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Play to Win by David La Piana

Description

Play to Win offers nonprofit leaders the help they need to develop their organization’s unique competitive advantages and to use the power of competitive strategies to build their organization’s capacity for advancing its mission. This book offers a clear description of competition and discusses its practical, ethical, and political ramifications within the nonprofit sector. It demonstrates how, by being a more effective competitor, a nonprofit can enhance its chances for both programmatic and financial success. Play to Win is filled with practical tools for assessing a nonprofit’s position in the marketplace and developing winning competitive strategies.

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David La Piana is founder of La Piana Associates, Inc., a consulting firm specializing in helping foundations and nonprofit organizations address the strategic issues they face. He has also been an adjunct professor at the University of San Francisco’s Institute for Nonprofit Organization Management and a lecturer at the Haas School of Business at the University of California, Berkeley. He spent the first eighteen years of his career directly managing nonprofit organizations and speaks to nonprofit leaders as a peer.

Michaela Hayes is a senior manager with La Piana Associates. She has more than twenty years of experience in helping organizations use marketing and communications strategies to strengthen their mission advancement.

The Wiley Advantage

This book helps develop a strategic approach to inter-organizational relationships grounded in direct market feedback.

Explains the relative merits of collaboration or competition.

Includes information on funding and both personnel recruitment and retention.

Offers a guide for organizations on achieving the optimal balance of collaboration and competition.

Reviews

“This excellent book addresses the key strategic question facing any nonprofit organization–how (and when) to compete without compromising the core values and public expectations that distinguish nonprofits from other types of organizations. David La Piana is eminently qualified to provide students and professionals alike with new insights and helpful tools for navigating the treacherous landscape of nonprofit management.”

–Kevin Kearns, author, Private Sector Strategies for Social Sector Success

“I applaud La Piana’s recognition that it is time for nonprofits to bring the notion of competition out of the closet.”

–Pat Jones, senior vice president, Affiliate Services, Easter Seals

“This book is three dimensional: prophetic with its take on competition and collaboration, practical with many tools and resources, and provocative in its ability to describe how it can help breed real collaboration.”

–Tom Reis, program director, Kellogg Foundation

“David La Piana challenges us to view constructive and ethical competition as the driving force behind innovation and real social change.”

–Jim Denova, senior program officer, Benedum Foundation

“An essential resource providing tools executives can use to develop and enhance strategies to move their organizations from a position of survival to a position of strength, and from a position of strength to a position of greatness.”

–Jan Williams, manager, Strategic Alliance Services, Girl Scouts of the USA

“Reveals ethical strategies for vying for scarce resources, maintaining organizational integrity, and strengthening the mission work of the sector.”

–Mike Hoff, director, consulting services, Center for Nonprofit Management

“David La Piana offers humor, ordinary stories and ideas for immediate action steps to make this an eminently accessible and useful book.”

–Martha Campbell, vice president for programs, Irvine Foundation

“Not only do David’s words jump off the page–resonating, validating, enlightening¾but he provides the nonprofit leader with the tools to compete ethically and effectively in the very competitive environment facing nonprofits.”

–Connie Cochran, CEO and president, Easter Seals UCP, North Carolina

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Salepage : Play to Win by David La Piana

About Author

David La Piana

David La Piana, the founder of La Piana Consulting, is recognized as one of the social sector’s leading thinkers and consultants. He is known for an ability to quickly get to the core of complex strategic questions and for working collaboratively with clients to devise innovative solutions that meet their needs and accelerate their growth.

David coined the term “strategic restructuring” to refer to the continuum of mergers, joint ventures, consolidations, and joint programming through which nonprofits attempt to anticipate or respond to environmental threats and opportunities. He works closely with major foundations and national nonprofits to promote new ideas and tools that can enhance nonprofits’ effectiveness. His work is driven by a commitment to building a more just and equitable world.

David has taught graduate level courses at the Haas School of Business at the University of California, Berkeley, and at the University of San Francisco’s Institute for Nonprofit Organization Management. A popular speaker, he is a regular contributor to the national dialogue on nonprofit and foundation effectiveness and the future of the social sector. He is widely published and frequently interviewed by the media for his opinions on trends in the sector. He also recently published his first novel: First Generation.