SWOT Analysis Of A Human Services Agency

In this assignment, you need to select a human services agency of your choice and conduct a strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, and threats (SWOT) analysis.
Analysis of the agency’s strengths, weaknesses, opportunities for future growth, and threats to its viability (SWOT).
Application of appropriate organizational theories into the SWOT analysis of the agency.
Proposal for a new initiative along with 1–3 recommendations toward its implementation.
Identification of stakeholders and 1–3 strategies to use to advocate the approval of the new initiative.

Organization Accomplishments

The Global United Way was started in 1887 in Colorado USA. It was founded by a rabbi, two ministers, priest, and a Denver woman. It is a non-profit organization established with a motive of identifying welfare problems in society and coming up with suitable actions on how to solve them. This team came together to come up with solutions to the various issues that were facing the community (Bezjian, Holmstrom & Kipley, 2009). They also aimed at collecting funds for charities and coordinating various wellbeing services however the organization collapsed. Come 1986 some Perth businessmen founded United Way WA in Australia (Ackerman & Auten, 2008). This was to cater for the increasing needs of the society and charitable requests (Fleming and Tappin, 2009). United Way mainly aims at caring for people and ensuring good lifestyles. The United Ways aimed at providing great opportunities to the community to ensure societal well-being by meeting their basic needs which are Income, health, and Education. They considered the three as the most critical assets in the society (Eikenberry, 2008). Education was thought to give skills and knowledge to young people. Therefore, students got good jobs and income and also meet the basic needs of their families. United Way also came up with very many programmes in the health sector meant to improve health service

The following are some of the organization accomplishments undertaken by the organisation.

• Community Engagement: United Way focuses more on the issues facing the society thus they are involved in community services. They aim to find and understand the various issues facing the community and come up with essential strategies to solve them.
• Customer relation management: United ways always ensure good relationships with their customers (Fleming and Tappin, 2009). They mainly check at the demands of the customers who are the community members and ensure that they help them become financially stable and independent

The organization receives corporate donations from corporate partners’ organization. The organization also accepts donations from workplace giving (Eikenberry, 2008). This is a situation where employees make contributions to the Australian tax office which is usually deducted as fee .lastly is that the organization receives funding from corporate volunteering (Fleming and Tappin, 2009). These are employees who volunteer to do a specific project for the local community. The organization also collects funds from Football competitions, Easter food hampers and casual dress Fridays; these sponsorship funds usually finance projects from origin to the end. The organization usually runs projects globally thus is not easy to run such a non-profit privately funded organization all by themselves.

` United Way WA cannot be in a position to offer health, income and education for society and individuals on their own thus they have 2.6 million volunteers and some 9.6 million donors meant to improve the lives of people in the community. For example, the organization has volunteering groups such as corporate connect, education volunteering, and skilled volunteering (Fleming and Tappin, 2009).  Corporate connect is a team of volunteers whose members choose to work on different projects in society without being paid (Ackerman, & Auten, 2008). Education volunteers also provide quality education to children and other members of the society without expecting pay. On the other hand, skilled volunteers usually use their skills to handle the different issues in the society. United Way is mainly involved in giving, volunteering and advocating.

One of the significant problems of the organization is that they encounter issues with their business structures (Johnson, 2010). For example, after the 2008 economic recession, many people were not willing to donate their funds while the needs of society also increased. Another major issue faced by non-profit organizations is leadership successions. Non-profit organizations are usually led by outstanding leaders however most of them are not good decision makers'. They are likely to come up with a project which will later fail to lead to wastage of resources. Change management also happens to be a massive issue in the non-profit making organization. Many organization face a lot of problems in this area because they usually change their board members more often thus losing consistency

Sponsors of United Way WA

One of the significant challenges faced by this organization is losing donors. If they don't put up to their business structure they usually loose donors. On the other hand, many organizations are moving from strategic philanthropy (Ackerman, & Auten, 2008). Moreover, this organization relies more on the old economy business structure thus they are not used of following new business techniques (Bajaj, & Heim, 2008). There is always a large trust gap when dealing with a non-profit organization where not many people can donate their resources to be used in society

