MGMT 602 Week 8 Nonprofit Analysis Project Example

Nonprofit Analysis Project: A Christian Worldview Reflection, a Review of Ten Nonprofits and an Assessment of a Central Virginia Home Repair Ministry

Part 1: A Christian Worldview of Nonprofit Work

A Christian worldview begins with the conviction that all work matters to God. Keller and Alsdorf (2012) argue that work was part of God's design before the fall, that it was damaged by sin but not abandoned, and that ordinary work can be a way of loving one's neighbor and serving God's purposes in the world. They reject the idea that only church work or ministry is sacred. On this view, the plumber who repairs a widow's furnace and the board member who reviews a budget are both doing work God cares about.

Paul instructed the Colossians to do whatever they do with their whole heart, as for the Lord and not for people, knowing that they would receive their reward from him (English Standard Version Bible, 2001/2016, Colossians 3:23-24). For nonprofit leaders, this teaching sets two standards at once. The work should be excellent, because it is offered to God, and it should be done for the good of the people served, not for the organization's reputation. James adds that religion that is pure before God includes visiting orphans and widows in their affliction (English Standard Version Bible, 2001/2016, James 1:27), a reminder that care for the vulnerable is central rather than optional.

This worldview shapes how a nonprofit should be evaluated. It is not enough to ask whether an organization raises money efficiently. A Christian evaluator should also ask whether the organization treats the people it serves with dignity, whether it is honest with donors and the public, whether it cares for its staff and volunteers, and whether it uses its resources faithfully, as a steward rather than an owner. These four questions, dignity, honesty, care and stewardship, guide the evaluation in Part 3.

The first question rests on the doctrine that every person bears the image of God (English Standard Version Bible, 2001/2016, Genesis 1:27). An older homeowner who cannot afford a new roof is not a project or a statistic but a neighbor whose home and choices deserve respect. Nonprofits can fail this standard quietly, for example by photographing clients for fundraising without asking, or by deciding what repairs a family needs without hearing what the family wants. The other three questions follow from the same root. Honesty matters because donors entrust gifts on the strength of what they are told. Care for staff and volunteers matters because the workers are also neighbors, not instruments of the mission. And stewardship matters because the resources a nonprofit holds were given for a purpose, and a steward who spends everything today and plans nothing for tomorrow has not fully honored the giver.

Part 2: Review of Ten Nonprofit Organizations

Ten nonprofits serving central Virginia were reviewed using their most recent Form 990, their websites and, where available, annual reports. Each was compared on four criteria: the clarity of its mission, the diversity of its revenue, the months of expenses it holds in unrestricted reserves, and how openly it reports results to the public.

The review revealed two patterns worth noting. First, reserves were low across the group: only three of the ten held more than three months of expenses, and two held less than one month, which suggests that thin cushions are common in the local sector rather than a problem of a few weak organizations. Second, public reporting of results lagged behind the quality of the work. Most organizations reported what they did, meals served, patients seen, homes repaired, but few reported what changed for the people they served. The organizations that reported outcomes were generally the larger ones with paid development staff.

Three organizations stood out as candidates for in-depth evaluation because they combined a clear mission with a visible financial risk: the free clinic, the homeless shelter and the home repair ministry. The ministry was chosen for three reasons. Its program directly serves a vulnerable group, older homeowners with low incomes, which fits the worldview standard of care for widows and the poor. Its reserve level of about six weeks is low for an organization that buys materials months in advance. And its leaders agreed to two interviews and shared internal outcome data, which made a deeper assessment possible.

Part 3: Evaluation and Assessment of the Home Repair Ministry

Mission and Programs

The ministry was founded by four churches in 2006 with a mission to help low-income older adults and people with disabilities remain safely in their own homes through critical repairs and accessibility changes. It completes about 140 projects a year in three counties, mostly roofs, wheelchair ramps, bathroom grab bars, furnace replacements and floor repairs. Homeowners must be over 60 or disabled and earn under half the area median income. The mission is clear and consistently reflected in the work; the ministry turned down a proposal two years ago to expand into general housing rehabilitation because it would have diluted its focus.

Each project follows the same path. A homeowner or a referral agency, usually the area agency on aging or a home health nurse, submits an application, and a construction supervisor visits within three weeks to assess the home and the homeowner's priorities. Projects are ranked by safety risk, so a failing furnace in January or a missing stair rail moves ahead of cosmetic work. Smaller jobs are completed by trained volunteer teams on Saturdays, while roofing and electrical work is subcontracted to licensed contractors who give the ministry reduced rates. At the time of this review, 63 applicants were waiting, and the average wait from assessment to repair was about four months, longer in summer when volunteer groups travel.

Governance

The eleven-member board includes representatives of the four founding churches, a retired contractor, an accountant and a social worker from the area agency on aging. It meets every other month, has finance and program committees, and conducted a formal evaluation of the executive director last year for the first time. Two weaknesses stand out. Seven of the eleven members have served more than nine years, with nothing in the bylaws to rotate anyone off; and the board has never adopted a reserve policy or reviewed a multiyear budget. Worth (2017) describes the board's responsibilities as including oversight of finances and planning for the organization's future, and Brown (2005) found that board performance was associated with organizational performance. The board's care is evident, but its financial oversight is reactive. Board members interviewed described meetings that review the past two months' projects and finances in detail but rarely discuss the year ahead. The finance committee chair, a retired accountant, said that she had raised the question of reserves twice and that the board had agreed in principle both times without voting on a policy. The executive director, for her part, described the board as supportive but said that she carries most of the ministry's relationships with churches and foundations herself, a pattern that resembles the founder-centered governance the course examined earlier.

