NGO (Non-Governmental Organization) Management skills

Introduction

NGOs could gain their popularity because of the number of benefits they provide. They gain increasing support and donations because of their efforts. They want to help people in remote communities. In addition, they help to complement the governmental role of alleviating poverty (Ahmed, 2014).

According to Vakil1(997), as cited in Graf & Rothlauf (2011), there is no generally accepted definition of NGOs, despite this, the United Nations defined the NGO to be a non-profit organization that involves voluntary citizens’ group it can operate locally, nationally or internationally. NGOs operate in different services and humanitarian contexts, direct citizens' attention towards governments, monitor policies and enhance people to participate in the political issues at the community level. Moreover, they conduct analysis and provide expertise, use early warning mechanisms and assist in implementing international agreements. Some of the NGOs are specialized in human rights issues, environment, and health. They focus in their activities on advocacy and operational efforts of social, political and economic goals.

It is important to investigate two factors; the first is the beneficiary of the NGO. In the self-benefiting NGO, the members are the beneficiaries, like the labour unions. The other benefiting NGOs deliver goods and services, like International Medical Corps organization. The second factor of classification is the action type that could be oriented towards providing people's needs or advocacy (Graf & Rothlauf, 2011).

Good governance enables NGOs to provide legitimacy, leadership, and direction. The founders of the NGOs are charismatic people in common, who are strongly committed to their purpose and ideas about serving others. The staff members should share the same ideas of the founders and commitment to organizational sustainability. Effective leaders of NGOs are able to use the enthusiasm of the stakeholders. Also, they should involve the stakeholder and community members and be more focused and consistent to be trusted by others and supported. NGOs have a political role to play through increasing people's awareness with democracy besides their role in health, agriculture, relief, industry, education and service supply (Mukanga, 2011)

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Description

Kabeer et al. (2012), as cited in Ahmed (2014), argue that NGOs could not be judged to be more cost-effective than the government institutions. In the developing countries, NGOs are organizations that can solve social problems, they could take the form of aid to support needy people. This cooperative role of NGOs should pervade across all NGOs types, but once a deviation from this role occurs, they are accused of mistrust and to be controlled by the political and economic powers (Tabsh, 2016).

Non-profit organizations (NPOs) have witnessed remarkable transformations that made them become more like the for-profit enterprises since the 1980s. These changes resulted in diverge attitudes towards the NPOs that are supposed to act according to their main aim of serving the public (Maier, Meyer, & Steinbereithner, 2014).

???????????The international non-governmental organizations (INGOs) have an ideal mission and spirit of a strong volunteer. INGOs have grown larger and faster over the years the matter that increased their financial resources. For example, World Vision International annual budget worth $2 billion. Also, INGOs have become more complex and the public interest in them has also increased, which creates a challenging pressure on them. Most people working in INGOs are driven by their mission more than financial compensation. Accordingly, INGOs should attract and retain talented people who have a sense of mission (Jayawickrama, 2011).

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General Analysis

NGOs do not distribute funds to the owners or the shareholders they use them in fulfilling the organizational goals. They act independently for achieving the welfare of the society by providing people with financial support, training programs, food supplies, and advocacy. NGOs do not seek any financial profit, their main goal is to act for the interest of the public at large. The large presence of NGOs represents an indicator of the health of the economy measured in financial terms. The increasing number of NGOs that focus on social services, environment, education and other needs, NGOs are the center of social health and well-being. Despite this, NGOs face many challenges represented in the lack of efficient management, lack of resources and access to information, the need for capacity building, maintenance and increasing (Karanth, 2015).

Managers in large INGOs usually started their career at these organizations among the staff members, then they learned and got expertise that elected them to take leading positions. The growth of the NGOs in terms of size, developmental activities and workforce led them to attract more managers and experts from outside the organization. Also, the high turnover rate among the staff encourages NGOs to hire external candidates. Larger NGOs could develop internal systems of training and development to enhance the managerial skills and technical skills of the staff members. INGOs act for people welfare across countries that required them to attract staff with new and deep skill sets and more effective managers and leaders (Jayawickrama, 2011).

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Actualization

First: The basic management

Many NGOs aim to achieve their objectives depending on their resources and ideas, but the forces of the external environment enforce them to adopt concepts belong to the profit organizations. Also, their rising importance on the national and international scales led them to engage in stakeholders' management and research on corporate social responsibility (CSR). The management of the NGOs have switched their policies to become businesses (Schwenger, Straub, & Borzillo, 2014).

