The recently published Nonprofit Guide to Going Green is a robust handbook on greening all aspects of a nonprofit organization's program. It covers everything from greening your office and building to green management, fundraising, information technology, purchasing, travel, organizing events in an environmental way, saving water, saving electricity, recycling, and obtaining green certification. The book has several great checklists and some in-depth case studies that show how both large and small nonprofit organizations have implemented their greening efforts.

The book is edited by three people: Ted Hart of GreenNonprofits.org, Adrienne Capps of the University of California, Davis, and Matthew Bauer, president of BetterWorld Telecom. The book includes articles by many other authors. It was published in December 2009 and has 425-page book in 20 chapters. It is both an informational resource and also geared to work in cooperation with GreenNonprofits.org Certification.

The green bottom line chapter by Glenn Croston is mainly a green office overview. It has a green computing section that describes Climate Savers Computing Initiative and information on buying Energy Star or EPEAT-rated IT equipment. It also talks about things I'd never heard about like Green Insurance. It also recommends SolarCity, one of the more controversial solar companies in that they own your solar infrastructure. I really like Croston's good clear section explaining the complex subject of carbon offsets.

The green management and employee plan section by Matthew Bauer is probably the most visionary chapter in the book. Bauer maintains that organizational greening involves unexpected things like effective partnering, transparency, open work, and organizational democracy to create an effective and motivated green workplace. He also recommends wrapping any green activities around core mission, and only then doing concrete planning like using the comprehensive GreenNonprofits Certification and Registration Checklist to address the largest areas of impact.

For example, some organizations generate a lot of paper, some use a lot of transportation, and so on. Bauer strongly advocates that organizations contemplate ways to employ flexible work schedules that involve more telecommuting and flex-time schedules that entail removing "time in the office" as the basis of employee measurement and enabling mobile employees to work from any location, giving them the freedom to choose that location as long as client needs and organizational objectives are met. Telecommuting alone has potentially huge positive potential for greenhouse gas reductions. He also advocates adopting new online technological tools like blogs and social networking as good ways to recreate the workplace and keep in touch.

I also liked the green event-planning chapter by Georgia Malki of Seven-Star Events. It has especially good checklists that nonprofits can use to replicate his method either in part or entirely. Several chapters in the book have compelling reasons for going green. I particularly liked Malki's list:

Every day:

• 15,000,000 tons of carbon dioxide (CO2) are released into the atmosphere
• 72 to 100 square miles of desert are created
• 50 species are added to extinction
• 170 million tons of topsoil are lost
• 27,000 tons of chloro∩¼éuorocarbons are added to the atmosphere
• 263,000 humans are born
• 1.2 million meetings and conventions held annually to the tune of $107 billion per year providing experiences to an estimated 136.5 million persons in the United States each year

The chapter on greening your organization's travel by Chris Seek, Brian Mullis, and Peter Krahenbuhl has some good info on choosing a carbon offset partner and some thoughtful packing tips.

The Nonprofit Guide to Going Green's building green and greening your building chapter by Danielle Brigida and Kristin Johnson has a good, informative section on greening your building's energy and water use ' a whole book could easily be devoted to this topic.

The Green Purchasing chapter by Britt Tang S├╕rensen covers the various green and eco labels from an international point of view. That information was new to me.

Find the Nonprofit Guide to Going Green at Amazon.com and look for part two of my overview of the book next week!