PETER F. DRUCKER AWARD FOR NONPROFIT INNOVATION

The Drucker Institute received over 500 applications for the 2008 Peter F. Drucker Award for Nonprofit Innovation, a 47% increase over the 2007 total. The award, administered annually since 1991, is granted to a social sector organization that demonstrates Drucker’s definition of innovation—change that creates a new dimension of performance. The winner will receive the $35,000 first prize, with $7,500 for second place and $5,000 for third place.

Widely considered the father of modern management, Peter Drucker not only consulted for major corporations, he advised the Girl Scouts of America, the Red Cross, the Salvation Army and countless other social-sector organizations. He called the nonprofit “America’s most distinctive institution.”

The past two winners of the Drucker Award include the “Made in NY” Production Assistant Training Program, which launches unemployed and low-income New Yorkers in careers in film and television production, and the Florence Immigrant and Refugee Rights Project, which trains detained immigrants to navigate often unfamiliar and complex legal systems.

“Peter Drucker was among the first people to understand and articulate that innovation extended far beyond the corporate world and into the social sector,” said Rick Wartzman, director of the Drucker Institute, a campus-wide resource of Claremont Graduate University. “In that way, he anticipated the rise of social entrepreneurship and the vital role that nonprofits would play in our rapidly changing world.”