Nonprofit management

Nonprofit management is the planning, organizing, funding, direction and control of nonprofit organizations. When those organizations are incorporated primary responsibility for management rests with the governing board, although they may delegate it to a paid manager or agent.

Strategic management for nonprofits

Strategic planning or strategic management is a business management method which has been in use since the 1950’s in the private sector. Its popularity in the non-profit sector has been growing for the past thirty years. Strategic management is a widely used way to tie together issues throughout an organization over functional divisions bringing together the needs of management, programming function, and the needs of the population served rectifying day to day operations with the long term plans of the organization.

Strategic management is practiced in several different stages. In the beginning the organization should employ environmental scanning. Environmental scanning is the analytical survey of all the realms in which an organization operates: political, economic, social, etc. At the end of the environmental scan the organization should know more about its mission, vision, and values in relation to all of the constructs of the world in which in exists.

The next stage is called strategy formulation. A strategy is simply a plan of action addressing those issues which the environmental scan turns up as being important to the organizations survival. Once the strategies have been formulated the organization enters the implementation stage. This is typically the five to ten year period for which the plan is to affect. Both during and after this stage it is important for the organization to use monitoring and evaluation techniques so that they remain abreast of their progress.

Strategic management has many areas of useful application in the public sector. Each year resources become more difficult to come by. This means that an organization that has planned well for the resources they do have, and are ready for changes in their funding will be one step ahead of those who do not. Many funding resources today are also becoming more and more results oriented. The strategically planned organization should know what results it affects and how to measure them.