BUSI 409 Week 4 Discussion Board Forum 2 Replies Example

Discussion Board Forum 2 Replies: Accountability, Strategy and Collaboration

BUSI 409 Nonprofit Management and Governance, Discussion Board Forum 2 Replies

Thread by [Student Name]

The two classmates and their threads are composites; the textbook, research and Scripture cited are real, and textbook locations are given by chapter because page numbers differ between printings.

Reply to Monica

Monica, your essay proposed that the homeless shelter measure its success by the number of beds filled each night, and you are right that occupancy shows how much need the shelter meets. Worth (2017), in Chapter 6, distinguishes outputs, the activities an organization performs, from outcomes, the changes those activities produce in people's lives. Beds filled is an output. An outcome might be the share of guests who move into stable housing within six months.

Research suggests that no single measure will satisfy everyone. Herman and Renz (2008) found that nonprofit effectiveness is judged differently by different stakeholders, so donors, clients, staff and the board may each care about different results. A shelter that reports only occupancy may satisfy a funder that pays per bed but miss whether it is helping people leave homelessness. Worse, a measure that rewards full beds could quietly discourage the case management that helps guests move out, since every successful move frees a bed the shelter must fill again.

Jesus told of a manager called to give an account of his management (English Standard Version Bible, 2001/2016, Luke 16:2). Every nonprofit is accountable for what it does with resources entrusted to it, and an honest account includes outcomes, not just activity. A shelter could keep occupancy as one measure while adding two outcome measures, such as housing placements and return visits within a year, and report all three to its board. Tracking outcomes takes more effort than counting beds, but even a simple follow-up call to former guests can provide useful information.

Which outcome do you think the shelter's guests themselves would most want it to measure?

Reply to Jason

Jason, your essay recommended that two small youth mentoring organizations in the same town merge to cut overhead and avoid competing for the same donors. The logic is sound, and Worth (2017), in Chapter 8, describes mergers as one option on a continuum of collaboration. The same chapter, however, describes looser forms along that continuum, such as shared administrative services or joint programs, which can capture savings without the risks of combining boards, cultures and brands all at once.

Research on partnerships suggests that the ability to collaborate is built over time. Gazley (2010) studied partnerships between governments and nonprofits and found that organizations' collaborative capacity, including their experience and the resources they devote to managing partnerships, was linked to their use of performance measurement within those partnerships. Two organizations that have never worked together may not yet have that capacity, and a merger asks them to build it under pressure. Mergers also raise questions donors care about, such as which name survives and whether the combined organization will still serve both neighborhoods.

Ecclesiastes notes that a cord of three strands does not easily snap (English Standard Version Bible, 2001/2016, Ecclesiastes 4:12). Strength comes from strands working together, but each strand must hold. A year of shared bookkeeping and a joint summer program would let both boards see whether their organizations fit before committing to a merger. Given what you know of them, do you think the two boards would be willing to try a partnership first, or are their finances too strained to wait?

References

English Standard Version Bible. (2016). Crossway. (Original work published 2001)

Gazley, B. (2010). Linking collaborative capacity to performance measurement in government-nonprofit partnerships. Nonprofit and Voluntary Sector Quarterly, 39(4), 653-673. https://doi.org/10.1177/0899764009360823

Herman, R. D., & Renz, D. O. (2008). Advancing nonprofit organizational effectiveness research and theory: Nine theses. Nonprofit Management and Leadership, 18(4), 399-415. https://doi.org/10.1002/nml.195

Worth, M. J. (2017). Nonprofit management: Principles and practice (4th ed.). SAGE Publications.