Steckel, Richard 1943(?)-

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STECKEL, Richard 1943(?)-

PERSONAL: Born c. 1943; married; wife's name, Michele; children: three. Education: Brooklyn College of City University of New York, B.A., 1964; Adelphi University, Garden City, NY, M.S.W., 1966; Boston University, Ph.D., 1974.

ADDRESSES: Office—AddVenture Network, 1350 Lawrence St., Denver, CO 80204.

CAREER: During early career, worked for nonprofit groups in New York, NY, and Boston, MA; Denver Children's Museum, Denver, CO, executive director, 1976–84; AddVenture Network, Denver, founder and president, 1984–. Advisor to Consultative Group on International Research and Future Harvest; board member for National Security Archive at George Washington University, and NESsT (Nonprofit and Self-sustainability Team), MD; associate, Sustainable Cities Trust, New Zealand. Speaker at conferences around the world.

WRITINGS:

(With Robin Simons and Peter Lengsfelder) Filthy Rich and Other Nonprofit Fantasies: Changing the Way Nonprofits Do Business in the '90s, Ten Speed Press (Berkeley, CA), 1989, revised edition (with Jennifer Lehman) published as Filthy Rich: How to Turn Your Nonprofit Fantasies into Cold, Hard Cash, Ten Speed Press (Berkeley, CA), 2000.

(With Robin Simons) Doing Best by Doing Good: How to Use Public Partnerships to Boost Corporate Profits and Community, Dutton (New York, NY), 1992, revised edition published as Making Money While Making a Difference: How to Profit with a Nonprofit Partner, High Tide Press (Homewood, IL), 1999.

(With Jennifer Lehman) In Search of America's Best Nonprofits, Jossey-Bass (San Francisco, CA), 1997.

(Editor, with Ellen Galinsky, Michele Steckel, and others) The Milestones Project: Celebrating Childhood around the World, Tricycle Press (Berkeley, CA), 2004.

(With others) Cold Cash for Warm Hearts: 101 Best Social Marketing Initiatives, High Tide Press (Homewood, IL), 2004.

Board member for newsletter Corporate Philanthropy Report.

WORK IN PROGRESS: Concoctions: Food Combinations Invented by Kids.

SIDELIGHTS: Richard Steckel has written and edited several books designed to share his expertise in marketing for nonprofit organizations and in promoting the corporate citizenship activities of for-profit enterprises. He claims to have advised over three hundred entities of both types over the past twenty years through his consulting group and through nonprofit advisory groups.

Steckel's first book, Filthy Rich and Other Nonprofit Fantasies: Changing the Way Nonprofits Do Business in the 90s, advises nonprofit groups to borrow ideas from successful businesses. According to Susanne Roschwalb in the NonProfit Times, this "highly readable" book is a manual based on the author's own experiences at the Denver Children's Museum. "Filthy Rich," observed Roschwalb, "is about changing nonprofits from poor, grant-dependent, beaten organizations into self-reliant, entrepreneurial, solvent organizations with broader audiences than they had previously dreamed possible." According to Pittershawn Palmer in Black Enterprise, the revised edition of this book, published as Filthy Rich: How to Turn Your Nonprofit Fantasies into Cold, Hard Cash, focuses on raising funds through joint ventures with for-profit corporations. These companies get "instant credibility through affiliation, helping [them] reach audiences they might not reach on their own … and helping them gain positive exposure in the press."

Steckel provides additional practical advice to nonprofit leaders, and those who might want to assist or work with nonprofits, in In Search of America's Best Nonprofits. Nearly two dozen organizations are profiled in the book. According to David Rouse in Booklist, the book helps "provide useful criteria … that can be used by managers, boards of directors, job hunters, volunteers, and donors." Steckel's 1992 book, Doing Best by Doing Good: How to Use Public Partnerships to Boost Corporate Profits and Community, is aimed more at businesses than at nonprofits, according to a Publishers Weekly contributor. Its main point, wrote the reviewer, is that alliances between the two types of organizations "can bring mutual success," although the point is driven home "a bit over-optimistically."

After years of traveling around the world and interacting with nonprofits facing the difficult challenges of social enterprise in poor countries, Steckel came up with a totally different publishing project. Collaborating with his wife, he took a selection of photos from the 23,000 they had taken during their travels through seventeen countries. The photos record various "milestones" in the lives of children in those countries. By showing how children of different races and cultures tend to react in similar ways on their birthdays, while getting haircuts, going to the doctor, playing with toys, and during other common experiences, Steckel hoped to provide a "tool to help parents raise a child free of prejudice, of stereotyping others, of hatred and intolerance," reported Patrick Kennedy in Bostonia. Published in 2004 as The Milestones Project: Celebrating Childhood around the World, the book includes stories and illustrations by contemporary children's book writers and artists. "This is a volume to share with younger children and to be enjoyed by many ages," according to Lee Bock in a School Library Journal review.

BIOGRAPHICAL AND CRITICAL SOURCES:

PERIODICALS

Black Enterprise, August, 2001, Pittershawn Palmer, review of Filthy Rich: How to Turn Your Nonprofit Fantasies into Cold, Hard Cash, p. 48.

Booklist, December 1, 1997, David Rouse, review of In Search of America's Best Nonprofits, p. 593; January 1, 2005, Jennifer Mattson, review of The Milestones Project: Celebrating Childhood around the World, p. 866.

Bostonia, fall, 2004, Patrick Kennedy, "Common Bonds."

NonProfit Times, December, 1989, Susanne Roschwalb, review of Filthy Rich and Other Nonprofit Fantasies: Changing the Way Nonprofits Do Business in the '90s, p. 24.

Publishers Weekly, October 6, 1992, review of Doing Best by Doing Good: How to Use Public Partnerships to Boost Corporate Profits and Community, p. 50; January 3, 2005, review of The Milestones Project, p. 57.

School Library Journal, November, 2004, Lee Bock, review of The Milestones Project, p. 169.

Skipping Stones, January-February, 2005, review of The Milestones Project, p. 32.