1.1 Change management

The difficulty of managing NGOs represents a big challenge that led them to compete with each other for private and public donors in fundraising. Change management processes of NGOs emerge in response to the problems that surround them and take place in negotiations with stakeholders. NGOs management tend to deviate from their main aim and diversify their sources of funding and develop projects for generating revenues. The model of knowledge management enables NGOs to change by a cycle of integrated knowledge management (Rocha, et al., 2015).

1. Source: Dalkir, K. (2005).

1.2 Conflict management

NGOs might have multiple identities that are conflicting and take place among non-managerial practices from business organizations. The increasing intensity of competition and resources limitation create conflicts for NGOs in balancing various sources of pressures and tensions between groups who have different views. New public management (NPM) approach argues the importance of using more formal control and bureaucratization by using pay-for-performance plans and standardized business practices. The management focus on achieving short-term outcomes and project funding could weaken the organization ability to act according to its values (Chenhall, Hall, & Smith, 2016; Vaceková, 2014). The group belonging to NGO that rejects the business-like approaches creates a conflicting situation (Maier, Meyer, & Steinbereithner, 2014).

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1.3 Communication

There are three parties involved in the communication process; the expert prescribers are the public relations professionals announced by the NGO, the communication facilitators who take the role of going between the public and problem-solving process facilitators is the one who assists the main coalitions by solving problems of public relations.

Dozier et al. (1995), as cited in Liu (2012), argue that public relations managers are the more capable to implement public relations programs rather than the technicians. The excellence theory assumes that the communication manager role consists of a mixture of facilitating communication, offering expertise and problem solving (Bhati, 2013).

1.4 Cooperation

Collaboration assists in creating economic value to the networked organizations. The resource-based view assumes that accumulating rare resources, non-substitutable and inimitable enable organizations to achieve a competitive advantage that differentiates it from its competitors (Graf & Rothlauf, 2011).

Trust is an essential factor of collaboration that represents an essential factor for partnerships. It opens lines of communication between various organizations through periodic interactions among organizations. Formalizing collaboration in the form of agreements that reflect the duties and responsibilities of various parties enhance collaboration (AbouAssi, Makhlouf, & Whalen, 2016).

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1.5 Motivation?????

Motivations of the various NGO staff members involve volunteers, who could be members in the organization or other involved unpaid community members and employees that receive wages for doing their work. According to Parry, Kelliher, Mills & Tyson (2005), as cited in Schmidt (2016), a significant difference exists among people performance in NGOs compared to employees in other organizations. These differences are result of employees attitude to work and job satisfaction. Thus management motivation for employees to work is vital for running the NGO's operations. Also, the board members work without pay in their spare time. The main aspect is to keep their devotion to the organizational goals and effectively contribute to the board performance.

1.6 Organizational structure

The executive body of the NGO has full responsibility for the operational business. The organizational structure is very important, especially in INGOs. There exist a wide variety of possible organizational structures that differ according to the adopted legal framework within every country. An umbrella organization networks and units various organizations and creates distinctive organizational structures. The sister organizations report to the umbrella organization that represents their legal parent. This organizational structure model maintains the existing structures and ensures alignment with the strategic goals. Another organizational structure is the holding organization that includes the various permanent establishment and other sister organizations. The permanent establishment represents a subsidiary of the sister organizations who have cooperation agreements with each other. These agreements define their responsibilities and allow to transfers responsibility from the permanent establishment to the sister organizations (Thum, 2017).

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Second: leadership?????????

Leadership in non-profits focus on people distinctive skills that enable them to effectively lead specific subsectors that could be economic, political, environmental, legal or social. Herman and Heimovics (1990), as cited in Kearns, et al. (2015), created their own approach of leadership skills. They argue that critical incidents result in an important impact on leadership.

The NGO leader could be considered like the company chief operating officer (CEO), he is an institutional leader, not a technocratic manager who is concerned with certain managerial functions of staffing, organizing and coordinating. NGO leaders should demonstrate the necessity of their initiatives for the development, advocacy, and humanitarian purposes. They are required to support the legitimacy at different social levels and gain the relevant knowledge associated with them. According to (Ghere, 2013), NGO leaders are required to reveal NGO accountability and donor responsibility, covey the sense of the NGO mission through culturally diverse employees, promote learning and concerning human rights and establish shared meanings across the NGO network.?

