Patton's Picks: Fall Semester 2025

At PMA Nonprofit Leadership, we often encourage our Mastermind cohorts to build intentional learning plans - because leadership growth doesn’t stop at graduation. It’s about committing to the next semester of education and skill development.

That’s been on our mind recently thanks to a thought-provoking article by Kelsey Picken, PhD, CFRE, CSPG in the July 2025 issue of the Association of Fundraising Professionals’ Advancing Philanthropy magazine.

Her piece, Does Philanthropy Need to Be More Academic?, lifted up seven books that could serve as the backbone of a semester-long curriculum for anyone serious about nonprofit leadership and the philanthropic sector. Thanks to Kelsey, here’s what’s now on our list:

📖 Commonwealth – Michael Hardt & Antonio Negri
📖 The Fragmented Metropolis – Robert M. Fogelson
📖 Winners Take All: The Elite Charade of Changing the World – Anand Giridharadas
📖 The Givers: Wealth, Power, and Philanthropy in a New Gilded Age – David Callahan
📖 The Generosity Crisis – Nathan Chappell, MBA, MNA, CFRE, AIGP, Brian Crimmins & Michael Ashley
📖 Bowling Alone: The Collapse and Revival of American Community – Robert D. Putnam
📖 Uncharitable – Dan Pallotta

Together, these works ask us to wrestle with issues of power, inequality, civic decline, and the urgent need to reform how nonprofits are structured and resourced.

Leave us a comment below! We would love to hear from you!