While there are many courses and tutorials online, learning from a book is still one of the best ways to greatly improve your skills. Below I have selected top Philanthropy books.
- Give Smart: Philanthropy that Gets Results (2012)
- The Seven Faces of Philanthropy: A New Approach to Cultivating Major Donors (Jossey-Bass Nonprofit & Public Management Series) (2001)
- Inspired Philanthropy: Your Step-by-Step Guide to Creating a Giving Plan and Leaving a Legacy (2007)
- Philanthropy in America: A History – Updated Edition (Politics and Society in Modern America) (2014)
- The Givers: Money, Power, and Philanthropy in a New Gilded Age (2018)
- Precision Prospect Development: How to Get a Seat at the Table and Be an Influencer. A Practical Guide to Achieving Success (2019)
- Philanthropy in Democratic Societies: History, Institutions, Values (2016)
- The Philanthropy Reader (2016)
- Faith and Fortune: How Compassionate Capitalism Is Transforming American Business (2005)
- Philanthropy, Hidden Strategy, and Collective Resistance: A Primer for Concerned Educators (2018)
- My Journey in Philanthropy: Memoir, Reflective Essays & True Stories (2017)
Give Smart: Philanthropy that Gets Results (2012)
A decade ago, Thomas J. Tierney left Bain & Company to cofound The Bridgespan Group, a nonprofit focused on helping donors and nonprofit leaders to develop and execute strategies to accelerate social change. In Give Smart, Tierney pools his hands-on knowledge with Duke professor Joel L. Fleishman's expertise to create a much-needed primer for philanthropists and the nonprofit organizations they support.
The Seven Faces of Philanthropy: A New Approach to Cultivating Major Donors (Jossey-Bass Nonprofit & Public Management Series) (2001)
Available for the first time in paperback, Seven Faces of Philanthropy introduces to you the Seven Faces approach—a powerful tool that enables development professionals to maximize their effectiveness when approaching major donors for gifts. The authors identify and profile seven types of major donors and offer you detailed strategies on how to approach them. Both novice and expert fundraisers will find this framework a valuable supplement to existing strategies and techniques.
Inspired Philanthropy: Your Step-by-Step Guide to Creating a Giving Plan and Leaving a Legacy (2007)
This newest edition of the classic book shows how anyone can align and integrate values, passions, and dreams for their communities and families into their plans. Inspired Philanthropy explains how to make a difference by creating giving and legacy plans, tells what questions to ask nonprofits, and spells out how to help partner with advisors and nonprofit leaders for inspired outcomes.
Philanthropy in America: A History – Updated Edition (Politics and Society in Modern America) (2014)
American philanthropy today expands knowledge, champions social movements, defines active citizenship, influences policymaking, and addresses humanitarian crises. How did philanthropy become such a powerful and integral force in American society? Philanthropy in America is the first book to explore in depth the twentieth-century growth of this unique phenomenon.
The Givers: Money, Power, and Philanthropy in a New Gilded Age (2018)
While media attention focuses on famous philanthropists such as Bill Gates and Charles Koch, thousands of donors are at work below the radar promoting a wide range of causes. David Callahan charts the rise of these new power players and the ways they are converting the fortunes of a second Gilded Age into influence.
Precision Prospect Development: How to Get a Seat at the Table and Be an Influencer. A Practical Guide to Achieving Success (2019)
This book is both a rallying cry and a tool for empowerment. The nonprofit sector needs more Prospect Development and Advancement Services representation at the senior leadership table in order to thrive in the era of data and precision and it is up to us to demonstrate this need.Do you want to be empowered to take control over your career and get out of reactive mode?
Philanthropy in Democratic Societies: History, Institutions, Values (2016)
Philanthropy is everywhere. In 2013, in the United States alone, some $330 billion was recorded in giving, from large donations by the wealthy all the way down to informal giving circles. We tend to think of philanthropy as unequivocally good, but as the contributors to this book show, philanthropy is also an exercise of power. And like all forms of power, especially in a democratic society, it deserves scrutiny. Yet it rarely has been given serious attention.
The Philanthropy Reader (2016)
Philanthropy is both timeless and timely. Ancient Romans, Medieval aristocrats, and Victorian industrialists engaged in philanthropy, as do modern-day Chinese billionaires, South African activists, and Brazilian nuns. Today, philanthropic practice is evolving faster than ever before, with donors giving their time, talents, and social capital in creative new ways and in combination with their financial resources.
Faith and Fortune: How Compassionate Capitalism Is Transforming American Business (2005)
Lately the headlines have delivered dispiriting news about wrongdoing and scandal in business. But behind the headlines lies a surprising, untold story: Corporate America is changing for the better. Faith and Fortune tells the stories of the extraordinary people who are leading the way and the admirable companies they have built.
Philanthropy, Hidden Strategy, and Collective Resistance: A Primer for Concerned Educators (2018)
In 1971, corporate lawyer and future U.S. Supreme Court Justice Lewis Powell wrote a detailed memo that galvanized a small group of conservative philanthropists to create an organizational structure and fifty-year plan to alter the political landscape of the United States.
My Journey in Philanthropy: Memoir, Reflective Essays & True Stories (2017)
The book is part memoir, part reflective essays about philanthropy and non-profit issues, and part a rendition of over 32 true stories that show the sometimes humorous, unusual and quirky aspect of both sides of philanthropy – the giving and the receiving sides. The memoir section relates the aspects of my life that had an influence on my getting into philanthropy as a career.
Best Philanthropy Books That Will Hook You
We highly recommend you to buy all paper or e-books in a legal way, for example, on Amazon. But sometimes it might be a need to dig deeper beyond the shiny book cover. Before making a purchase, you can visit resources like Library Genesis and download some philanthropy books mentioned below at your own risk. Once again, we do not host any illegal or copyrighted files, but simply give our visitors a choice and hope they will make a wise decision.
Distilled: A Memoir of Family, Seagram, Baseball, and Philanthropy
Author(s): Charles Bronfman, Howard Green
ID: 2320744, Publisher: HarperCollins Canada, Year: 25 Oct 2016, Size: 4 Mb, Format: epub
The Routledge International Handbook of Critical Philanthropy and Humanitarianism
Author(s): Katharyne Mitchell, Polly Pallister-Wilkins
ID: 3602192, Publisher: Routledge, Year: 2023, Size: 9 Mb, Format: pdf
Private Virtues, Public Vices: Philanthropy and Democratic Equality
Author(s): Emma Saunders-Hastings
ID: 3253847, Publisher: University of Chicago Press, Year: 2022, Size: 3 Mb, Format: pdf
Please note that this booklist is not absolute. Some books are truly chart-busters according to Chicago Tribune, others are written by unknown writers. On top of that, you can always find additional tutorials and courses on Coursera, Udemy or edX, for example. Are there any other relevant links you could recommend? Drop a comment if you have any feedback on the list.