Finances

Revenue has grown modestly, from $812,000 to $905,000 over three years, and comes from individual and church gifts (54 percent), foundation grants (24 percent), a county contract for accessibility repairs (15 percent) and a spring fundraising event (7 percent). The mix is reasonably diverse. The weakness is liquidity. With about six weeks of expenses in unrestricted reserves, the ministry has little cushion against a delayed grant or a spike in material costs, and the executive director reported that in 2024 lumber and roofing prices forced it to postpone fourteen projects until donations caught up. Administrative and fundraising costs together were 16 percent of expenses, a reasonable level that leaves room for modest investment in capacity. Fundraising depends heavily on relationships the executive director maintains personally with about thirty congregations, which give through annual offerings and by sending volunteer teams. That base is loyal but aging: church giving has been flat for three years, and growth has come from foundation grants, which are often limited to one or two years. The spring event raised $63,000 last year but required roughly 400 hours of staff time.

Volunteers and Staff

The ministry has five full-time staff, including two construction supervisors, and about 600 volunteers a year, most of them from church groups that work on Saturday projects. Volunteers contribute an estimated 14,000 hours annually. Volunteer satisfaction appears high: 70 percent of church groups have returned each year for at least three years. Staff, however, described strain. The two construction supervisors each oversee three or four projects every Saturday and spend weekdays buying materials and assessing new homes, and one supervisor said he had not taken a full week off in two years. Volunteer safety is managed through a short orientation and a supervisor's presence on every site, and the ministry carries volunteer accident insurance. With two supervisors and growing demand, however, some Saturday sites have been led by experienced volunteers alone, a practice the supervisors themselves described as a risk.

Accountability and Outcomes

The ministry tracks the number of projects completed and the dollar value of repairs, and since 2023 it has called each homeowner six months after a repair to ask whether they are still living at home. Of the 2024 homeowners reached, 91 percent were still at home, and 84 percent said the repair made them feel safer. These are meaningful outcome measures, though the ministry does not compare them with any baseline, and it publishes only project counts in its annual report. In one of their nine theses, Herman and Renz (2008) hold that judging a nonprofit's effectiveness always means comparing it with something, and in another that the judgment has several dimensions that different stakeholders weigh differently. The ministry's own follow-up calls are a strong start that it could share more openly. A useful comparison is already within reach. The area agency on aging tracks how many of its clients move into assisted living or nursing homes each year, and the ministry could ask whether homeowners who received repairs moved less often than similar clients on its own waiting list. Such a comparison would not prove that the repairs caused the difference, but it would give the board, the county and donors a far better sense of what the program achieves than a count of roofs replaced.

Assessment Against the Worldview Standard

Measured against the four questions from Part 1, the ministry performs well on dignity: homeowners are consulted on every repair and volunteers are trained to treat their homes respectfully. It performs well on honesty in what it reports, though it reports less than it knows. Its care for staff is the weakest area, given the supervisors' workload. Its stewardship of resources is careful in spending but limited in planning, since a faithful steward also prepares for lean seasons. The pattern is common among organizations driven by compassion: every available dollar goes to the next family in need, and the long-term health of the organization feels like a lesser concern. Yet the families on next year's waiting list depend on the ministry still being able to serve them.

Part 4: Recommendations

Five recommendations follow from the evaluation. They are listed in order of priority, beginning with the change that protects the ministry's ability to keep serving homeowners if a lean year comes.

• 1. Adopt a reserve policy. The board should set a goal of three months of unrestricted reserves, about $220,000, built over four years by setting aside 3 percent of revenue annually and directing a portion of the spring event's proceeds to the reserve.
• 2. Add board term limits. The board should adopt two three-year terms with a one-year break, phased in so that no more than three long-serving members rotate off in any year, and recruit members with fundraising and construction management experience.
• 3. Hire a third construction supervisor. Funded partly by the county contract's growth and a capacity grant, a third supervisor would reduce weekend loads and allow each supervisor to take regular time off.
• 4. Publish outcomes. The annual report should include the six-month follow-up results, with a simple comparison over years, so that donors and churches see what the repairs accomplish.
• 5. Prepare a three-year budget. A multiyear budget reviewed each fall would let the board plan for material price swings and staffing rather than responding to them.

Taken together, the recommendations ask the board to shift some of its attention from reviewing what has happened to planning what comes next. None requires the ministry to change its mission or its character. The first and fifth can be adopted at the next two board meetings at no cost. The second and fourth require only a change in practice. The third, the new supervisor, costs about $58,000 a year with benefits, and the evaluation suggests it would pay for itself by shortening the waiting list and protecting the health of the two people on whom the program most depends.

Part 5: Letter to the Organization

Dear Board Chair,

Thank you for allowing me to study your ministry this term and for the time you and your executive director gave to my interviews. Your work keeps older neighbors safe in their homes, and the follow-up calls showing that nine in ten homeowners remain at home six months after a repair are evidence of real impact.

My assessment found a ministry with a clear mission, a caring board, loyal volunteers and careful spending. It also found two vulnerabilities: reserves of about six weeks of expenses and heavy workloads for your construction supervisors.

I respectfully offer five recommendations: adopt a reserve policy aiming at three months of expenses over four years; add board term limits phased in over time; hire a third construction supervisor; publish your six-month outcome results in the annual report; and prepare a three-year budget each fall. A fuller explanation of each, with the figures behind it, is enclosed.

It has been a privilege to learn from your work. I would be glad to discuss any of these ideas with the board.

Respectfully,

A Liberty University MGMT 602 student

References

Brown, W. A. (2005). Exploring the association between board and organizational performance in nonprofit organizations. Nonprofit Management and Leadership, 15(3), 317-339. https://doi.org/10.1002/nml.71

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

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

Keller, T., & Alsdorf, K. L. (2012). Every good endeavor: Connecting your work to God's work. Dutton.

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