Forces for Good, by Leslie Crutchfield and Heather McLeod Grant is a new book the explores the "Six Practices of High-Impact Nonprofits".

To do this, the authors have selected 12 high-impact non-profit organizations and have documented in thorough detail what it is that makes these organizations some of the most successful of their kind.

I got this book for Christmas and have only just started reading it, but I was immediately blown away by the relevance that this book has for my need to step up and truly be a leader of our LC and the importance of setting the right kinds of goals and vision.

"Its not surprising that leading social entrepreneurs and their organizations have outgrown the conventional tools of the trade. Merely building a great board or delivering adequate services or even running an efficient nonprofit is no longer enough. In order to be tru forces for good, the must learn new ways of thinking and acting".

This passage comes from the 4th damn page of the book, people. After reading that I was pretty much sold on the whole concept of the book and have barely been able to put it down since.

Sure enough there were two more home-run passages within the first ten pages:

"We don't have time for incremental change - we need dramatic change if we are to sole the complex global problems that plague us today. The stakes are high on all sides, and we must rise to the challenge. Doing anything less would squander this momentous opportunity to advance the greater good."

oh shit

One more, this one is long so hold onto your butts...

"Teach For America is one of these high impact groups. Launched by Princeton Senior Wendy Kopp in 1989 on a shoestring budget in a borrowed office, it now has forty-four hundred corps members and more than twelve thousand alumni. Many of the country's best and brightest college grads now spend two years teaching in America's toughest public schools, in exchange for a modest salary. In the las decade, Teach For America has more than quintupled in size, growing its budget from $10 million to $70 million by 2007 and its number of teachers from five hundred to forty-four hundred. And it ams to double again in the next few years.

But rapid growth is only part of the story. More important, Teach For America has succeeded in doing what was once considered impossible it has changed how we think about teacher credentialing, made teaching in public schools "cool", and created a vanguard for education reform among America's future leaders. Itis now the recruiter of choice on Ivy League campuses, out-competing elite firms like Goldman Sachs and McKinsey & Company. And graduates who went through the program in the 1990s are now launching charter schools, running for elected office, managing education foundations, and working as school principals. Teach For America's audacious goal is to one day have a U.S. president who is an alumnus of the program".

My vision is to have AIESEC Madison on the first page of the 2nd Edition of the book. An ambitious, forward thinking vision. Goals that challenge you to meet it. A sensible and responsible organizational structure. This is what its gonna take to make history, baby.