Not-For-Profit: An Organizational Dilemma

NFP organizations all over the world have played critical and far-reaching roles in their respective societies. Every country has each evolve organizations that made meaningful and lasting impact on people's lives.

You will see NFP organizations in far-flung and depressed areas of countries. You will meet volunteers of these organizations during calamities, in the heat of war, and even in the dark secret prisons of totalitarian states.

These dramatic experiences are not really the typical variety even in these organizations. The more common experiences are really those that concern routine tasks of getting services to beneficiaries or meet project schedules.

The Challenges of Contemporary NFP Organizations
The challenge of not-for-profit organizations today is that it must accomplish A goal or a mission, it demands leadership, it has to manage people to accomplish this, it has to provide its people with tools and resources, it needs to develop competence, it needs to coordinate projects, and it has to acquire money just like any business. What it cannot do very well is acquire profit.

This is not only a challenge but also an irony.

Admittedly, not-for-profit or NFP organizations by their operation or activities are for all intents and purposes run just like any enterprise. It requires the same amount and quality of talent, knowledge, skills, and labor costs but it is deployed not to gain profit but to accomplish an altruistic or supposedly noble goal.

I have volunteered my own personal time to help not-for-profit or non-government organizations (NGOs). Most of the time, I don't help organizations raise funds. I help them prepare to receive and use them.

The difference may not be apparent but raising funds compared to being prepared to receive them are to me two distinct actions. The reason why I took the liberty of creating a distinction is for my own reference of accepting a consulting project pro bono or not.

Raising funds can be very controversial especially if you have very prominent community personalities running the fund-raising initiative.

Raising funds is getting money from someone and putting it in your hands or technically into the organization's bank account if it has any. Helping organizations prepare to receive funds is about creating the process, systems and mechanisms to effectively use funds and monitor its flow from its infusion to its final payout to projects.

NFP or NGOs have almost the same likelihood of being recipients of funds. I mean funds of any kind and amount. What they don't have in equal footing is the ability to use them.

The one thing a consultant will gain when volunteering time to help NFP organizations is the intimate knowledge of processes and structures. Even a consultant with expertise and experience in process development and improvement will find the realities of NFP organizations a challenge.

This is the single most strategic reason I help out NFP organizations. The learning experience for me as a consultant is invaluable.

Some of the approaches I have developed in communications, organizational development, leadership, competence development, and team building are direct result of my involvement with NFP organizations.

Let me list down the difficulties or "challenges" that a typical NFP organization faces on a fairly regular rate. These are just mere examples of the most common. If you are a member of one, go email me some I have not mentioned here.

Here's a few samples:

• Raising funds using a team without a single salesman led by a retired person with no business sense.
• Managing a project without a plan nor funds to start with.
• Working with a project team led by a retired desk clerk.
• Organizing 300-strong small-scale miners against the abuses of fifteen families who are backed up by a military contingent, a police station, a mayor and a governor.
• Improving an organization's image after a project team ruffles the sensitivity of beneficiaries and insults local legislators because of bad behavior and questionable conduct.
• Coming up with a relocation plan for urban poor dwellers while their association officers are fighting each other during confederation meetings.
• Convincing local government leaders to help in relocating urban poor dwellers knowing full well that this will mean lesser voters in their locality in the next election year.
• Requesting endorsement for the organization's programs to community leaders after they have formally requested their local government to terminate one of the projects under these programs.

Common Problems of NFP Organizations
When you facilitate brainstorming, planning and project management meetings, you get to know all stakeholders up close. You get their opinions and contributions first hand, you hear their biases, you get acquainted with their most excellent and their worse moments, and you experiment with th most creative to the most absurd ideas to solve society's perennial problems.

The problems that commonly plague NFP organizations:

• Poorly defined goal or purpose.
• Lack of leadership.
• Absence of a competent project team.
• Badly conceived strategy.
• Organizational structure does not support strategy.
• Programs are not effectively driving strategy.
• Absence of a viable project plan.
• Lack of expertise or knowledge resource.
• Lack of or poorly created alliances.
• Lack of dedicated volunteers.
• Absence of appropriate hard assets.
• Absence of sound policies and process.
• Lack of funds.

There can be a lot more problems you can put on paper but the above are the most common that not only cause projects to fail but can lead organizations to eventually shutdown.

You can check the list above and compare it with the most common reasons why most industry cooperatives become inactive or go bankrupt and you will find that they are almost identical.

If you haven't notice, lack of funds is in tail end of the list. When you have a clear goal and you are passionate about it, are led by the most charismatic and creative leader, and you have the most dedicated team of volunteers behind you, lack of funds is the least of your worry.

I have seen more programs and projects fail simply because of the absence of a strong and inspirational leadership than by lack of funds.

Endeavors great and small throughout ancient and contemporary civilizations have demonstrated man's capacity to move mountains, change beliefs, forget the unforgivable, and build from the ashes of devastation.