The Mission Trap: Nonprofit Management for a Post-Charity World

The Mission Trap argues that the American nonprofit sector is caught in a structural contradiction: the very features that make nonprofits appear virtuous, including volunteer governance, donor-driven revenue, below-market compensation, and the fixation on low overhead, are the features that prevent these organizations from achieving their stated missions. Drawing on decades of research, practitioner experience, and cross-sector analysis, the book offers MBA students and nonprofit leaders a set of frameworks for redesigning organizations around outcomes rather than activities. Each chapter pairs critical analysis of the sector's orthodoxies with practical tools for building institutions that serve their missions rather than their own survival. This is not a book about how to run a nonprofit. It is a book about how to build an organization worthy of the problems it was created to solve.