Course description
This course engages students in examining nonprofit management innovations that have arisen during the extremely challenging period of the past four years, including as a result of the COVID-19 pandemic, and how nonprofits can discover new management innovations in times of threat and prepare for future perils. We draw from sources in the literature as well as from empirical findings gleaned from a number of charitable organizations that report their experiences and innovations, and prepare papers on how nonprofits in the students' own communities have fared and how they could adopt strategies for coping, pivoting, or revising business models. Nonprofits include those that provide amenities, such as libraries, museums, symphonies, country clubs, hospitals, schools, and college sports; and services, such as shelters, food banks and pantries, daycare, and crisis centers. We explore management innovations both in terms of vertical types of organizations (by field) and horizontal functional areas within them, including director/trustee engagement, c-suite management, strategic planning, development and fundraising, human resource management, supply chain, and service delivery. Taking this course benefits students by understanding what we have learned of value to date and how, as nonprofit managers, they can prepare for unexpected turns ahead.
