about “crucial issues for the UK sector in the next ten years”.
Helmut Anheier, Centennial Professor at LSE and Professor of Public Policy at UCLA said “Mike Hudson takes a fresh and innovative look at nonprofit management, and comes up with fascinating results that are well-grounded in theory and relevant to practitioners. Looking at management practices and developments in the US through a UK lense provides a treasure of thought-provoking ideas and key insights.”
About Howard Lake
Howard Lake is consultant editor of UK Fundraising. He founded the site in 1994 and successfully sold it in 2022. As director of Giving X Ltd he is exploring growing giving on a massive scale.
He is the founder of Fundraising Camp and co-founder of GoodJobs.