Third: project management

Project management does not have a universal definition, but projects share common characteristics that explain their overall context. According to Rold?o (2000), as cited in Esteves (2013), the project is a set of organization activities designed to fulfil organization objectively and dissolves after the conclusion. Therefore, projects are characterized by their temporary nature and accomplishment of their plans. The main project phases consist of planning, executing and controlling to achieve the predefined goals in a certain time frame according to a certain budget and quality through technical and human resources mobilization. The explanatory model of project management in non-profit organizations explains the possible relationships between six constructs: leadership, team commitment, project success, organizational support, cross-functional cooperation, and psychosocial outcomes as shown in figure (1):

Figure 1: explanatory model of project management in non-profit organizations

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Source: Esteves (2013)

According to this model, the project manager is responsible for coordinating the six constructs. The project teams are outsourced to work in the project that requires leaders support to ensure good performance (Esteves, 2013).

Fourth: Human Resources

The human resources (HR) represent the core value of any NGO because these non-profit organizations have no other major resources except the human capital. The work nature of the NGOs involves wide support of various activities to people and the objectives achievement is highly related to the way of performing work by the HR.?Human resources management (HRM) in NGOs represents the basic input more than capital and land. The heterogeneity of HR is obvious in the differences among their remuneration. People who work for a wage are honorary/paid board members, professional manager/ employees, others are volunteers. The structure of HR in NGO is more complex compared to business and governmental organizations because the financial criterion is associated with the form of engagement and level of cooperation with the organization (Schmidt, 2016).

The volunteer paid managers and employees and paid board represent the members' critical stakeholders of the NGO. Private and organizational donors significantly influence the personal and managerial levels of NGOs. Many organizations define their goals and objectives and assign people to achieve them in terms of projects that take place in real life (Rahman & Sultana, 2012)?

Fifth: Volunteer

The projects and goals of NGOs around the globe are restricted to a grant-by-grant basis. The matter that leads NGO management to make critical decisions of reducing the number of staff members to meet their desired goals. That is why the need for a volunteer group is essential for them to boost their productivity with their limited funds. volunteers can serve the NGO in a variety of ways, including creation of a positive image of the organization that enables it to attract greater outside resources, provide fresh energy to the work environment, maximize the accountability, link between the community needs and changes and the organization, provide new networking opportunities and save money for the organization (Abushadi, et. al, 2015)

Volunteering varies by demographic characteristics, including sex, race, ethnicity, and age. According to Einolf & Yung (2018), Non-Hispanic Whites represent the highest percentage of volunteering among other volunteers, while the African Americans recorded the most hours of volunteering. Age has a curve-linear relationship that represents an increasing tendency of volunteering in the young adulthood and middle age then it declines by getting older. According to the resource theory, people are more likely to volunteer when they have skills and time to be allocated to volunteer. People with higher education and better skills are more likely to volunteer compared to others with low skills (Einolf & Yung, 2018).

Sixth: Funds

It is highly important for NGOs to create and implement a fundraising plan to enable diversify their funding sources. It should be based on their annual budget and it should include regular donors. By this, if the NGO loses one donor, it will find alternatives to support its activities. The number of donors that the organization should have is the function of their budget size and ability to do fundraising activities and capacity to manage the grants. NGOs can think in terms of the pyramid as shown in figure (2). It positively relates the number of funds with the organization size (Lewis, 2017).

Figure 2: NGO pyramid of donors management

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Source: (Lewis, 2017)

Building positive relationships with the donors need few key tools to be used regularly and systematically, including a newsletter to be sent by email, holding special events to maintain the relations with the existing donors and attract new donors and a group of volunteers who can help in fundraising (Asia Catalyst, 2017).

Brady, et. al. (2011), argues that NGOs are unlike the profit organization in their orientation towards the marketing activities. They do not devote much efforts to make marketing campaigns to promote their objectives, the matter that limits their ability to attract funds.

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Seventh: Operations Management

The operating management structure of NGOs have two major characteristics; the first one is the organization committed to the external environment, the second one is management ability to fulfil various activities of oversight and operations management. NGOs former operational managers follow up the daily operations into a regulatory body (Thum, 2017).

Another important group members of organizations NGOs are the volunteers

who have the right to vote and participate in general meetings, they are involved in running the operations of associations, directed towards development and policy implementation (Schmidt, 2016).

