The complete set · Available now

The ten books.

Ten books and 152 chapters. Each treats one part of the work in full. The tenth reproduces the documents.

How to read the set

Start with Book One. After that, in any order.

Book One is the only book written to be read continuously, and it assumes you have not started. The other nine are reference books. Open them at the chapter that applies.

One exception. Book Nine is the only book concerned with the founder rather than the organization.

Book I · Starting up

How to Start a Nonprofit With Almost No Money

How to start a nonprofit with no money, and actually get it running

Most guides start at incorporation. This one starts a chapter earlier, at the question everybody skips: whether you should start one at all.

If the answer is yes, the remainder is procedure. The name and the state filing. Bylaws, which are ignored until the day they govern everything. The federal application, both forms and both fees, and which one applies to you. A founding board that is more than three friends in agreement. And a first-year budget that balances.

If you cannot name three things your mission rules out, you have not written a mission. You have written a mood.

Open Book I →

In the complete set 15 chapters · 156 pages

Book II · Being known

How to Get a New Nonprofit Noticed

How to promote a new nonprofit and get it noticed

Nobody is withholding their support. They have not heard of you — and those are completely different problems with completely different solutions.

The book covers the sentence that describes your organization, and how to tell when you have not yet earned it. A website built around four screens. Email, the only audience you own outright, and the deliverability failures that remain invisible until they are severe. Search, now that engines answer the question rather than list the links. And the platforms you can reasonably ignore, which is most of them.

An unmarketed nonprofit is not a humble nonprofit. It is a temporary one.

Open Book II →

In the complete set 25 chapters · 222 pages

Book III · Mission and program

How to Tell If Your Nonprofit Program Works

Theory of change, logic models, and how to measure nonprofit impact honestly

A program is a hypothesis. You are claiming that if you do a specific thing, a specific change follows — and a claim can be wrong.

The book is practical rather than academic. Theory of change without the jargon, on one page. Dosage, and the threshold below which a program is not being delivered. Fidelity, and which components are load-bearing. The pilot, which is a question with an end date rather than a smaller version of the program. Intake, safeguarding, participant voice, and maintaining quality when nobody is observing.

An unexamined program is not a humble program. It is an experiment being run on people without anyone admitting it is an experiment.

Open Book III →

In the complete set 25 chapters · 238 pages

Book IV · Money in

How to Raise Money for an Unknown Nonprofit

How to raise money for a nonprofit nobody has heard of

The most common assumption in nonprofit fundraising is that the size of a problem is an argument. It is not, and everything else follows from that.

The book opens with what research on charitable behaviour has established, much of which the sector disregards, and rebuilds the case for support from there. Then your first fifty donors, who are not strangers, are not wealthy, and are largely people you already know. Then the conversation itself: the request is four sentences, and the silence that follows is where the skill lies.

The size of the problem is not the argument. The size of the difference your reader can make is the argument.

Open Book IV →

In the complete set 15 chapters · 147 pages

Book V · Money handled

Nonprofit Budgets and the Overhead Myth

Nonprofit budgets, the overhead myth, and the numbers funders actually read

A board does not need to understand accounting. It needs four answers, and most organizations cannot produce them.

This is the book on holding it. Bookkeeping that survives the third year. Restricted and unrestricted, the two most consequential words in nonprofit finance and the ones founders usually learn after they matter. Fund accounting without an accountant. Internal controls in an organization of three people. And reserves, with the argument for holding them.

Every restricted dollar is a promise. Unrestricted money is the only money that is actually yours.

Open Book V →

In the complete set 14 chapters · 134 pages

Book VI · People

How to Hire Your First Nonprofit Employee

How to hire your first employee and keep the volunteers you already have

You are not busy. You are the bottleneck, which is a different problem with a different solution.

The book covers the mechanics of transferring work to another person. Contractor or employee, where the apparently cheaper answer is the one that produces the liability, and a signed agreement stating otherwise carries no weight. Designing a role that is a position rather than a list of tasks you no longer want. Writing a posting that reaches the people who would actually apply. And interviewing without prior experience of it, which is a matter of prediction rather than preference.

‘Help’ is not a job. It is a description of your feelings.

Open Book VI →

In the complete set 14 chapters · 146 pages

Book VII · The board

How to Build a Nonprofit Board of Directors

Nonprofit board member roles, responsibilities, and how to build a board that works

You do not have a board. You have nine people who are fond of you and have signed something.

The book is about constructing a board deliberately. What a board is for, and what yours currently does. The founding board and the point at which it should change. Recruiting for the expertise you lack rather than the company you enjoy. The relationship with the chair, which determines how difficult everything else becomes. Meetings that reach decisions. Committees that do work.

A founding board that has never disagreed with you is not evidence that you are right. It is evidence that nothing has been tested.

Open Book VII →

In the complete set 14 chapters · 130 pages

Book VIII · Law and compliance

Keeping Your Nonprofit’s 501c3 Status

501c3 filings, Form 990, contracts, and the deadlines nobody sends a reminder for

You have been fundraising illegally in four states for two years. So has nearly everybody you know.

Charitable solicitation registration, which few organizations complete correctly. Operating in a second state, which is rarely a decision: a volunteer moves, a partner opens a site, and the obligation follows. Insurance, and the coverage most small organizations lack while paying for coverage they do not need. And the agreements you will sign in the first five years, against the small number you will read.

An obligation nobody enforces is still an obligation, and the year somebody looks is never the year you were ready.

Open Book VIII →

In the complete set 14 chapters · 128 pages

Book IX · The founder

Nonprofit Founder’s Syndrome and Burnout

Founder’s syndrome, burnout, and what the organization owes you

You thought you were taking on a project. It was a post.

Deciding on incomplete information. Having nobody to ask while surrounded by people. The week that disappears, and why conventional productivity advice assumes an employer you do not have. And what you pay yourself, which is not only a budget decision but a public statement about the value of the work, read by everyone who works for you.

The reason no other founder has told you they are struggling is that they are having this exact chapter’s experience, in a room four miles away, about you.

Open Book IX →

In the complete set 9 chapters · 84 pages

Book X · The documents

Nonprofit Bylaws, Budgets, and Policies

Bylaws, policies, budgets, board papers — the paperwork, written out in full

Every other book explains what to write. This one reproduces the finished document and annotates it.

They belong to Second Chapter Reading, North County Diaper Bank, and Southside Community Kitchen, the three organizations followed throughout the preceding books.

The founding documents take an afternoon and govern for a decade. Nothing else you write will have that ratio.

Open Book X →

In the complete set 7 chapters · 81 pages

Get the complete set

All ten books, plus the toolkit.

Passion Turned Profession is available as a complete set for $149: all ten books in PDF and EPUB, plus the forty documents printed in Book X as editable Word files. The books are not sold separately.

Get the set — $149 →