Doing Good Well

Willie Cheng examines why the charity sector works the way it does, presenting its oddities as ironies and paradoxes. One is that a deserving charity can struggle while a wasteful one thrives, because revenue and expenses are structurally disconnected in nonprofits. Another is that a charity's final aim is to become extinct rather than to keep growing, and a third is that volunteers can be worth using even when paid skilled staff would cost less, if engagement with the community matters. Cheng also revisits mission, staff pay, governance and corporate social responsibility, along with informed giving, social entrepreneurship and the gap between rich and poor. He takes apart existing paradigms and proposes new ones, with change as the stated theme.

Gift-it-Forward founder Theresa Evanoff listed it among her favourite books in an interview about being a lifelong reader.