The Catalysts: "Not for Profit" Organizations!!

If an organization has to deliver results, it must be built like an Institution: 

1. Imagine/ Design the future (Vision, Biz Model, Strategy)
2. Establish execution engine (People, Processes, Policies, Structure, Technology, Infra AND Plan – Do – Check – Act)
3. Motivate stakeholders to contribute to realizing the future (Webinars/ knowledge sharing sessions/ workshops/ open houses/ conferences, training, knowledge management and others.)

If we don't fire all three cylinders, as mentioned above – the motivated stakeholder's passion and effort will not be realized, and energies will not become the synergy.

Whether you are a non-profit organization or profit organization, the execution model must be the same, except for non-profit organization, the profits will be spent for the benefit of their members/stakeholders. Of course, non-profit organizations focus is NOT on revenue/profit, but money is required to drive operations. 

Unfortunately, most of the non-profit organizations have been focusing on conducting events, developing a few standards/ policies and collaborate with the government/ agencies to introduce a few society/business-friendly policies. 

That is not enough. I always believed that in addition to the routine tasks, it is important for non-profit organizations to drive a few transformational initiatives. 

For example, when I was the chairman of seven PMI Chapters in India, I have executed a few transformational programs: 

PMI Head Quarter, USA, was highly focusing on China in 2008. Then I have brought all chapters in India together, and with the support from Saji and Chapter Presidents, I was able to create a balanced scorecard and re-defined what Project Management is. - 

Project Management is not just for improving productivity and profit; it is for building the Nations. With combined efforts, we were able to shift PMI HQ focus from China to India. The result was a dedicated office of PMI at Mumbai.

When I was the President of PMI Pearl City Chapter, I introduced the Student leadership Competency Building Initiative (SLCB) and also announced International Student Leadership Day (ISLD) on February 3rd of every year. Under this initiative, myself and my PMI Pearl City Chapter Colleagues met with Dr Kalam when he was the president of India at his office, Delhi, on April 11th 2005. I presented the ideas. He had advised us to focus on building leadership in the age group of 12 - 22 years in semi-urban and rural areas. With that motivation, we met and mentored 3000 students in villages and towns. 

Currently, I am the chairman for IET Future Tech Panel, Smart Cities Working Group. My dream is to manage the water in the cities, towns and villages effectively and efficiently to minimize water problems to the next generation. We started an initiative of DIGITAL TWIN for Water Distribution Management. We call this as "WATER TWIN" Initiative. We hope to deliver some good results. 

The important aspect of any non-profit organization is to recruit, retain and recognize the Volunteers.

If the non-profit organization office or board do not understand the importance of volunteers and focus on just completing a few tasks/ jobs and bring a few influencers to conduct some events and webinars, then we could safely forget about the delivering the value/ dream that was designed by the non-profit organization.

Managing Volunteers is 10X complex than managing employees in business organizations. 

Respect, Reward and Inspire the Volunteers and Volunteers leaders. Volunteers can spend a maximum 3% to 15% of their total time availability. Most of the times, only 5%-10% of volunteers are active, even many enroll into initiatives. 

If any of the leadership team of a non-profit organization become insecure and do not let the best in class volunteers to join the organization, that would be doing injustice to the whole members and to their organization. 

As a not for a profit-making organization, Do not become an event management/conference/ webinar management organization.

Intellect brainstorming is only a drop in the big ocean - the key aspect is to implement the outputs of ideation/ brainstorming sessions to deliver expected outcomes to stakeholders. 

Be a CATALYST to contribute to building a healthy, safety, green, blue and wealthy NATION. 

Jai Ho  & Jai Hind

#VSR