Non Profit Coach

Managing in Small Businessesand Nonprofit OrganizationsSmall businesses are growing in importance. Hundreds of small businesses open everymonth, but the environment for small business today is highly complicated. Chapter 6provides detailed information about managing in small businesses and entrepreneurialstartups.One interesting finding is that managers in small businesses tend to emphasize rolesdifferent from those of managers in large corporations. Managers in small companiesoften see their most important role as that of spokesperson because they must promotethe small, growing company to the outside world. The entrepreneur role is also criticalin small businesses because managers have to be innovative and help their organizationsdevelop new ideas to remain competitive. At LivingSocial, for example, founder and CEOTim O’Shaughnessy spends a lot of his time promoting the rapidly growing daily-deal siteand talking with department heads about potential new products and services.68 Smallbusinessmanagers tend to rate lower on the leader role and on information-processingroles, compared with their counterparts in large corporations.Nonprofit organizations also represent a major application of management talent.69Organizations such as the Salvation Army, Nature Conservancy, Greater Chicago FoodDepository, Girl Scouts, and Cleveland Orchestra all require excellent management. Thefunctions of planning, organizing, leading, and controlling apply to nonprofits just as theydo to business organizations, and managers in nonprofit organizations use similar skillsand perform similar activities. The primary difference is that managers in businesses directtheir activities toward earning money for the company and its owners, whereas managersin nonprofits direct their efforts toward generating some kind of social impact. The characteristicsand needs of nonprofit organizations created by this distinction present uniquechallenges for managers.70Financial resources for government and charity nonprofit organizations typically comefrom taxes, appropriations, grants, and donations rather than from the sale of productsor services to customers. In businesses,managers focus on improving the organization’sproducts and services to increasesales revenues. In nonprofits, however,services are typically provided to nonpayingclients, and a major problem for manyorganizations is securing a steady streamof funds to continue operating. Nonprofitmanagers, committed to serving clientswith limited resources, must focus onkeeping organizational costs as low as possible.71 Donors generally want their moneyto go directly to helping clients rather thanfor overhead costs. If nonprofit managerscan’t demonstrate a highly efficient use ofresources, they might have a hard time securingadditional donations or governmentappropriations. Although the Sarbanes-Oxley Act (the 2002 corporate governancereform law) doesn’t apply to nonprofits,for example, many are adopting its guidelines,striving for greater transparency andaccountability to boost credibility with constituents and be more competitive when seekingfunding.72In addition, some types of nonprofit organizations, such as hospitals and private universitiesthat obtain revenues from selling services to clients, do have to contend with a bottomline in the sense of having to generate enough revenues to cover expenses, so managersoften struggle with the question of what constitutes results and effectiveness. It is easy tomeasure revenues compared to expenses, but the metrics of success in nonprofits are typicallymuch more ambiguous. Managers have to measure intangibles such as “improve publichealth,” “upgrade the quality of education,” or “increase appreciation for the arts.” Thisintangible nature also makes it more difficult to gauge the performance of employees andmanagers. An added complication is that managers in some types of nonprofits dependon volunteers and donors who cannot be supervised and controlled in the same way that abusiness manager deals with employees. Many people who move from the corporate worldto a nonprofit are surprised to find that the work hours are often longer and the stressgreater than in their previous management jobs.73The roles defined by Mintzberg also apply to nonprofit managers, but they may differsomewhat. We might expect managers in nonprofit organizations to place more emphasison the roles of spokesperson (to “sell” the organization to donors and the public), leader(to build a mission-driven community of employees and volunteers), and resource allocator#aagsb #AASTMT #mba #MBA #manager #get_ready_academy_alex_egy #get_ready_academy #businessadminstration #entrepreneur #entrepreneurmindsets #marketing #businesscourse #business_adminstiration #aast #contemporary_management #arab_academy_business #entrepreneurship #managementskills #marketingcourses #leadership #managmentcourses