Key Trends Help to Shape "Nonprofits of the Future" (but are you paying attention?)
By Adam Stocker
A new report published on Nov 9 in Philanthropy.com outlines the challenges that nonprofits face in recapturing their pre-recession operational ethos and the caveats in choosing to ignore them. In order to thrive in this new economic reality, 5 trends have been pinpointed.
Demographic shifts demonstrate that the growing number of younger workers in the labor talent pool is leading to a growing number of, respectively, younger leaders. Advances in Social Media Technology is providing greater exposure for charities and higher opportunity for workers to speak out. Further developments in communication technologies have created increasingly cheaper and more reliable methods to promote new ways to collaborate. Nonprofits must recognize that volunteers have a broad range of reasons to increase their interest in service and tailor their projects to attract and accommodate those interests. Finally, the leveraging of corporate and social responsibility by private sector organization to promote their public relations profiles has created somewhat of a blurred interpretation of the traditional identity of nonprofits. However, this has opened new doors for partnership and collaborative opportunities across the mixed economy.
For nonprofits, these trends 'could' have a strong impact on how they will be shaped and driven in the future. Leaders will feel the pressure to abandon increasingly outdated hierarchical structures and follow private sector examples of flatter hierarchies. However, the inherent dangers of such a move, is that many organizations, including private sector businesses, are still unaware of the negative issues that come with such restructures including the creation of over complex communication networks and over demanding spans-of-control. These seminal structural errors can incubate into long-term cemented issues such as increasing operating costs, reduced efficiency through over-complex processes and workflows, lower morale and repetition of work.
Our company is currently working on such a project and already helping our client to understand that by applying our unique model for achieving the correct functional equilibrium of communication and subordinate responsibility, we can help reduce lower operating expenses by 35%, boost efficiency through re-engineered workflows, create stronger organizational focus and gain faster insight into company performance. So ask yourself:
Is your organization experiencing internal communication problems?
Is your structure possibly too tall or too flat?
Are your managers and departmental heads dealing with too narrow or too wide scopes of responsibility managing others?
Is your operational framework sufficiently effective both in the short and long terms to achieve your objectives?
If the answer to any of these questions is anything less than positive then it is imperative to buck these trends and eliminate any further seminal development. We can diagnostically help pinpoint the root causes of these issues, engineer solutions to put your organization back onto a healthier operational track and most importantly.........focus on your long term objectives.
|
|
|
|