THE CALL FOR BETTER MANAGEMENT IN TODAY’S NGO’S
In today's skyrocket developing society, many experts predict that non-profit organizations will continually grow and obligations undertaken by many governments in the past 30 years, will more and more generally turn to NGO in the future.
The non-profit organization “world” is one of the fastest growing fields, in which the beliefs of voluntary service are thought to be a community-driven principle. NGO’s are being regarded as one of the most three important realities in the world, paralleled with market and government principles.
Thus, due to the important role of NGO, the managerial research concerning NGO’s has been conducted for many years. According to trustful statistics, NGO’s today are facing several issues, such as, low volunteer retention rates and obsolete fund-raising ideas.
Personally I believe these points are just superficial problems, which certainly cannot reflect the real problem of NGO’s. Peter F. Drucker, the father of modern management, said NGO’s success greatly depends on the owners’ excellent management. Only first addressing the issue of “less-than-best” of management can make the organizations maintain a long-term steady development. Following are some managerial reforms I personally feel need to be addressed. They are:
1. NGOs need management
Management has always been seen as a business "patent" until the late 1970s. NGO’s did not fully aware of the managerial importance was in being responsible for the daily operation and final consequences which were all determinant elements to an NGO’s existence.
Management has always been seen as a business "patent" until the late 1970s. NGO’s did not fully aware of the managerial importance was in being responsible for the daily operation and final consequences which were all determinant elements to an NGO’s existence.
As management was initially tailored for commercial enterprises, thus these associations have achieved great success in recent decades, causing people to link "management" with "profit". However, NGO’s most inspiring point is the non-profit-oriented purpose, which misleads many people to view the lack of management as a quite normal situation for NGO. While in fact, these organizations in the past, organized by part-time volunteers did not have the basic skills or experience in the management disciplines.
The spirit of management does not belong only to profit, regardless of what the organization's purposes are. Management is the most effective mean to promote the operational results, in which "profit" is only one test performance standard. All organizations need to be managed, thus they need to have an efficient manager. Moreover, NGO’s are not only need to be managed, but also need to be highly efficiently managed; for the primary reason is that people’s expectation on NGO is usually much higher than on business associations and, NGO’s failures or scandals will get more condemnation. They need efficient and effective management to guarantee the expected result.
Secondly, if the organization is poorly managed, it will not only be difficult for attracting high-quality volunteers, but also risks wasting huge social resources of limited people and hard-to-find financing.
Thirdly, all the NGO staffs and volunteers need to realize that the purpose of all their effort is to accomplish the organization’s mission, which is considered as the reason of the organization’s existence. This is the first task of management is to find the mission of an organization.
2. PROFESSIONAL MANAGEMENT
Since the operation of NGO needs to be focused on successful results; good management (like commercial organizations who look for certain results) needs to be more highly considered in the NGO. So seeking and practicing new management skills by current NGO leadership, or seeking outside managerial skills should be a considered need and meet a growing acceptability.
Since the operation of NGO needs to be focused on successful results; good management (like commercial organizations who look for certain results) needs to be more highly considered in the NGO. So seeking and practicing new management skills by current NGO leadership, or seeking outside managerial skills should be a considered need and meet a growing acceptability.
“Professional” management means the managers may need to come from other talent markets and their salaries are adjusted by both of the NGO and outside market.
Today, some great NGOs have already been able to maintain efficient operation just due to their high-quality professional management which is delivered by MBA students or” veterans” in business industry. One of the world's largest and most complex NGO, the Red Cross has already achieved a successful career management by hiring several professional managers. And as a result, we all see their great progress achieved could be approached by hiring professional managers who bring in managerial skills and experiences. And another telling statistic could also reflect the trend of NGO’s management from another angle that more than 52% MBA students in America hope to work in NGO, which exactly express people’s idea of today’s NGO---they still need many talented managers.
In general, when an NGO develops into a considerable size, the part-time volunteers usually cannot solve the day-to-day management work; while professional managers should be available resolve that. But someone may wonder who should supervise their conduct and determine their objectives? Who should be responsible for their behaviors? The best answer is: let the internal effective regulatory body “speak up”. From my research, NGO’s in the West have unlimited diversity, yet the vast majority of them have adopted similar managerial structures--the Board body, just like most profit-oriented companies, which includes Board Director, Board members from similar enterprises with independent personnel determination, and a manager as well. Board members and board director are mostly part-time staffs, who are mainly just being responsible for organizational objectives, net-working events, and performance assessments.
Therefore, managers need to take full charge of the daily work and also be responsible for the NGO’s high quality operation. Therefore, the agreed upon objectives and performance assessment for senior managers’ turnover should be clearly known and understood; if they fail to reach the expected indicators, resignation is generally considered to be the only choice. Thus the establishment of high-level management will help the NGO upon a steady condition in a quite large extent.
