Challenges And Opportunities In Non-Profit Human Services: Insights From An Interview

For this assignment, you need to identify and interview an administrator of a local nonprofit human services agency.

The report should contain:

A list of all questions asked during the interview, along with their answers, addressing a typical day at work for the administrator.

Analysis and examples regarding administrative challenges that are encountered on a daily basis by the administrator. Include challenges with regard to staffing, budgetary decisions, strategic planning, and alignment with the organizational mission.

Evaluation of the political implications of the administrator's work.

Explanation of opportunities for collaboration that the administrator encounters. Specify how and by whom.

Evaluation of future trends in the field of human services. Discuss with relation to managed care, governmental policy, funding, technological advances, and appropriate access to services.

Include a title and reference page and apply APA standards to the citation of sources, including the use of in-text citations and full references.

Your report should rely upon at least three sources from additional professional literature. Professional literature may include the  online library resources, relevant textbooks, peer-reviewed journal articles, and websites created by professional organizations, agencies, or institutions (.edu, .org, and .gov).

List all questions used during the interview addressing a typical day at work for the administrator along with a description of his or her answers.

Analyze and provide examples regarding administrative challenges that are encountered daily by the administrator (i.e., staffing, budgetary, strategic planning, and alignment with organizational mission).

Evaluate the political implications of the administrator’s work.

Explain opportunities for collaboration that the administrator encounters (how and by whom).

Evaluate the future trends in the field of human services (as related to managed care, governmental policy, funding, technological advances, and appropriate access to services).  

Staffing

Human services are a non-profits organization that offers services to people through the use of their program and services. Numerous HSO majorly focuses on disaster relief, drug, and alcohol, adult camping, and rehabilitation (Norris-Tirrell, 2014). The purpose of this paper is to report an interview with an administrator of Cornelia de Large Syndrome Foundation (CdLS) concerning various daily administrative challenges in respect to staffing, budgetary decisions, strategic planning and alignment with the organizational mission(Gupta,Kumar,Aora & Devgan, 2016). The paper further reports on the political implications of the administrator's works, the exploitation of the opportunities for collaboration encountered and the evaluation of the future trends in the human services field.

CdLS Foundation is a family support organization that helps individuals to have an early and accurate diagnosis of CdLS. CdLS is a genetic disorder that occurs from birth and always fails to be diagnosed at the birth and causes physical, cognitive and other medical challenges to the individuals (Eliason,Melzer & Gallagher, 2017). The genetic disorder has the following symptoms: excessive body hair, an unusually small head, and continuous hair loss and digestive problems. CdLS conducts research of the causes and the manifestation of the disease and advice people to make informed decisions throughout their lives..

The administrator reported that he faces challenges in retaining the employees of the organization. According to the administrator, most of the employees are youths and middle-aged persons; who most of them have families. Due to low funding and little amount to facilitate the activities, these volunteers who at times have no money to walk into various homes, tend to get discouraged in carrying out their responsibilities, leading to the high rate of turnover of the employees (Kerfoot, 2015). Secondly, being most of the staffs are volunteers, it is very difficult to administer strong policies since when the policies and regulations are adjusted, a number of them tend to drop down their tools (Johnson-Carlson, 2017). 

Finance forms the second element of every organizational success, almost all the activities are facilitated through the use of money thus control all the decisions made(Saunders,2014). Availability of enough funds determines the quality of decision made in an organization. The poor budgetary decision results into the following consequences: incomplete projects, high turnover and unnecessary loans to fill the gaps. According to the administrator, the organization still does not have a stable source of funds, thus it forces the administrator to forgo other crucial activities and completes less urgent activities due to inadequate money to bring the urgent activities into the competition. 

Budgetary decisions

The administrator thus is in most cases required to make proper buttery decisions so as to continue the human services, these can only be achieved through a proper rethinking of the business and programs models. The most common approach the administrator can use include: creative sharing of cost through collaboration and mergers with other human services that provide the same services. Secondly, the admission can seek financial expenditure support from consultants such as FMA.

Strategic planning in an organizational management aids the administrator to set properties, focus the energy and the resources to strengthen the options between the employees and other stakeholders to realize the objectives (Andersson, Faulk & Stewart,2016).It allows the organizations to be proactive rather than reactive to see their future and prepare accordingly. However, according to Dogan & Simek (2017) organization, their setting planning covers a span of one two years, thus in most cases fail to realize the short-term goals. They tend to lose direction as they redirect their focus to any upcoming urgency: for example, they consider any person with physical, psychological assistance without having a proper plan on how this individual can have self-assistance. The administrator, however, looks forward to having differently designated activities that will help not engage the patients but also help them to earn some little amount of money that can cover a few their expenses.

The failure of the organization to have a comprehensive strategic plan makes it difficult for the administrator to align the daily activities with the organizational mission (Brown & Anderson, 2016). The organization's mission is to improve the quality of the population through helping in research, diagnosis, and management of the disease, however, only in a scale of 1-10, the organization has just achieved, which is lower than the expectations.

The administrator's work is quite good even though all the objectives of the organizations are not always daily achieved. The failure is attributed to the financial constraint that dictates almost all other aspects in the organization, thus with accessibility to enough funds, there would be positive outcomes (Ashton,Pettigrew & Galatsanou, 2016). On the other hand, the administrators seem to lack some leadership and management skills; for example, one should always plan with the available and achieve short-term goals with a focus on the long- term focus.

Collaboration and partnerships are significant for human services organizations to ensure that the offered services are of high quality and the processes are aligned to the law. The administrators have various opportunities such as collaborating with government agencies and other non-profit organizations such as the Red Cross. From the government, the organization can obtain emergency food stamps to ensure that the collected food does not end in the market. Secondly, the administrator has the opportunity to here with other well established and stable organizations that have the capability to conduct an extensive research such as red cross so as to receive information from these organizations that can facilitate their operations without incurring the research cost.

