I always enjoy Nancy Lublin's column in Fast Company so I excited to hear she had a book out called Zilch:The Power of Zero in Business. She prefaces her book saying this was not a feel-good book about social responsibility and charity, but rather a book on what business strategies for-profits can learn from not-for-profits. Yes, yes, I know -- you're thinking I meant the other way round. I, too, am guilty of saying my not-for-profit employer needs to adopt the corporate model, but it turns out Lublin is on point when she says not-for-profits are a lot better at certain business practices.

Here are my favorite lessons learned from not-for-profits:

• Your brand transcends everything - Your brand isn't made up of your products, name, and logo. It is so much more than that. In fact, it is everything, from your salesperson's tone of voice, to your shipping packaging, to who is associated with your brand. Once you start thinking about your brand in this light, the possibilities of how to create a strong brand are endless.
• People are connected - Social networks are influential. What you do can cause a ripple effect of good vibes, or bad vibes. Treat all your stakeholders very, very well and it will pass on to people they know, and then people those people know, etc. 
• Transform your business into a club - Not-for-profits aren't the only organizations that have passionate people who help them recuit new followers and fundraise. For-profit companies also have customers who are crazy about them, spreading the word and encouraging others to discover them too. First you need to make customers feel welcome to your club, then sustain that relationship so that they feel like they are part of something worth being fanatical about.
• Corporations just don't understand budgets - This always baffled me -- why do departments desperately find ways to blow their leftover money so they can spend their entire budget and ask for more the next fiscal year? I don't see anything effective about this practise. Create a culture of frugality at your company; encourage people to do more with less. This way, your employees won't waste the company's resources and they'll focus on what is important. Departments should compete in being more efficient, not in seeing who can justify more money to throw away.

There are eleven chapters, each ending with eleven questions to think about your company. The symbolism behind this is that not-for-profits never stop at 10 out of 10 -- they always reach for 11 (with 0, of course). Not only are the eleven questions a great chapter summary to apply Lublin's ideas to your own business, it's a reminder that we should all strive for 11.

The essence of the book is that once you stop thinking about how to spend your money and start to imagine what you would do if you had nothing, you're getting on the right track of building a good foundation. And I couldn't agree more -- huge budgets can make you lose focus of what's truly important in business, which often costs little to nothing. Ironically, having zilch helps you see opportunity everywhere. I'm sure my fellow bootstrappers concur. This is a must-read for anyone from a not-for-profit or for-profit, may it be big or small.