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Discussion: Pros and Cons

NGOs have become major forces in economic and social fields across the local and national levels of the world countries and on the international level as well. They tend to attract greater policy recognition at the three defined levels. Part of this attention is due to the low capacities available to promote welfare and development. There are many pros for the NGOs, represented in considering it to be a strategic component between the policies that give the priority to the market powers and the high state reliant advocates at the local and national levels. At the international level, large organizations like the World Bank and the United Nations seek to balance between the powers of state-led and market-oriented development approaches and devote high importance to NGOs in fulfilling such a role. According to Anheier (2014), The NGOs pros and cons on the local, national and international levels are discussed as follows:

??????????On the local level, NGOs became a phenomenon that represents part of the community building and implementation of the empowerment strategies. Their cons could be represented in government restrictions on their activities and the low funds they receive. NGOs are able to reach areas and population that are not covered by governments policies and actions. This is usually the case in countries where governments are facing natural disasters, political conflicts or lack of economic resources to cover citizen’s needs. NGOS play a critical role supporting government in its actions, but it noticed that at long, this support is changing into a total replacement of government, which is completely shirking its responsibilities and disperses international aid into inappropriate expenditures.

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??????????On the national level, they are increasingly involved in various activities of welfare, environment, and health that represent their pros. Their cons are represented in the transformation in culture and people and governments resistance to change. In the common street thinking INGOs are just representation of occidental power, which plunder countries' resources before returning to them with hypocritical humanitarian aid. INGOs are also considered as spy agencies, coming to collect information on populations and governments capacities, they are often accused to support forces against government by providing materials, weapons, resources to rebellions through their humanitarian convoys.

??????????At the international level, NGOs role is promoting the international system of governance. They are highly assisted in increasing sustainability across various countries. Their cons are represented in the complexity of the structure and management of thousands of staff members that put high pressure on NGO management. We have also now the issue related to the origin of donations and funds received by some NGOs. They are suspected to contribute to the financing of terrorism or money laundering by some mafia groups.

There is also a lack of transparency in the management of some NGOs founding families, or some social actors who are accused of avoiding taxes by investing in an NGO or foundation. Governments are increasingly demanding on controls, taxation and monitoring of NGOs.

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General recommendations

NGOs should develop their organization competency, adopt performance-based policies, implement institutional mentoring programs and facilitate the experiential system. Also, the INGOs expansions should stress on networking with developmental organizations through implementing joint projects to assist in management capacity building and offering support to good leadership.

Change management should be implemented by developing people's skills to achieve social objectives through adopting for-profit organizations policies. Managers of the NGOs should work harmoniously and focus on mutual benefits by adopting a win-win strategy. This could be highlighted by:

-??????Creating a strong communication chain: providing staff guidelines on how to clearly interact together, with external actors, who is involved or not depending on responsibility level

-??????Enhancing staff efforts and involvement: determining which type of staff will be required and skills needed to reach organization goals. Set up skills and capacity building system in order to improve efficiency. Empowering evaluation system to assess staff performance

-??????Managing Finance resources and department

-??????Effective outside (donors, local authorities, partners, beneficiaries) visibility and communication plan, in order to reinforce NGO’s activities understanding and secure upcoming funds.

The NGO leader vision should extend to the local, national and global environment. Employees at the NGOs should be well trained, educated and developed to achieve the organizational goals and objectives.

Conclusion

The difficulty of managing NGOs represents a big challenge that led them to compete with each other for private and public donors in fundraising. The increasing intensity of competition and resources limitation create conflicts for NGOs in balancing various sources of pressures and tensions between groups who have different views. The communication manager role consists of a mixture of facilitating communication, offering communication expertise and solving problems.

A significant difference exists among people performance in NGOs compared to employees in other organizations. These differences are result of employees' attitude to work and job satisfaction. The executive body of the NGO has full responsibility for the operational business.

The HR represents the core value of any NGO because these non-profit organizations have no other major resources except the human capital. The work nature of the NGOs involves wide support of various activities to people and the objectives achievement is highly related to the way of performing work by the HR.

Volunteering varies by demographic characteristics, including sex, race, ethnicity, and age. Non-Hispanic Whites represent the highest percentage of volunteering among other volunteers, while the African Americans recorded the most hours of volunteering.

The number of donors that the organization should have is the function of their budget size and ability to do fundraising activities and capacity to manage the grants.

Building positive relationships with the donors need few key tools to be used regularly and systematically, including a newsletter to be sent by email, holding special events to maintain the relations with the existing donors and attract new donors and a group of volunteers who can help in fundraising.

There are many pros for the NGOs, represented in considering it to be a strategic component between the policies that give the priority to the market powers and the high state reliant advocates at the local and national levels.

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