Welcome Book Club Attendees!!
Hey!!!
Welcome to the YNPN San Francisco Book Club Blog. We’ve started this blog to keep you informed about what’s happening in the book club and also learn more about what you’d like to read. You’ll find new posts every month, fun videos, resources and also updates on our upcoming events. You can take a peek at our 2010 Events Calendar. Feel free to post your comments, write blog posts for us, share resources or suggest books to read.
The book club meets every other month usually at the Foundation Center in Downtown San Francisco. Based on the nature of the book, the committee arranges for a guest speaker to share their insightful perspectives on the subject.
We look forward to seeing you at our next event- if you’ve read the book great, if you’ve not- don’t be discouraged. It’s fun way to meet new people, network, hear different points of view and maybe drink some nice wine. And that’s not all, buy the book from our own San Francisco BookSmith, say YNPN and you’ll recieve a 15% discount!
Happy Reading,
The Book Club Committee
Uncharitable – What are your Thoughts?
We’d like to know what you think about the book — please share your general thoughts or use some of these questions to guide you:
1. Pallotta argues that non-profit professionals should be compensated at market-rate. While probably everyone would agree non-profit professionals deserve to be paid more, is market-rate really reasonable? Do you think some of the passion in non-profits would be lost if the salaries were equivalent to corporate counter parts?
2. Of the 5 errors discussed in chapter 2 (Constraints on Compensation, Prohibition on Risk, Discouragement of Long-Term Vision, Discouragement of Paid Advertising, and Prohibition on Investment Return) Which ones do you agree with the most? Which one do you think would be the easiest to “correct”? Which would be the most difficult to “correct”?
3. Of the efficiency measures that Pallota includes in his book: Real Dollars, Incremental Effects, Intangibles, Future Value of Money and Economic Values of the Result, which did you find most striking?
February 10th 2010: Uncharitable by Dan Pallotta
JOIN US FOR A FASCINATING EVENNING DISCUSSING CHARITY IN AMERICA TODAY
Wednesday, February 10th, 2010
6 to 7:30p.m.
@ The Foundation Center
(312 Sutter Street, Suite 606, San Francisco)
Reserve a spot at this event by going to
http://www.acteva.com/booking.cfm?bevaid=196685
About the Book:
Dan Pallotta founded the company Pallotta TeamWorks which was the for-profit brainchild that raised millions of dollars for breast cancer and AIDS research and awareness through nationwide, marathonlike events. However, Pallotta came under attack for violating the sacred premises of charitable organizations: low profile, low budget, and little or no profit. Pallotta turns on its head the assumption that charity and capitalism should be forever divided. Don’t charitable causes deserve the same kind of competitive forces that work to get results in the for-profit sector? Wouldn’t social causes be better served if charitable organizations were headed by the kind of bright, aggressive executives that work in the for-profit sector?
Learn more about the book here:http://www.uncharitable.net/ or Dan Pallota’s latest blogpost on the Harvard Business Review http://blogs.hbr.org/pallotta/2010/01/lessons-in-entrepreneurship.html
* Get your Discounted Book at BookSmith (1644 Haight Street)! *
YNPN Book Club has a special partnership with BookSmith. Just tell them you are a member of the YNPN Book Club and you’ll get a 15% discount on Uncharitable.
December 2009 Event Highlights:Outliers
Last Wednesday, December 9, 20 people participated in a wonderful and enlightening conversation about Malcolm Gladwell’s theory on success, based on his book, Outliers. Outliers was selected by YNPN members as the Reader’s Choice book for this month’s discussion. Outliers engaged us in thoughtful conversation about what success means to each of us and who in our lives represents an outlier. The size and diversity of this month’s group also allowed participants to gain differing and unique perspectives on the book. Thank you to everyone for participating!
We hope that you’ll be able to join for the next YNPN Book Club conversation on February 10th at the Foundation Center, where we will be discussing Uncharitable: How Restraints on Nonprofits Undermine their Potential, by Dan Pallotta. The Stanford Social Innovation Review said that the book, “deserves to become the nonprofit sector’s new manifesto.”
