Earlier this year, I wrote about the NY Times Award for Nonprofit Excellence. Well, I would be remiss in not talking about the Washington Post Award for Nonprofit Excellence also. Both newspapers have teamed up with nonprofit education and advocacy organizations to manage the awards process.

In New York, the NY Times has been working with the Nonprofit Coordinating Committee. They devised seven characteristics of nonprofit management excellence, and I wrote about those in another blog post earlier this year. Here in Washington, the Post has teamed up with the Center for Nonprofit Advancement.

The Post award is given out for excellence in the following categories:

• Fiscal Management
• Information and Communication
• Organizational Development
• Board Development
• People Development
• Planning
• Resource Development
• Risk Management
• Use of Technology
• Diversity
• Evaluation

Across these areas, applicants are encouraged to evaluate their management competence, achievement of best practices, and innovation. I think this award and the NY Times award are a great encouragement to nonprofits to look at ways to improve their management practices. Probably not surprising, I also see a valuable role that the Balanced Scorecard can plan in helping one excel at management excellence.

The BSC can help a nonprofit organize the above categories into a management framework such that they can see how Diversity, People Development, and Organizational Development will allow them to execute on their key internal processes. They can also use many of the other categories to ensure they are excellent at financial management. The BSC can help a nonprofit determine how to look for a best practice to compare against. Thus, if the financial strategy is based on a revenue model, then certain fundraising best practices would not be applicable. Further, practices around use of technology, resource development and planning really depend on the strategy of the organization.

I think these awards are great at highlighting what is working in nonprofit management, and I hope to see a user of the BSC get one of these awards in the near future. By the way, the 2008 award winner was the Washington Tennis and Education Foundation. Congratulations!