Twenty-seven years ago, Tom Warth, a British expat and local book publisher, visited a small library in Jinja, Uganda. Its shelves were mostly empty. Students had little to read and what they had needed to be shared with several others. Warth had an idea: Let's end the book famine in Africa. And let's use best business practices to help make that happen.
That idea became the mission of St. Paul-based Books For Africa and has led to the shipment of more than 34 million books to 49 countries in Africa since Warth's visit to Jinja. The book famine is not over, but we've made progress.
That simple mission became the guiding light of our nonprofit all these years. And while it is inspiring and durable, the mission alone is not sufficient. There are hundreds of nonprofits promoting worthy causes. But to survive and prosper in the 21st century, nonprofits have to adapt the best practices of both the nonprofit world and the business world and weld them together.
Nonprofits are important because they fill a role that neither governments nor corporations can. "Corporations almost invariably underinvest in public goods, because they can capture only a small fraction of the rewards," the New Yorker's James Surowiecki wrote recently. "Governments do better at providing public goods (defense, say, or education), but private agendas often derail the public, and governments are far less effective at tackling global problems."
Nonprofits bring much to the table. They generally have a compelling mission like ending the book famine, curing cancer or ending hunger. They serve a social purpose and the greater good. They are generally service-oriented. They offer a compelling narrative about the impact of their work. Photos of smiling African children who finally got their own textbook are priceless.
But more and more nonprofits need to look to the business world for ideas about efficiency, results and metrics to measure results — using innovation, outsourcing and collaboration with other businesses and nonprofits to reduce the costs of operations.
BFA and other nonprofits take pride in the work they do and the standards by which they are judged.
For example, Charity Navigator, the country's premier charity evaluator, gave BFA its top four-star rating for the fourth consecutive year, a rating only 8 percent of the charities rated received. The four-star rating was based on fiscal management and commitment to accountability and transparency. And Charity Navigator rated BFA No. 1 in its national "Humanitarian Relief Supplies" category.