READER’S CHOICE BOOK
We’re pleased to announce that our December Book Club Event will be Reader’s Choice! We collected the titles of books you recommended over the last year. Now it’s time for you to decide which book you would like to read for our December event.
Please vote for 1 of the below titles by leaving us a comment before October 1, 2009.
1. Mountains Beyond Mountains: The Quest of Dr.Paul Farmer, a Man Who Would Cure the World by Tracey Kidder
The story traces the life of Paul Farmer, an anthropologist and specialist in infectious diseases, whose goal is to redress the “steep gradient of inequality” in medical service to the desperately poor.
2. Outliers by Malcolm Gladwell
Gladwell examines the factors that contribute to high levels of success.
3. Beak of the Finch: A Story of Evolution in Our Time by Jonathan Weiner
Weiner follows two scientists living in the Galapagos as they watch Darwin’s finches and come up with a new understanding of life itself.
4. Half the Sky: Turning Oppression into Opportunity for Women Worldwide by Nicholas Kristof
Half the Sky lays out an agenda for the world’s women and three major abuses: sex trafficking and forced prostitution; gender-based violence including honor killings and mass rape; maternal mortality, which needlessly claims one woman a minute.
5. Leaving India: My Family’s Journey from Five Villages to Five Continents by Minal Hajratwala
Hajratwala, a journalist at the San Jose Mercury News, tells of the Indian diaspora experience through a part-personal, part-reported story of her extended family’s journey through 5 continents.
Thanks in advance for your vote! Winning book title will be announced October 1., 2009
If you have any questions about YNPN Book Club – or are interested in being a part of the YNPN Book Club Committee leave
BOOK CLUB EVENT ANNOUNCEMENT OCTOBER 2009
We are proud to announce our October YNPN Book Club event, reading the New York Times Bestseller:
A Problem from Hell – America and the Age of Genocide
By Samantha Power
Whether you’ve had a chance to read the book, or want to learn more about the US’s role in genocides, or you’re just looking for a way to participate in a fun networking event, please join us!
Foundation Center (312 Sutter Street, Suite 606, San Francisco)
6 to 8pm, Wednesday October 7, 2009
We’ll have refreshments during our discussion!
If you have any questions or would like to receive the Evite, please email at bookclubsf@ynpn.org
About the Book:
Samanth Power, a former journalist for U.S. News and World Report and the Economist and now the executive director of Harvard’s Carr Center for Human Rights, offers an uncompromising and disturbing examination of 20th-century acts of genocide and U.S responses to them. In clean, unadorned prose, Power revisits the Turkish genocide directed at Armenians in 1915-1916, the Holocaust, Cambodia’s Khmer Rouge, Iraqi attacks on Kurdish populations, Rwanda, and Bosnian “ethnic cleansing,” and in doing so, argues that U.S. intervention has been shamefully inadequate.
Her analysis of U.S. politics what she casts as the State Department’s unwritten rule that nonaction is better than action with a PR backlash; the Pentagon’s unwillingness to see a moral imperative; an isolationist right; a suspicious left and a population unconcerned with distant nations aims to show how ingrained inertia is, even as she argues that the U.S. must reevaluate the principles it applies to foreign policy choices. But Power also sees signs that the fight against genocide has made progress. This is a well-researched and powerful study that is both a history and a call to action.
* Get your Discounted Book at BookSmith (1644 Haight Street)! *
YNPN Book Club is partnering with BookSmith to make our book club more exciting at the same time supporting our independent bookstores in San Francisco. Just tell them you are a member of the YNPN book club and you’ll get a 15% discount on the book we’re reading in the book club.
* Become part of the YNPN Book Club Committee!
We’re looking for volunteers to join our book club committee. Want experience in event planning and/or developing leadership skills? Interested in meeting authors? You don’t need to be a big bookworm to join us. However, if you love reading books, that’s a big plus! If you’re interested in learning more about this volunteer opportunity, please email YNPN at bookclubsf@ynpn.org with the Subject heading ‘Book Club Committee Volunteer’
