Developing Nonprofit and Human Service Leaders

Essential Knowledge and Skills

Larry D. (Dan) Watson, Richard A. Hoefer

• Editore: SAGE Publications, Inc
• Anno: 2013
• ISBN:
  9781483324944
• Edizione: 1
• Argomento: Sciences sociales
• Categoria: Travail social

Developing Nonprofit and Human Service Leaders comprehensively prepares students with the skills to successfully manage human service organizations. Authors Larry D. Watson and Richard Hoefer explore core managerial competencies tailored to the unique environment of these organizations, including administrative responsibilities, values and ethics, organizational theories, leadership, boards of directors, fundraising, supervision, research, cultural consideration, and more. This essential text offers hands-on practice for the skills that future administrators will need to make a substantial impact in their organizations and communities.

Part I

Context

1

The Context of Nonprofit Administration

INTRODUCTION

The larger context of human services nonprofit administration must be considered before you read chapters on any other topics. By understanding the “big picture,” you will be able to fit the individual skills and ideas into a larger framework so that their importance is clearer. Nonprofit agencies of course operate as part of society, and the nature of the broader culture and trends have considerable impact on what individual nonprofit managers and leaders can accomplish and how they go about their work.

The literature is full of information about how nonprofit managers must be aware of, and deal with, changes in their agencies’ worlds. Managed care (Jones, 2006; McBeath & Meezan, 2006), an uncertain political and economic climate (Golensky & Mulder, 2006; Hopkins & Hyde, 2002; Schmid, 2004), policy reform (Regehr, Chau, Leslie & Howe, 2002; Reisch & Sommerfeld, 2003), requirements for outcome budgeting (Martin, 2000), and the introduction of performance measurement systems (Zimmermann & Stevens, 2006) are just a few topics affecting human service administrators today.

Although many trends are important, six are described here as having a significant impact on nonprofit administrators. After reading about these trends, you will understand better why specific preparation for being an administrator is important, and working through practical exercises and assignments like those in this book is valuable for your learning process.

COMPETITION FOR RESOURCES IS GREATER

Put simply, nonprofit administrators operate in an environment of increasingly scarce resources and increased competition for those resources. Funding from government at local, state, and federal levels is strained due to political pressure to lower tax rates (or at least keep them steady). Many states and localities have delayed contracted payments to nonprofit organizations for months, causing those nonprofits to face cash-flow problems and undermining the service providers’ fiscal health. Some nonprofits have found that getting a government contract causes more harm than benefit because the amount they are paid is lower than the cost of providing the services required to fulfill the terms of the contract.

Getting a contract or grant is more difficult. While numbers fluctuate depending on the source chosen and years of comparison, there is no dispute that the number of nonprofits has grown. According to the prestigious Urban Institute (2012), the number of nonprofits grew by about 25% between 2001 and 2011, from 1,259,764 to 1,574,674. More nonprofits have turned to foundations and government grants for support even as funding from those sources decreased.

Foundation funding has had ups and downs in the past decade, but, even in its good years, increases in this type of philanthropy cannot equal the amount of funding lost at the governmental level. Even individual-level giving has decreased for many non-disaster related human service nonprofits (although some types of nonprofits have seen individual donations increase in recent years). The ability of middle-class, middle-aged donors to give has been impacted by uncertainty over their home’s value, their employment situation, and the value of their retirement nest eggs. Increasingly, these families have had increased financial responsibilities toward young adult children and parents with medical and other issues. This “sandwich generation” has been hard-pressed to keep their giving to charity at the same level as in prior years.

MORE SKILLS ARE REQUIRED FOR NONPROFIT ADMINISTRATORS

Challenges are greater now for human service agencies than ever before (Hopkins & Hyde, 2002; Perlmutter, 2006). The range of skills needed to cope with this difficult environment is also greater than what was needed previously (Golensky & Mulder, 2006). Administrators need to be competent not only at internally oriented activities such as budgeting, supervision, and human resources, but also at externally oriented capacities such as advocacy, community collaboration, and fundraising (Alexander, 2000; Golensky & Mulder, 2006; Hoefer, 2003; Hopkins & Hyde, 2002; Menefee, 2000; Menefee & Thompson, 1993). Increasingly, cross-sector partnerships involving the government, business, and nonprofit sectors are used to achieve progress on social issues (Selsky & Parker, 2005). The term social enterprise has popped up as a way to incorporate for-profit principles into nonprofit operations. Nonprofit managers must respect and understand how to collaborate with counterparts in other sectors who have different perspectives. The most important skill of all, given the rapidly evolving landscapes of human services, may be the ability to manage change.

WHAT IS SOCIAL ENTERPRISE?

Social enterprises are businesses whose primary purpose is the common good. They use the methods and disciplines of business and the power of the marketplace to advance their social, environmental, and human justice agendas.

Three characteristics distinguish a social enterprise from other types of businesses, nonprofits, and government agencies:

It directly addresses an intractable social need and serves the common good, either through its products and services or through the number of disadvantaged people it employs.

Its commercial activity is a strong revenue driver, whether a significant earned income stream within a nonprofit’s mixed revenue portfolio, or a for-profit enterprise.

The common good is its primary purpose, literally “baked into” the organization’s DNA, and trumping all others.

Source:Social Enterprise Alliance (n.d.).