While for those NGO’s who still remain in the initial stage or at smaller size levels, professional mangers are not quite as essential. Two different operational systems could figure out their most projects. For daily work, NGO need to handle their work by regular departments with each take full charge of their parts. While for special projects which cannot be easily conducted by departments, it should adopt another different system. Firstly, they need to elect a project manager who would be responsible for this whole session. And then, conducting a project team should be made in which it would be separated into several groups according to different projects. The project manager needs to assure the skeleton of this project with teammates and then let group leaders be responsible for detail work of their part. And after project, the system should be turned back into the daily one.
3. MANAGEMENT BY OBJECTIVES
NGO must have a clear mission and vision, which is also the key fundamental element for a highly effective management. To enhance operational efficiency, an organization and its board should build agreed upon objectives and standards to evaluate their operational management. Frankly speaking, profit is always the most important standard and pretty clear evaluation criteria for the business sector. Since the NGO serves our society by using social resources just like companies, then reasonable criteria of effective resource-utilization should also be put into concrete operation and assessment standards.
Because of the high diversity of the NGO, the implementation is apparently much harder than enterprises realize. Nevertheless, there are many successful NGO’s who do find a specific operational target. For example, "The Salvation Army" mainly target at abandoned children, criminals and homeless people; transforming them back into a normal citizen .That exactly describes their spirits essence and encourages their further development.
So what every NGO should do is just question themselves: first,” what do they want to be remembered for”, which can perfectly exhibit the real meaning of their existence, inspiring their further development.
The above are reforms throughout NGO’s fundamental management, which need to be applied in daily functional work. And of course it can resolve those superficial problems which have been mentioned above:
Now for more, it’s the detailed solution:
Finance
The conception of “finance” in NGO has been changed a lot. For one example, in the United States, individual donation has been accounted for more than 18% of the total funding. With the fund raising channel being more and more familiar by the public, they will no longer regard their donations as charitable behaviors, but spending money for a particular social service. People are inclined to see the consequence before they actually donate, if not, a reliable guarantee for their kindness is needed. Under such circumstance, clear and specific objectives would be the most convincing means. Besides, NGOs are also requested to provide transparent financial system. Because many organizations only use the publicity in the first beginning, focusing on the organizations’ own point of view to persuade the donors. This kind of “sentimental” approach is not as effective to arouse people's compassion as in previous years.
Take an orphanage as an example. Usually the orphanage would use the children’s tragic life to gain public mercy. Yet it is not the case now. Because people are quite skeptical about such organizations and want to know how the funds will be utilized. Simply put they now desire more open financial accountability. Then, if there is no approval or improvement after donation, then the donor will not contribute again. Therefore, NGOs must develop their own capital development strategy, make it known and be ready to show financial accountability and transparency.
Organizations’ funding strategy is mainly to ensure the accomplishment of their own mission, which means vision cannot succumb to finance issue. It takes funds to operate. It also demonstrates that NGO are using the behavior of "given" to make donors achieve the "participation" of membership.
Whereas, we can firstly wield the market research to find enterprises well interested in our organizations’ vision or even share with the same values, then work to cooperate with them to achieve a win-win situation. In this process, what really matters is finding the “cooperation point”. Accepting the loyalty we have to the NGO’s issue and need we might clearly see, we need to be calm and analyze the backgrounds, transactions, market strategies with both sides, thus we can find the right point and maintain the partner relationship, bridging long-term stability. Based upon this new good corporate relationship, we then build on it, and network through these "members" to approach other potential partners which may initially do not have too much interest. Yet by demonstrating successful cases, well-praised community feedback surveys and reliable supervision, these companies will split doubts and finally turn to be our sponsors or partner. At last, we can hold regular annual thematic activities, inviting all our "members" and their partners to participate, in which our achievements and organizing details like balance sheet, cash flow and gearing ratio something else will all be informed. With this transparent management, I do believe the NGOs can certainly solidify partnerships and promote themselves as well.
Recruitment
The objective of NGO is to attract large numbers of talents who shared the same vision of voluntary spirit and obviously not targeted at money. Therefore, considering their non profit aim, their work should be meaningful and more challenging than those in profitable organizations those ones.
The objective of NGO is to attract large numbers of talents who shared the same vision of voluntary spirit and obviously not targeted at money. Therefore, considering their non profit aim, their work should be meaningful and more challenging than those in profitable organizations those ones.
Today more and more volunteers do not regard their works as a charitable deed. They firmly believe their voluntary work is just as important as any "professional". So in addition to the no-payment point, other itemsare not in too much difference. Thus the selection should be more stringent than the enterprise. Their attitudes towards voluntary work and determinations in devoting themselves into this “industry” should be their first consideration and then followed with other ability, prioritized by each different NGO’s functional work. This approach is not only to attract a variety of professional staffs for NGO, but also to help them realize how significant their jobs are. In this way, the personnel maintenance will become quite easy.
In general, although NGO and commercial organizations are different in goals, yet the management tasks are the same issue. Since enterprise management and operations have a long history, the NGO should bring in more “business sense,” a spirit of management, as Drucker likes to call it, and the concepts to contribute to their growth. Efficient and effective management will bring about the expected development and long-term stability to all NGOs.