Some of the pronounced characteristics of non-profit organizations include a passion for their cause; working with limited resources; support from volunteers as well as trustees board have to double their function as support and oversight. Also, difficulties in assessing program outcomes; intricacy in justifying organizational operations under financial and mission mutual grounds; bias towards informality, participation, and consensus as well as having staff with mixed skill levels to manage and operate programs. Passion for the cause serves as motivation towards making achievements in the non-profit organization world.
Passion is characterized when the organization taps extraordinary creativity, vigor, and commitment. Nevertheless, the zeal for a cause among staff can turn strategic differences into interpersonal conflict, especially where individuals are adamant to change or disagree on a common footing. Non-profit organizations appear to work with limited resources (Dameri 2005, 107). This may be in perception or reality. Staff is a non-profit organization that will appear to volunteer their time to a cause rather than spend money for the same. In this sense, one is made to think that the organization commits most of its resources to service delivery.
Thus, in most cases, the non-profit organization will appear to have underdeveloped infrastructures. Under the pretext of scarcity, nonprofit organizations appear to breach capacity limits if they have more access to funds, decision-making as well as talent, inter alia. Many non-profit organizations operate on the active contribution of volunteers (Hasenfelda and Gidronb 2005, 97). Active volunteers participate through spending their time and effort towards a service or supporting administrative tasks within the non-profit organization. For instance, the Board of Directors works for the non-profit organization without pay.
The participation of volunteers in service delivery is critical since they are the driving force in availing social services to the public. Notably, volunteers operate on multiple commitments, intermittently; thus, the priority attached to the volunteer work depends on their income activities and schedule for other commitments such as family responsibilities. To meet their volunteer commitments the Board of Directors may be willing to meet in the evening or have weekend retreats. Some volunteers may not welcome or may resist people being paid when they are supposed to work free. Most non-profit organizations are small but staff composed of highly skilled professionals.
The organizations normally have the internal capacity to train staff regarding their role-play; hence, individuals have a mixed level of skills (Morrow-Howell et al. 1999, 65). Non-profit organizations justify tough missions against limited funding resources. For-profit organizations are inclined towards realizing the mission and with dismal attention towards the return on investment (Macedo and Pinho 2006, 533). The dual bottom line in non-profit organizations influences strategic positions taken.
Mostly, non-profit organizations provide services where the market or the government do not and their funding sources are partly or fully independent of the direct beneficiaries of their activities. This can assess financial efficiency a difficult affair, especially when riding on the fact that individuals have diverse assumptions towards the relationship between cost and effectiveness.
References
Damer, Renata Paola. “Using the Balanced Scorecard to Evaluate ICT Investments in Nonprofit Organisations.” Electronic Journal of Information Systems Evaluation 8, no.2 (2005): 107-114.
Hasenfelda, Yeheskel, and Gidronb, Benjamin. “Understanding multi-purpose hybrid voluntary organizations: The contributions of theories on civil society, social movements, and non-profit organizations.” Journal of Civil Society 1, no.2 (2005): 97-112.
Macedo, Isabel Maria, and Pinho, José Carlos. “The relationship between resource dependence and market orientation: The specific case of non-profit organizations.” European Journal of Marketing 40, no.5 (2006): 533-553.
Morrow-Howell, N., S. Kinney, and M. Mann. “The Perceived Benefits of Participating in Volunteer and Educational Activities,” Journal of Gerontological Social Work 32, no.2 (1999): 65-80.