RESEARCH AND EVIDENCE OF PROGRAM EFFECTIVENESS ARE ESSENTIAL

Evidence-based practice and research/program evaluation are becoming more important to funders and other stakeholders. As the need to compete for resources intensifies, human service agencies must become more effective. One way to accomplish this is to use service technologies that have research to support their claims of helping solve client problems. The movement toward evidence-based practice, while compelling theoretically, may require culture change within agencies (Johnson & Austin, 2006). As difficult as this is to accomplish, some grant-providing agencies, such as the federal Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration (SAMHSA), provide strong incentives and greater funding opportunities for agencies willing to use program models that have been tested empirically and have evidence of effectiveness. Interventions that have received research validation are listed on the National Registry of Evidence-based Programs and Practices (available online at www.nrepp.samhsa.gov). Additional reviews of evidence-based social work practice are located on the website for the Campbell Collaboration (www.campbellcollaboration.org) and elsewhere.

Similarly, research and program evaluation within agencies is usually required as a condition of receiving a grant. Agencies struggle with how to cope with such demands, having neither the staff time nor the knowledge base to analyze data they collect (Stoecker, 2007). Performance measurement, within the context of program evaluation and accountability, is a salient example of the need for additional research skills for nonprofit managers (Zimmermann & Stevens, 2006). Salipante and Aram (2003) argue that nonprofit managers must move beyond being users of knowledge to becoming generators of knowledge. Education for nonprofit administration should stress the ability to collect, manage, and analyze data to make management decisions.

A CRISIS IN HUMAN SERVICE LEADERSHIP HAS EMERGED

One source of leadership for nonprofit human service administrators has been social workers. Social work education, however, is currently producing fewer administrative practice students (Ezell, Chernesky, & Healy, 2004) than in the past. At the same time, the number of business schools, schools of public administration, and programs in nonprofit management producing graduates, who compete with social workers for administrative jobs, has increased rapidly (Mirabella, 2007; Packard, 2004). Research shows that experienced leaders in nonprofit institutions (whether social workers or not) are leaving the field (Birdsell & Muzzio, 2003; Faffer & Friedland, 2007). Not only are current leaders retiring, but many direct-service human service workers, their supervisors, and even middle-level managers also exhibit little desire to take over top positions within their agencies (Faffer & Friedland, 2007).

Research indicates that social work educators, public administration educators, and current leaders in nonprofit and government organizations agree for the most part on what nonprofit administrators should know how to do (Hoefer, 2003), so the educational background of the administrators may be less important than whether applicants have the actual skills needed to be successful in leading nonprofits. Still, it is unclear whether all of the academic programs put together are graduating sufficient numbers of people (especially people of color and women) with high enough skill levels to fill the leadership gap that is emerging.

DIVERSITY IN THE WORKPLACE IS INCREASING

Considerable attention has been given to the decreasing percentage of people in the United States who are of European ancestry, and to the increasing percentage of people from Hispanic, African American, and Asian backgrounds. For example, half the growth in the American population from 1990 to 2010 (or 30 million people) was among Hispanics (El Nasser & Overberg, 2011). Hispanics now account for about one in six of all Americans and have had larger numbers than African Americans since 2003. The Asian population doubled between 1990 and 2010 and now makes up nearly 5% of Americans. Of considerable importance over the long term is the increase in the number of people who identify as multi-racial, a category available on the U.S. Census only since 2010 (El Nasser & Overberg, 2011).

This type of diversity, racial and ethnic, is extremely important for the running of nonprofits, particularly in terms of leadership style. But other types of diversity exist as well. Women in 2010 earned more degrees in college and post-graduate work than men (El Nasser & Overberg, 2011), and should be expected to occupy more top leadership positions in the nonprofit sector (and elsewhere). The debates about “male” and “female” styles of leadership have softened over the past few decades, with a consensus emerging that leaders must have a variety of skills, including those skills historically seen as male traits, such as financial savvy, and those traits historically seen as female, such as listening and nurturing.

Human service organization leaders also are challenged to be able to relate to differences between younger workers (Generations X and Y, Millennials, and so on), as well as members of the aging Boomer and Bust generations. This is not only within the organization in terms of supervision and leadership styles, but also among donors. Gay, lesbian, bisexual, and transgendered persons have distinct viewpoints about many human service issues, and their communities often are strong stakeholders of certain types of nonprofits.

This type of discussion often can seem as if diversity were a problem, when in fact, the range of ideas and experiences in the workplace may now be broader than at any other time in history. This is definitely a positive aspect of today’s nonprofit workforce! Still, it is an issue that must be addressed and sometimes “managed” so that different stakeholder groups, with their unique perspectives, see value in differences that can sometimes cause misunderstanding or even conflict.

TECHNOLOGY’S IMPACT IS INCREASING

Two or three decades ago, most personal computers in the workplace were in the hands of secretaries so they could more efficiently type correspondence and reports dictated or handwritten by others higher in the hierarchy. Nonprofits rarely had computers, and the most common use in nonprofits was for correspondence or budgeting (Mutschler & Hoefer, 1990). Information was kept in file cabinets on paper records. Client information could be accessed only in person. Information needed for budgeting or financial reports was often meticulously collected shortly after the end of each month.

Currently, nonprofits are highly computerized, with internal networks and high-speed Internet connections. In most agencies, databases keep client records well protected behind significant firewalls. Information is easily accessible to all who have a need to know that information. Administrators can pull up financial information in real time. A great deal more information is available from many sources so that decisions can be made based on current data. Choosing from among hardware options (once easily solved by...

Indice dei contenuti

• Cover Page
• Title
• Halftitle
• Copyright
• Contents
• Preface
• PART I: CONTEXT
• PART II: LEADERSHIP AND COMMUNICATIONS
• PART III: LEADERSHIP SKILLS
• Conclusion: Putting the Pieces Together
• Index
• About the Author
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