UST 493/693 Institutional Development of the Nonprofit Organization Fall Semester 1999 Tuesdays 6:00 B 9:50 pm

Course Objective:

Students will develop a basic understanding of key features of community-based nonprofit leadership and management and will be able to apply them to specific problem situations.

Introduction to Course:

Nonprofit organizations occupy a distinct place in contemporary society. They fulfill functions and deliver services that have a public character, yet increasingly they are expected to operate in a businesslike manner.

Since many of their clients pay little if any of the cost of the services they receive, building a stable and continuing base of financial support is a primary concern of nonprofit leaders. Difficulty in matching salaries found in business and government often means difficulty in attracting and retaining qualified staff. Nonprofit leaders must spend considerable time building and maintaining community support. Since few community-based nonprofits have enough money to do everything they would like to, leaders are constantly faced with the necessity of making tough trade-offs.

All in all, despite this country's belief in the nonprofit sector as a way of providing needed services while keeping government relatively small, leading and managing the community-based nonprofit presents a distinctive set of challenges. Yet many people are attracted to careers in the nonprofit sector because of the potential to work directly and creatively to advance values they believe to be important.

This course is intended to provide the foundational knowledge and perspectives important to good leadership and management in the nonprofit sector. It emphasizes the "big picture" -- the factors that make the sector distinctive and their implications for leadership and management -- and introduces concrete skills and capacities within this context. The main assumption behind the way this course is organized is that while there are leadership and management skills that are transferable across sectors, each sector -- government, business, nonprofit -- has characteristics unique to it.

One difference between excellence and mediocrity in any sector is understanding its particular qualities and practicing leadership and management in a way appropriate to the sector in question. In other words, being a leader or a manager is less about acquiring nuts-and-bolts (although this is an important part) than it is about developing an understanding of the environment in which the work takes place and an approach to leading and managing that is appropriate to the context in which you find yourself.

There are many different kinds of nonprofits, everything from very large, well-supported institutions like museums and hospitals, to national organizations like the Salvation Army and the Red Cross, to medium-sized social welfare organizations that contract with government, to very small grass-roots organizations that are one step beyond the all-volunteer group. While some of what we will study in this course applies to any nonprofit, we will concentrate in particular on the small to medium-sized community-based organization, where needs are great, environments are turbulent, resources are constantly strained, and good leadership can make the difference between survival and disappearance.

The paradox of this course is that much of what turns a person into a good leader or manager is not learned in the classroom, but on the job. Nevertheless, the classroom can be a golden opportunity to reflect on the complex situations and tough decisions that make up the life of a nonprofit leader or manager, a chance to bring to bear theories and ideas on problems, and a chance to share your experiences with others and to learn from theirs.

The situations and problems that class members have faced or are facing now will be a major resource for the class. We will also analyze case examples that are typical of dilemmas nonprofit leaders and managers have to deal with, and talk with nonprofit leaders in the Cleveland area about the challenges they are facing. In all these ways, theories and "book knowledge" will be constantly tested in terms of their applicability to real life problems.

Course materials: Christine Letts, William Ryan & Allen Grossman. AHigh Performance Nonprofit Organizations.@

Thomas Wolf. "Managing a Nonprofit Organization"

Xeroxed materials as provided by instructors.

Assignments:

Field Project: In teams of three or so, students will select a community-based nonprofit to find out about by interviewing staff and board members and reviewing written material about the organization and its community. Teams will write up their findings around some significant problem facing the leaders of the organization and prepare their own analysis of the case (decide how they leadership should deal with the problem). In class, eac case will also be analyzed by another team.

2. Mid term

3. Final

4. Reading case studies and participating in small group and class discussion. Students will bring to class two typed copies answering the following questions for case studies as they are assigned:

C Briefly list out what you see to be the most typical problem(s) about this case, i.e., the problems in it that one sees most often in organizational affairs.

C Complete the following sentence (as many time as you wish): AThe problem in this case came about because ofY.And because ofY.@

C If you could do, or could have done, anything you want to about the problem(s) depicted in the case, what would you want to do?

Class Schedule:

August 31: Introductions

Brief history of nonprofit sector

Sept 7: Nonprofits and the Welfare State

Reading, analyzing, writing a case study.

Sept 14: Capacity and High Performance in Nonprofit Organizations

Wolf Chaps 1 & 2

Sept 21: Leadership

Read Selznick chapter provided.

John Kotter article from Harvard Business Review

Sept 28: Nonprofit Boards

Letts Chapter 3, 4 &7

Oct 5: Strategic Planning

Alliance Building

Wolf Chapter 9

Oct 12: Performance Measures

Evaluation

Outcome Measures

Letts Chap 5

Wolf Chap 11

Oct 19: Mid term

CASE?

Oct. 26: Constituency Building

Marketing

Wolf Chap 2, 5

Letts Chap 7

Nov 2: Fundraising

Entrepreneurship

Enterprise strategies

Wolf Chap 8

Letts Chap 9

Wolf Chap. 11

Nov 9: Financial Management

Budgeting

Wolf Chaps 6,7

Nov 16: Human Resources

Managing Volunteers

Wolf Chaps 3 & 4

Letts Chap 6

Nov 23:

Nov 30: Project presentations

Managing Information

Wolf Chap 10

Dec 7: Review and Synthesis

Dec 14: Final

Grading:

Class participation: 20% Involvement, attendance

Case Studies 20% Answering the three questions listed above thoughtfully, ability to use and follow format

Field Projects 20%

Midterm 20%

Final 20%