Challenges to Nonprofits Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 1750 words

Challenges to Nonprofits - Essay Example That is why resource-allocation decisions present nonprofit executives with their best opportunity to focus resources on activities that will efficiently achieve their organizations' objectives. (Swords, n.d, online) Considering the significance of these choices, it is worrying that the financial systems in many nonprofit organizations aren't designed to support either short-term or long-term strategic decision making. Particularly, most financial systems do not add to organizational knowledge about the true, total costs of providing services, running programs and otherwise running the organization. Working without this information, nonprofit executives frequently have to make vital resource-related decisions on the basis of instinct, the skills and knowledge of the program staff, or the priorities of the organization's funders. (Swords, 2002, pp 113-114) Consequently, they run the risk of weakening their organizations' missions by failing to assign resources to the programs and services that have the highest impact. To make resource-related decisions in a way that enhances an organization's effectiveness and promotes its mission, nonprofit leaders need to have a clear picture of the full costs of operating their programs and services. ... ata can provide valuable input to decisions about how to assign resources among programs, whether to expand into a new setting, and what level of funding is required to sustain the organization's operations (Lang, 2000, pp 57-58). That Programs to Support The most essential resource-allocation decisions concern dividing funds among numerous programs in a single department. For example, one of Bridgespan's clients provided a range of counseling, adult-education, youth, and economic development services to its clients to help them become more self-reliant. An investigation of this organization's costs revealed that within the economic-development department, the employment-services program and the resume-services program were incurring the same cost. To put it other way, it was costing the organization the same amount of money to put a client in a job as it was to help her prepare a resume. Because having a job provides a client with better economic self-reliance than simply having a resume on hand, the organization decided to center its resources on the employment-services program instead of mounting the resume-services program as it had initially planned. Full and precise cost data can be uniformly enlightening when an organization's leaders are wrestling with the best way to divide resources among numerous sites. This was the situation facing a countrywide educational organization with seven regional affiliates. (Lang, 2000, pp 67-69) Because the organization's current accounting system stated that all its financial information on a line-item basis, area cost data had never been collected. When these data were collected and examined, the organization learned that the cost of training teachers differed significantly by locality. These findings encouraged a

Quality of Work Life and Turnover Intention Coursework

Quality of Work Life and Turnover Intention - Coursework Example Though, we are in the middle of a recession period these days, but if we recollect the events unfolding couple of years back, it becomes abundantly clear that the policies of globalisation and liberalisation resulted in many more opportunities for the skilled workers around the world. This resulted in high levels of turnover ratios, particularly in the IT industry. The industry had to eventually think about innovative measures to reduce the turnover ratio and retain the employees. Quoting the figures from a study HR.com (2008) states that on account of economic pressures and an evolving workforce; the voluntary as well as total turnover intentions have seen consistent increase over the last four years. The study indicates that the voluntary turnover intention has seen a more prominent increase. Employee turnover results in multiple impacts for the organisation. When an employee all of a sudden decides to leave a company and join another one, offering better facilities, pay packages etc. then the parent stand to lose by way of; The generally held belief is that life at the working place leaves a big impact on the levels of motivation of the worker. Motivation in simplest terms can be defined as a means of providing motives. Motives can act towards doing a job more efficiently or for distorting the work environment. Quite often the lack of any positive motivation by the managers also results in an automatic provisioning of negative motivation. Mullins (2005) contends that organisations comprise 'people, objectives, structures' and 'management'. While objectives and structure depend upon the manner in which management wishes to work and do not require regular updating, the people require more attention on a regular basis. There are a number of determinants towards shaping the working environment within an organisation. The factors are both internal and external to the organisation. Internal factors will include the strengths of the organisation, in terms of its finances, human resources, management, strategies etc. These factors can be controlled well by the organisation. On the other hand the external factors like the legal and political scene prevailing within the state/ country of its operations, number and types of competitors, suppliers in the market, terms and conditions from financial institutions, alternative products available in the market, newer technological innovations etc. On these factors the organisation may not be able to exert much control. This study is therefore an attempt to take a look at all such factors which affects the quality of work life and how this quality of work life impacts the turnover intentions of the individual. 2. Preliminary Literature Review The search for better ways of retaining the employees to counter the increasing turnover intentions and dysfunctional consequences of job designs based on traditional principles began with the