SWOT is defined as strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, and threats faced by an organization. Strengths and weaknesses are internal parts of the non-profit organization which it has control of while opportunities and threats are external factors of the non-profit organization in which it does not have control of. An organization can use SWOT analysis to gain a competitive advantage. This is a situation where the organization uses its strengths to take care of its threats (Eikenberry, 2008). While it also uses its opportunities to deal with the weaknesses. Strengths are defined as those qualities that help an organization accomplish its mission. Strengths are either tangible or intangible. Weaknesses are those factors that do not assist an organization to accomplish its task or achieve its full potential. On the other hand opportunities usually, occur in the environment in which the organization operates. Threats arise when factors in the environment are likely to affect the profitability and reliability of an organization  

• Availability of funds through donations
• It is a well-known organization globally thus building a lot of trust with the public
• Availability of volunteers globally thus making it easier for organizations to run programmes effectively.
• It has support from the Australian government

• There has been emergent of many charity organization thus making donations very few
• The organization seems homeless because it does not have a permanent location
• On the other hand, many people are not responding to programmes set by the organization for example school going programmes `
• The organization programs are normally affected by economic recessions `and changes of policies in a country
• Sometimes it is difficult to manage many programmes across the globe
• The organization mainly relies on donations. If an organization is not in a position to be sure of the funds it has, it cannot be able to plan effectively.

The significant opportunity of this organization is that it receives a lot of government incentives. The organization gets grants which they can use to cater for costs. They also receive a lot of tax deductions and exemptions.

 On the other hand, many organizations support their activities

• Threats are factors that threaten the survival of a company or non-profit organization. The primary threat to this organization is the economic downturns which affect the financial position of the organization as well as bringing a lot of issues in the society  
• There is a lot of competition from other non-profit organizations all trying to deliver the same projects to society and trying to win donations. It makes people confused about which charity organization they should donate for thus making money to be divided into small portions

United way WA should embrace the organization theory of change combined with SWOT analysis (Bakija, & Heim, 2008). Theory of change mainly involves coming up with strategies that assist you to achieve your goals as an organization. It helps one to know the activities the organization is engaged in to achieve the goals set or there are other ways an organization should consider (Aldrich, 2009). The theory of change helps in connecting the targets with the activities as well as identifying potential risks in the plan by looking at the assumptions in each step. In this organization theory of change connects the different projects that the organization is running and how they are related.

They need first to identify the main problem they need to solve and also the goals they want to achieve in the long-term. They also need to know their target audience and where they need to be located as specific as possible. Secondly is that they need to work from the outside right from problem definition towards achieving the long-term goal (Castaneda, Garen, & Thornton, 2008). The organization needs to know the people that are most affected by the issues they have set and the people who will assist in getting the work done. The organization needs to think of where they need to start their work .also think of practical steps that you can take towards achieving your goal.

Challenges faced by nonprofit organizations

I would advise the United Way to start an intuitive on stopping children trafficking. Although we don't have enough data as evidence of children and human trafficking, these issues have emerged in recent years. Human trafficking is thought to be brought by lack of awareness, poverty, and conflict. There is a need for people to come up with steps on how to stop these criminal activities in multilateral, Bilateral and national level. Many programs have been set by other organization trying to deal with the problem, but they have been unsuccessful because they try to deal with the observable effect rather than the significant causes of the problem. United Way WA needs to run this intuitive with better strategies in place. Some of the strategies it should consider are as follows

The increased children trafficking is thought to have been caused by the growing demand for labour, in some countries .however it seems to be a very complicated issue since it is also thought to be associated with globalization and technologies.

They should take a focus of children trafficking as a criminal offense against human beings and call for punishment to those found trafficking children

United way WA needs to run an awareness campaign of what are children trafficking and generally human trafficking and the laws and human legal rights attached to it. They should look at the most affected nations of origin and destinations and seek the government to tighten the laws and regulation about the child and human trafficking.  They should also come up with strategies on how they can rescue children being trafficked before they get into the countries of destinations. Thus they should come up with rescue centres for those children that have been victims of human trafficking. They also need to encourage human beings to value other human beings

Take a human right focus by assisting those people who are found victims of human trafficking

The organization should seek to assist those people who have been victims of human trafficking by giving them the necessities and also assisting them to locate their homes and facilitate their travel. They should also offer counselling to the affected persons to help them get their lives back to normal. Like I stated earlier the organization need to come up with rescues centres. They also need to teach and create awareness for our children on the importance of education so that they don't get to be coerced. The organization need to get ambassadors in place who are not only qualified but also motivated

Holistic approaches

Coming up with long-term strategies for this issues will require holistic approaches addressing every aspect of human trafficking. This kind of approach will call for promotion protection of human rights specifically those who have been victims of trafficking. They also need to include prevention criminalization and punishment of human traffickers

Stakeholder are those people who have an interest in your non-profit organization, and they include foundations that give grants, donors, board members and many 0rther people such as vendors or even suppliers.