Strategic planning

Lastly, the advisor needs to partner with other organizations to enlarge the sources of their funds that will facilitate their growth in service provision among the population. Other financial management organizations, can also offer final advisory to the organization to efficiently manage the little funds available. Generally, when the administrator manages to take the collaboration opportunities, then the organizational will, be efficient as it will have enough staffs to finish its projects within the time frame, will work more effective since it will be able to advance its mission from one step to another and even cover broader Davila system in the population.

Digital transformation 

The global advancement has changed the operations of many organizations and process, and human services are not an exception. A large number of human services organizations are currently undergoing a digital transformation in order to meet the needs of the people. The digitalization brings about innovative services that make the human services to move to greater levels. The use of diagnostic machines can help in diagnosing some diseases at birth thus ensure early treatment and proper management in the future.

Humann services organizations get their funds from well-wishers and donors; however, currently some governments are making steps in funding such organizations .the trend has contracted stiff competition among nonprofit organizations and profit organizations that pose greater pressure for positive outcomes and accountability (Evans & Kivell, 2015). The stiff competition makes it most of the small non-profit organizations to get leas collaboration incentives from the government that have numerous political and revenue regulation modifications. In order for the non-profit organization to retain government funding under the increased regulatory, extra additional performance is significant and an indicator; these changes affect the workforce development and the growth of the organizations.

Thirdly, the rising trend is the caring for the whole person thus they are increasingly seeking collaboration with other agencies such as health care organizations. The collaboration trend among agencies has been one of the current determinants of the success of these organizations(Sparrow, 2016). Some of the organizations have difficulty in accessing some information such as government database, thus collaborating with government, or well-established organizations, they have the easy accessibility of the required information.

Conclusion

The interview enlisted good information about the organization that can be used to evaluate the services. In a scale of 1-10, I can rate the administrator's work at 5, that means extensive steps are needed in terms of staffing, strategic management, alignment with organization's mission and budgetary decisions to attain high-quality services. These can be achieved through the strengthening of the new trends such as collaboration and partnership, adopting new technologies and sourcing new funding models.

References

Andersson, F., Faulk, L., & Stewart, A. (2016). Toward More Targeted Capacity Building: Diagnosing Capacity Needs Across Organizational Life Stages. Voluntas: International Journal of Voluntary & Nonprofit Organizations, 27(6), 2860–2888. https://doi.org/10.1007/s11266-015-9634-7

Ashton, W., Pettigrew, R. N., & Galatsanou, E. (2016). Assessment of Settlement Services Systems in Western and Northern Canada: Perceptions of Settlement Provider Organizations. Canadian Ethnic Studies, 48(3), 69–89. Retrieved from https://search.ebscohost.com/login.aspx?direct=true&db=aph&AN=121923116&site=ehost-live

Brown, W., Andersson, F., & Jo, S. (2016). Dimensions of Capacity in Nonprofit Human Service Organizations. Voluntas: International Journal of Voluntary & Nonprofit Organizations, 27(6), 2889–2912. https://doi.org/10.1007/s11266-015-9633-8

Do?an, Ö., & ?im?ek, Y. (2017). Lecturers’ Consciousness Level and Views on Strategic Planning. Electronic Journal of Social Sciences, 16(62), 836–853. Retrieved from https://search.ebscohost.com/login.aspx?direct=true&db=aph&AN=125500251&site=ehost-live

Eliason, M. J., Melzer, J. M., & Gallagher, T. Q. (2017). Cornelia de Lange syndrome: What every otolaryngologist should know. ENT: Ear, Nose & Throat Journal, 96(8), E6–E9. Retrieved from https://search.ebscohost.com/login.aspx?direct=true&db=aph&AN=131778484&site=ehost-live

Evans, S. D., & Kivell, N. (2015). The Transformation Team: An Enabling Structure for Organizational Learning in Action. Journal of Community Psychology, 43(6), 760–777. https://doi.org/10.1002/jcop.21756

Gupta, P., Kumar, S., Arora, S., & Devgan, V. (2016). Severe Neonatal Thrombocytopenia in a Case of Cornelia de Lange Syndrome. Journal of Clinical Neonatology, 5(2), 115–118. https://doi.org/10.4103/2249-4847.179922

Johnson-Carlson, P. (2017). Predictive Staffing Simulation Model Methodology. Nursing Economic$, 35(4), 161–169. Retrieved from https://search.ebscohost.com/login.aspx?direct=true&db=aph&AN=124650128&site=ehost-live

Kerfoot, K. M. (2015). On Leadership. The Pursuit of Happiness, Science, and Effective Staffing: The Leader’s Challenge. Pediatric Nursing, 41(2), 93–95. Retrieved from https://search.ebscohost.com/login.aspx?direct=true&db=aph&AN=102472683&site=ehost-live

Norris-Tirrell, D. (2014). The Changing Role of Private, Nonprofit Organizations in the Development and Delivery of Human Services in the United States. Journal of Health & Human Services Administration, 37(3), 304–326. Retrieved from https://search.ebscohost.com/login.aspx?direct=true&db=aph&AN=101080014&site=ehost-live

Saunders, L. (2014). Linking Resource Decisions to Planning. New Directions for Community Colleges, 2014(168), 65–75. https://doi.org/10.1002/cc.20121

Sparrow, J. (2016). Reflective Practice in Organizational Learning, Cultural Self-Understanding, and Community Self-Strengthening. Infant Mental Health Journal, 37(6), 605–616. https://doi.org/10.1002/imhj.21602