Strategic Restructuring for Nonprofit Organizations: Mergers, Integrations, and Alliances

Drawing on the findings of the most ambitious national study to date on nonprofit strategic restructuring, the authors provide nonprofit managers, board members, consultants, and foundation executives with research-based information to use in making tough decisions about whether and how to pursue a range of organizational partnerships--from jointly managed programs and consolidated administrative functions to full-scale mergers. The authors investigate two widespread assumptions--that strategic restructuring leads to greater organizational efficiency and that nonprofit consolidations are similar to corporate consolidations. Six in-depth case studies of actual nonprofit restructurings highlight the costs and benefits associated with this increasingly adopted course of action, a trend that is expected to remain on the upswing for the foreseeable future.

AMELIA KOHM is a Researcher at the Chapin Hall Center for Children at the University of Chicago.

DAVID LA PIANA is a Founder of La Piana Associates, Inc., a consulting firm specializing in strategic solutions for nonprofit organizations and foundations./ He has taught at the University of San Francisco’s Institute for Nonprofit Organization Management and at the Haas School of Business at the University of California, Berkeley.