Challenges faced by United Way WA

All of these individuals and groups can be affected by what your organization does or even help determine what your non-profit does. Non-profit organization stakeholders are divided into three categories which are a constitutional, contractual and third party. The constitutional stakeholders include the board members or trustees who can be further being referred to as management committee. The constitutional stakeholders are significant in managing the institution. They should always avoid having a conflict of interests.

On the other hand contractual stakeholders in a non-profit organization usually include the funders the paid staff a team or a group that is known to have a relationship with the organizations. Lastly, we have the third party stakeholders which include people and groups that get to be affected by the activities of the no-profit organization (Aldrich, 2009). They usually include the citizen, local government and businesses.

Get to know those people who are affected or interested in the project and be in a position to explain your initiative effectively

Every initiative is made up of many stakeholders. A team must carefully analyse the conditions of those that will be affected by the initiative. How there are affected, their interest and their reactions. Initiatives are thought to bring changes which later translate to opportunities (Bakija, & Heim, 2008). However, opportunities are not enough to make stakeholders accept your initiative. Giving a context around the reason for your initiative and why such changes need to be made is what makes your project to be accepted or rejected by the stakeholder

Deal with resistance effectively

Initiatives will always face resistance. However, the questions stand how to respond to resistance in the right manner (Bakija, & Heim, 2008). Resistance sometimes is brought about by the feeling of fear, insecurity, and anxiety about doing a new thing. One mistake people make when dealing with resistance is not talking about the negative side or the disadvantages of the initiative. People start developing a gut of something negative being concealed (Basil, Ridgway & Basil, 2008). This is likely to cause more resistance thus one must learn to communicate effectively about the negative side of the initiative

Inform stakeholders individually.

  As we have discussed there is excellent importance in giving the stakeholders the background of the project. Stakeholders also look forward to seeing how the said project will be beneficial to them. Thus as a project manager, you must come up with an effective communication plan that addresses the needs of stakeholders only (Aldrich, 2009). The needs of stakeholders should be addressed in a four-step approach. First, you need to explain to the stakeholders what will not change around them. Secondly is what the group is likely to lose because of the project. Thirdly is how they will benefit from the project and lastly should be opportunities and the advantages of the project overall    

Conclusion

In conclusion, although non-profit making organizations do not pay taxes, they usually act like a business. Just like the business organization United way WA operates from the point of guessing or informed strategy. The owner of the business knows the importance of doing research generating revenues and maximizing resources. Non-profit organizations can benefit from the same by use of the SWOT analysis.  

References

Ackerman, D., & Auten, G. (2008). Tax Expenditures for Noncash Charitable Contributions. NBER Chapters, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.

Aldrich, T. (2009). "Benchmarking the fundraising performance of UK charities," International Journal of Nonprofit Sector Marketing, V 14 (November), 353-364

Bakija, J., & Heim, B. (2008). How Does Charitable Giving Respond to Incentives and Income? NBER Working Papers, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.

Basil, D., Ridgway, N., & Basil, M. (2008). Guilt and giving: A process model of empathy and efficacy. Psychology & Marketing, 25(1), 1-23.

Bezjian, J., Holmstrom, W., & Kipley, D. (2009). Creating Not-For-Profit Organizational Legitimacy During Periods of Economic Constraints and Diminishing Donor Resources. Quarterly Business Renaissance, 4(4), 49-67

Castaneda, Garen, & Thornton, . (2008). Competition, Contractibility, and the Market for Donors to Nonprofits. Journal of Law Economics & Organization, 24(1), 215-246.

Eikenberry, A. (2008). Fundraising in the new philanthropy environment: The benefits and challenges of working with giving circles. Nonprofit Management & Leadership, 19(2), 141-152.

Fleming, M, and Tappin, R. (2009). "Face-to-face donor cancellation rates (attrition): establishing a benchmark, "International Journal of Nonprofit Sector Marketing, V 14 (November), 341-357.

Johnson, G. (2010). Marketing Learning the United Way. Chief Learning Officer, 9(5), 42- 47.Public Sector Marketing, 20(1), 119-138.