The complete set · November 2026

The Library.

Ten volumes and 152 chapters. Each treats one part of the work in full. The tenth reproduces the documents.

How to read the set

Start with Book One. After that, in any order.

Book One is the only volume written to be read continuously, and it assumes you have not started. The other nine are reference volumes. Open them at the chapter that applies.

One exception. Book Nine is the only volume concerned with the founder rather than the organization.

Book I · Starting up

Passion Turned Profession

How to start a nonprofit with no money, and actually get it running

Most guides start at incorporation. This one starts a chapter earlier, at the question everybody skips: whether you should start one at all.

If the answer is yes, the remainder is procedure. The name and the state filing. Bylaws, which are ignored until the day they govern everything. The federal application, both forms and both fees, and which one applies to you. A founding board that is more than three friends in agreement. And a first-year budget that balances.

If you cannot name three things your mission rules out, you have not written a mission. You have written a mood.

Open Book I →

November 2026 15 chapters · 139 pages

Book II · Being known

Nobody Knows You Yet

How to promote a new nonprofit and get it noticed

Nobody is withholding their support. They have not heard of you — and those are completely different problems with completely different solutions.

The volume covers the sentence that describes your organization, and how to tell when you have not yet earned it. A website built around four screens. Email, the only audience you own outright, and the deliverability failures that remain invisible until they are severe. Search, now that engines answer the question rather than list the links. And the platforms you can reasonably ignore, which is most of them.

An unmarketed nonprofit is not a humble nonprofit. It is a temporary one.

Open Book II →

November 2026 25 chapters · 188 pages

Book III · Mission and program

Does It Actually Work?

Theory of change, logic models, and how to measure nonprofit impact honestly

A program is a hypothesis. You are claiming that if you do a specific thing, a specific change follows — and a claim can be wrong.

The volume is practical rather than academic. Theory of change without the jargon, on one page. Dosage, and the threshold below which a program is not being delivered. Fidelity, and which components are load-bearing. The pilot, which is a question with an end date rather than a smaller version of the program. Intake, safeguarding, participant voice, and maintaining quality when nobody is observing.

An unexamined program is not a humble program. It is an experiment being run on people without anyone admitting it is an experiment.

Open Book III →

November 2026 25 chapters · 185 pages

Book IV · Money in

Nobody Gives to Need

How to raise money for a nonprofit nobody has heard of

The most common assumption in nonprofit fundraising is that the size of a problem is an argument. It is not, and everything else follows from that.

The volume opens with what research on charitable behaviour has established, much of which the sector disregards, and rebuilds the case for support from there. Then your first fifty donors, who are not strangers, are not wealthy, and are largely people you already know. Then the conversation itself: the request is four sentences, and the silence that follows is where the skill lies.

The size of the problem is not the argument. The size of the difference your reader can make is the argument.

Open Book IV →

November 2026 15 chapters · 97 pages

Book V · Money handled

Where Did It All Go?

Nonprofit budgets, the overhead myth, and the numbers funders actually read

A board does not need to understand accounting. It needs four answers, and most organizations cannot produce them.

This is the volume on holding it. Bookkeeping that survives the third year. Restricted and unrestricted, the two most consequential words in nonprofit finance and the ones founders usually learn after they matter. Fund accounting without an accountant. Internal controls in an organization of three people. And reserves, with the argument for holding them.

Every restricted dollar is a promise. Unrestricted money is the only money that is actually yours.

Open Book V →

November 2026 14 chapters

Book VI · People

Somebody Else Has to Do This

How to hire your first employee and keep the volunteers you already have

You are not busy. You are the bottleneck, which is a different problem with a different solution.

The volume covers the mechanics of transferring work to another person. Contractor or employee, where the apparently cheaper answer is the one that produces the liability, and a signed agreement stating otherwise carries no weight. Designing a role that is a position rather than a list of tasks you no longer want. Writing a posting that reaches the people who would actually apply. And interviewing without prior experience of it, which is a matter of prediction rather than preference.

‘Help’ is not a job. It is a description of your feelings.

Open Book VI →

November 2026 14 chapters · 144 pages

Book VII · The board

The People You Answer To

Nonprofit board member roles, responsibilities, and how to build a board that works

You do not have a board. You have nine people who are fond of you and have signed something.

The volume is about constructing a board deliberately. What a board is for, and what yours currently does. The founding board and the point at which it should change. Recruiting for the expertise you lack rather than the company you enjoy. The relationship with the chair, which determines how difficult everything else becomes. Meetings that reach decisions. Committees that do work.

A founding board that has never disagreed with you is not evidence that you are right. It is evidence that nothing has been tested.

Open Book VII →

November 2026 14 chapters · 118 pages

Book VIII · Law and compliance

Nobody Told You That Was Illegal

501c3 filings, Form 990, contracts, and the deadlines nobody sends a reminder for

You have been fundraising illegally in four states for two years. So has nearly everybody you know.

Charitable solicitation registration, which few organizations complete correctly. Operating in a second state, which is rarely a decision: a volunteer moves, a partner opens a site, and the obligation follows. Insurance, and the coverage most small organizations lack while paying for coverage they do not need. And the agreements you will sign in the first five years, against the small number you will read.

An obligation nobody enforces is still an obligation, and the year somebody looks is never the year you were ready.

Open Book VIII →

November 2026 14 chapters

Book IX · The founder

The Last Thing Nobody Tells You

Founder’s syndrome, burnout, and what the organization owes you

You thought you were taking on a project. It was a post.

Deciding on incomplete information. Having nobody to ask while surrounded by people. The week that disappears, and why conventional productivity advice assumes an employer you do not have. And what you pay yourself, which is not only a budget decision but a public statement about the value of the work, read by everyone who works for you.

The reason no other founder has told you they are struggling is that they are having this exact chapter’s experience, in a room four miles away, about you.

Open Book IX →

November 2026 9 chapters

Book X · The documents

What It Actually Looks Like

Bylaws, policies, budgets, board papers — the paperwork, written out in full

Every other volume explains what to write. This one reproduces the finished document and annotates it.

They belong to Second Chapter Reading, North County Diaper Bank, and Southside Community Kitchen, the three organizations followed throughout the preceding volumes.

The founding documents take an afternoon and govern for a decade. Nothing else you write will have that ratio.

Open Book X →

November 2026 7 chapters · 86 pages

November 2026

Ten volumes.
None of them
repeats another.

Each subject is treated once, in the volume that owns it. The full contents of all ten are listed on this site.

The documents → What you get →