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Managing a nonprofit organisation
Challenges in a non-profit organisation
Challenges in a non-profit organisation
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Recommended: Managing a nonprofit organisation
Nonprofit Organization Challenges
Nonprofit Organization (NPO) leaders face many challenges in growing their organizations and improving services to clients. Some of the most difficult challenges include: 1) developing leaders of change; 2) reflecting and embracing diversity; and 3) focusing on collaboration, alliance building, and partnerships. The following paper describes the three nonprofit leadership challenges and discusses how a nonprofit organizational leader could address each with recommendations.
Challenge 1: Developing leaders of change Change, whether incremental or huge, can create significant challenges and displacements in organizations due to the difficulty of many individuals, groups and institutions to adapt to change.
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Without an industry-wide effort to make diversity a top concern, many organizations may find it challenging to draw from the market they want. With communities in the United States growing more diverse, the types of audiences and the means by which they communicate have also expanded, giving the nonprofit sector room to increase their base of donors and volunteers. For example, the university I work for the University of North Carolina at Pembroke is very diverse. It’s one of the top schools for diversity.
It's important that employees are representative of their client base so they can understand their needs and know how to serve them. It means that the organization as a whole is better able to relate to a larger population. It does not mean that people of one culture, gender, age, etc., only work with those respective populations. Just having people who are different from each other is not enough. A good training program helps people work better together and utilize each other's
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However, while there is a growing body of knowledge about the factors that support effective negotiation and integration of strategic partnerships, much less is known about the actual outcomes nonprofits experience and how these compare to expected outcomes. Many nonprofits expend large amounts of organizational energy for questionable returns while pursuing interorganizational relationships. Nonprofits often encounter major barriers to collaboration, such as autonomy issues and conflicting organizational cultures, and trust-building among
Worth, M. (2014). Nonprofit management: Principles and Practice. 3rd Ed. Thousand Oaks, CA: SAGE Publications, Inc.
The nonprofit sector in America is a reflection some of the foundational values that brought our nation into existence. Fundamentals, such as the idea that people can govern themselves and the belief that people should have the opportunity to make a difference by joining a like-minded group, have made America and its nonprofit sector what it is today. The American "civil society" is one that has been produced through generations of experiments with government policy, nonprofit organizations, private partnerships, and individuals who have asserted ideas and values. The future of the nonprofit sector will continue to be experimental in many ways. However, the increase of professional studies in nonprofit management and the greater expectation of its role in society is causing executives to look to more scientific methods of management.
Crutchfield, Leslie R., and Heather McLeod Grant. Forces for Good: The Six Practices of High-impact Nonprofits. San Francisco: Jossey-Bass, 2008. Print.
Nonprofits are dealing with many risks that seemed especially significant. For example, Nonprofits might encounter fiscal risk caused by the difficulty of finding enough resources and funds to subsidize their mission and objectives. Throughout history, fiscal distress has been a way of life for the nonprofit sector as many nonprofits are competing to access the needed resources and raising money to fund their activities. Nonprofits also might encounter the risk of losing market shares due to the uneven opportunity in accessing resources required to establish new facilities or new programs and services in response to the rapid surges in demand. Accordingly, nonprofits are required to maintain effectiveness
Others believe that diversity is something that will happen on its own with out intervention. Some experts who study diversity, however, believe that diversity is not something that should be left up to chance. It is important, therefore, for organizations to take
Nonprofit Organizations The purpose of this research is to define nonprofit organizations, describe opportunities that are present in nonprofits, outline advantages and disadvantages of working in the nonprofit sector, and explain how you can determine if this is an area for you to consider as a career. WHAT IS THE NONPROFIT SECTOR? "Nonprofit" is a term that the I.R.S. uses to define tax-exempt organizations whose money or "profit" must be used solely to further their charitable or educational mission, rather than distribute profits to owners or shareholders as in the for-profit sector. The term is also used to describe organizations which are not a branch of -- are independent of -- the government and the corporate sector. This term refers to one of the most important uniqueness of a nonprofit organization: it is independent of both the public or government sector and the private or corporate sector.
Many organizations receive benefits, from the government, for being culturally diverse. For example, organizations that follow the government guidelines are given new technology and more resources to better the community health. If a healthcare organization isn’t culturally diverse, it can harm the organization’s incentives and raise concerns on diversity and inequality from the community.
When diversity is being discussed, there are a plethora of ideas that are associated with it. Whether people are talking being put on a waitlist for college, about people of color, or about representation in the media, the subject of diversity is not rare. Recently, the conversation of diversity has become more common because colleges want to demonstrate that they have diversified campus. How would diversity on campus be defined? Most importantly, diversity is more than having an extraordinary personality. Race, gender, sexuality, and social status are a few of the superfluous traits that make an individual unique in a college’s eyes. In Sophia Kerby’s article, “10 Reasons Why We Need Diversity on College Campuses”, she notes that, while there has already been an effort to diversify high schools and middle schools, accepting students of different backgrounds is not as apparent in higher education (1) . A university desires to diversify its campus in order to benefit the students that are attending the college. Students are not only likely to improve
Worth, M. (2014). Nonprofit management: Principles and Practice. 3rd Ed. Thousand Oaks, CA: SAGE Publications, Inc.
Nonprofit and for-profit businesses have multiple similarities and differences. For-profit organizations are very different from non-profit organizations because the driving goal of a for-profit organization is increasing its revenue whereas a non-profit organization will not go out of business if it suffers financial loss or does not have a bottom-line. The marketing process also differs, with the biggest differentiating factor of profit marketing is to encourage customers to buy and while the nonprofit marketing purpose is usually to encourage people to give. This means that the return on investment differs between the two. Although the principles of marketing remain the same, some of the methods must, of necessity, be different. Because of the intense involvement in the community as well as support from government, agencies non-profit firms should not compete in the same markets as for profit companies nor in anyway position their organization in any way to give the impression that their efforts could be commercial based (Nelson, 2002).
A diverse workforce more closely reflects the global marketplace that the organization competes in. With the growing number of Asian, Hispanic and other minority populations, it makes sense for companies to promote and strive for diversity in the workplace. By doing this, businesses create the very conditions needed to produce more creative outcomes to the problems and challenges they will be faced with.
Worth, Michael J. Nonprofit Management: Principles and Practice. 3rd Ed. Copyright 2014 by SAGE Publications, Inc.
The relationship between young people and nonprofits can be the start of a significant change in our community, and should be a reciprocal and powerful educational experience. An open-minded and encouraging flow of communication between organizations and community members can be the launchpad for the social and environmental change organizations talk about and try for every day. Together, we can make change – not just a semblance of idealism, but reality, as well.
Throughout this course my paradigms of what a nonprofit organization have been challenged as we have considered the major aspects and leadership challenges of these organizations. Having worked with for profit and nonprofit organizations in the past I was quite confident that I had a clear understanding of the distinctions between the two. I had worked in organizations that regularly used volunteers to accomplish their mission and felt that the management of these processes were simplistic. Despite these misconceptions, I found that I was able to learn a tremendous amount through our reading, peer interactions, group projects and equally important, my volunteer service as part of this course.
Within an organization, there are always people that think and behave differently, all dependent on their personal values and cultures. Efficient managing of the human resources is an art, and it is hard to find a perfect solution/combination. It is important that management recognize and understand that people work differently. This is why it is important to have strong cultural foundations that also guides how employees are expected to behave and work. Thereby it should be easier for management to utilize the work force diversity to something meaningful.